The Acquisition of Japanese Relative Clauses by L1 Chinese Learners

Ph.D

Can the Head Quantifier Phrase Reconstruct in Doubly Embedded Chinese Relative Clauses?

Aoun and Li (2003) claimed that when a universal quantifier phrase (QP) occurs in the doubly embedded subject position of Chinese relative clauses (RCs), it cannot be raised out of the RC and thus cannot have scope over the head of the RC. This study investigated whether it is really true that when a universal QP occurs in the doubly embedded subject position of Chinese RCs, it cannot take scope over the head of the RC. With a controlled truth value judgment experiment, our findings suggest that in Chinese RCs, it is possible for the universal QP in the doubly embedded subject position to have scope over the head QP, which contradicts Aoun and Li\u27s (2003) claim. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt upon the raising analysis (Aoun and Li 2003, Lee 1986) for the universal QP in the RC subject position of Chinese RCs. We argue that the head of Chinese RCs, regardless of whether it is a QP or an NP, can reconstruct into its base position inside the RC. There is no need to stipulate that in Chinese RCs, a head NP can reconstruct while a head QP cannot

An Analysis of the Application of Cognitive Linguistics in English Vocabulary Teaching

This paper aims to analyze the application strategies of Cognitive Linguistics in English vocabulary teaching. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cognitive Linguistics emerged as a prominent theoretical framework, providing new theoretical support for English teaching. This paper first introduces the basic concepts and principles of Cognitive Linguistics. Then, it discusses how Cognitive Linguistics can be applied to promote vocabulary acquisition, including the use of prototype, conceptual metaphor and image schema. Based on the literature review and analysis, this paper further examines the significance of context and collocation in vocabulary learning. Finally, it summarizes the advantages and challenges of the application of Cognitive Linguistics in English vocabulary teaching. This paper highlights the significant role of Cognitive Linguistics in vocabulary teaching and provides new insights and methods for future English teaching

Simplified grammar in both languages? On scope assignment in Q-Neg sentences in English-dominant heritage Chinese speakers

Quantifier-negation (Q-Neg) sentences are sentences like ‘All teachers did not use Donald’s car,’ where a negation word and universal quantifier occur in the subject position. There are both surface scope (all>not) and inverse scope (not>all) readings in English, but only the surface scope (all>not) reading is allowed in Chinese. This study conducted a picture-matching truth value judgment experiment to examine whether English-dominant heritage Chinese speakers know the difference between English and Chinese regarding the interpretation of Q-Neg sentences. The data reveals three different groups of participants: a. participants who accepted the inverse scope reading in both languages; b. participants who rejected the inverse scope reading in both languages; c. participants who accepted the inverse scope reading in English but rejected it in Chinese. Implications regarding heritage language research will be discussed

An experimental investigation of the deep double-o constraint in Japanese causative constructions

The double-o constraint (DoC) (Harada, 1973) was proposed to explain the ungrammaticality of having two or more noun phrases (NPs) marked by the accusative case marker -o in a single Japanese clause. Poser (2002) argued for two types of DoCs: the surface double-o constraint (SDoC) and the deep double-o constraint (DDoC). The DDoC prohibits two accusative arguments in a single argument structure and is not affected by the number of accusative case markers on the surface. The evidence is from Japanese causatives. Our study conducted an experiment to test the DDoC and found that it may not exist

Style shifts in Japanese video game commentary monologues

Honorific markers play an integral role in many languages, but their purpose and meaning are still widely debated. Ide (1989) claims a one-to-one relationship between social rank difference and linguistic form, but Cook (1997, 2011) proposes that honorifics are used to display a ‘disciplined self,’ which further indexes a variety of social meanings. This study examined style shifts between the honorific and plain form in Japanese video game commentary monologues. We found that instances of honorific form can be grouped into four categories regarding their contextual functions: to make an announcement, to indicate seriousness, conventionalized formulae, and to quote others. This conclusion supports Cook’s proposal

A Comparative Study on Regularization Strategies for Embedding-based Neural Networks

This paper aims to compare different regularization strategies to address a common phenomenon, severe overfitting, in embedding-based neural networks for NLP. We chose two widely studied neural models and tasks as our testbed. We tried several frequently applied or newly proposed regularization strategies, including penalizing weights (embeddings excluded), penalizing embeddings, re-embedding words, and dropout. We also emphasized on incremental hyperparameter tuning, and combining different regularizations. The results provide a picture on tuning hyperparameters for neural NLP models.Comment: EMNLP '1

Classifying Relations via Long Short Term Memory Networks along Shortest Dependency Path

Relation classification is an important research arena in the field of natural language processing (NLP). In this paper, we present SDP-LSTM, a novel neural network to classify the relation of two entities in a sentence. Our neural architecture leverages the shortest dependency path (SDP) between two entities; multichannel recurrent neural networks, with long short term memory (LSTM) units, pick up heterogeneous information along the SDP. Our proposed model has several distinct features: (1) The shortest dependency paths retain most relevant information (to relation classification), while eliminating irrelevant words in the sentence. (2) The multichannel LSTM networks allow effective information integration from heterogeneous sources over the dependency paths. (3) A customized dropout strategy regularizes the neural network to alleviate overfitting. We test our model on the SemEval 2010 relation classification task, and achieve an $F_1$-score of 83.7\%, higher than competing methods in the literature.Comment: EMNLP '1

Optionality in semantic-pragmatic interface of bilingualism? Bare numeral constructions in Tibetan and Chinese bilinguals’ grammar

Bare numeral constructions (BNCs) can be anaphoric in Chinese but not Tibetan. Since the interpretation of BNCs requires a specific context, we consider it to involve a semantic-pragmatic interface, which has been argued to be vulnerable to crosslinguistic transfer for bilinguals (e.g., Sorace 2005, 2011). This study conducted a controlled sentence-picture matching truth value judgment task to examine whether Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals show crosslinguistic influence when interpreting BNCs in both languages. The data suggests that crosslinguistic effects did occur among some bilinguals. However, there were more bilinguals who successfully differentiated the two languages regarding the interpretation of BNCs. Our findings imply that early bilinguals may not necessarily show optionality in interface phenomena