This paper investigates how the French second person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by Korea... more This paper investigates how the French second person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by Korean learners of French. This is specifically approached from an interlanguage pragmatics research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of the learners’ pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that Korean learners of French will face difficulties acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the similarities between French and Korean second person pronoun use in requests, mediated by their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a discourse completion task and an error correction task, the findings support the hypothesis, showing the interplay between language transfer and their second language developmental status. Moreover, this was detectible by using a combination of tasks which allows pinpointing of knowledge used. The implications for explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed agai...
This chapter is devoted to the data gathered by experimental means, in the areas of first languag... more This chapter is devoted to the data gathered by experimental means, in the areas of first language acquisition, second language acquisition, bilingualism, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and clinical studies, in that order. The six languages discussed in the theoretical section form the focus of our exploration.
The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts o... more The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts of the cooperative principle, maxims of conversation and their properties, to generalized and particularized implicatures, among others. The theory’s originator, Paul Grice, delivered his ideas at the William James lectures at Harvard University in 1967. This revolutionized the direction of pragmatics and opened new frontiers of research in linguistics and beyond. The theory of conversational implicature, a cornerstone of Grice’s thinking, aims to capture how language is used in communication to maximum effect while being efficient as possible. Since Grice’s proposal, a new generation of Gricean theorists has advanced the theory, while others have taken issue with Gricean explanations and moved to create other theoretical models of meaning, such as Relevance theory. Overall, this article is separated into two distinct parts. The first part is a review of Gricean theory and its evolution i...
Factivity is often taken advantage of in politeness, as ‘believe’ can be interpreted politely as ... more Factivity is often taken advantage of in politeness, as ‘believe’ can be interpreted politely as ‘know’ given contextual considerations. Korean has the distinction of being a language that has a productive non-factive ‘know’ (found in Altaic languages), -uro al-, which does not embed a factive presupposition complement, that is nonetheless supported by limited evidential justification (‘believe’ is not). In terms of politeness, this is an excellent way to indicate disagreement with a social superior, as it works both the negative and positive face of the superior. Therefore, this research aims to understand how non-factive ‘know’ is interpreted as compared to other expressions in terms of politeness and appropriateness, in different power situations. It is clearly demonstrated that non-factive ‘know’ is considered to be the most polite way to indicate disagreement. Moreover, participants’ politeness levels were measured psychometrically, revealing how their choices were influenced by their individual politeness characteristics. This factivity phenomenon is given a clear theoretical treatment in relation to politeness. In sum, researching the relationship between factivity and politeness opens new research avenues in languages which take advantage of the non-factive ‘know’ phenomenon.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2021
Implicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched... more Implicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched in areas such as syntax, however our understanding of how these knowledge constructs affect learner pragmatics is not well understood. Through an interlanguage pragmatic perspective we aim to understand how implicit and explicit knowledge intertwines with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence. This is investigated by testing for L1 politeness transfer in Korean learners of French regarding their acquisition of tu and vous, which provides a new perspective as past research focuses on Anglophone learners. By triangulating data from two test types, results show that the learners have difficulty with vous but not tu, attributed to negative language transfer of L1 politeness values. Moreover, learner variation of tu/vous use can be linked to the explicit/implicit status of their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, showing that the implicitization of their sociopragmatic knowledge is a challenging hurdle towards native-like tu/vous use.
This article introduces new Mandarin Chinese data on ziji ‘self’, namely it has been overlooked t... more This article introduces new Mandarin Chinese data on ziji ‘self’, namely it has been overlooked that ziji is able to take the collective suffix –men to form zijimen. This observation is gleaned from written material found in the mainstream Chinese news media, as well as among general Chinese websites. In evaluating this new reflexive data, there are two major theoretical traditions, syntactic and pragmatic, to consider. Assessing recent Minimalist anaphoric theories shows that there are challenges presented for these syntactic theories’ mechanisms when applied to zijimen. In the field of pragmatics however, this new form presents little challenge to the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora. Moreover, this new data sheds light on the distributivity problem of ziji, leading to a new pragmatic analysis. Consequently, in spite of recent syntactic advances in anaphoric theory, the best answer to Chinese reflexive pronouns is still a pragmatic one.
This chapter explores the pragmatics behind reflexive pronoun binding in Chinese, Korean and Engl... more This chapter explores the pragmatics behind reflexive pronoun binding in Chinese, Korean and English. It is argued that Chinese ziji is captured pragmatically by the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora. This theoretical paradigm shifts the viewpoint on ziji in the experimental literature as syntactic perspectives are dominant. The data involves native speaker and second language Chinese learners’ (English and Korean) binding judgements. Korean learners of Chinese are at an advantage over the English learners of Chinese, attributed to pragmatic transfer in the former and syntactic transfer in the latter. Together with the native speaker judgements, a pragmatic ziji is supported.
As learners of a second language progress past the advanced stage, there are certain features tha... more As learners of a second language progress past the advanced stage, there are certain features that may continue to set near-native speakers apart from native speakers. This may be apparent in non-native like acquisition of the phonology (retaining L1 features), having a non-native like control of the grammar, or not having a full sociopragmatic understanding. In this study, we examine bilinguals’ understanding of reflexive pronouns that straddle the syntactic-pragmatic interface due to how their L1 and L2 process reflexives. Exploratory by nature, we examine five native English speakers, one Spanish speaker and one Chinese speaker with a mixed background. The aim of this article is to understand their interpretation of the Chinese reflexive pronoun ziji ‘self’which is understood here to be pragmatically regulated (Huang 2000). The key question is whether the participants have a native-like interpretation of ziji, matched with native-like processing. This is achieved by using phased choice methodology (Sperlich 2015) and using subjective measures of confidence and knowledge source, including reaction timing, to arrive at a well-rounded understanding of how the judgement was made. Ultimately, it is found that pragmatic ziji does present some difficulties for our participants, namely they have continued difficulty in selecting for the long-distant antecedent given their preference for the local antecedent, which is reflected in timing measures. Thus, they have yet to fully transition their L2 anaphoric systems to a pragmatic-style one as is present in Chinese, presenting a possible area of fossilization. This issue gives raise to the System Exchange Hypothesis introduced in this study.
This article aims to understand the place of syntax and pragmatics in regard to Chinese ziji. Whi... more This article aims to understand the place of syntax and pragmatics in regard to Chinese ziji. While there has been continued theoretical debate on this topic, there is little experimental evidence to verify whether syntax or pragmatics plays the defining role in the regulation of ziji. This study achieves this by investigating the interpretation of the long-distance reflexive ziji by English and Korean learners of Chinese. English learners of Chinese are hypothesized to negatively transfer their syntactic anaphoric strategies into their L2 Chinese, while Korean learners of Chinese are hypothesized to positively transfer their pragmatic anaphoric strategies in their L2 Chinese, as Chinese reflexive pronouns are pragmatically regulated. The data gathered includes antecedent judgements and psycholinguistic observations, finnding that Korean learners of Chinese are at an advantage over their English counterparts. This is discussed against current syntactic and pragmatic anaphoric theory, arguing that this evidence supports the theory that ziji is pragmatic in nature.
Global Communication and Beyond: Language, Culture, Pedagogy and Translation: Selected Papers from the APLX 2015 International Conference on Applied Linguistics, 2016
This paper examines learners of Chinese from English and Korean linguistic backgrounds acquiring ... more This paper examines learners of Chinese from English and Korean linguistic backgrounds acquiring the Chinese reflexive ziji (‘self’). The data presented here focuses on how antecedent judgement data aligns with psycholinguistic measures. The theoretical perspective taken follows Huang (2000), who proposed that English reflexives are more syntactic in nature, while Chinese and Korean are more pragmatic. In order to assess his theory of anaphora, learners who have different first languages (and native speakers)judge both neutral and biased sentences, which also include psycholinguistic judgements. Judged is the potential local and long distance antecedent of ziji. The experiment itself took the form of an interpretative judgement test and truth-value judgement test. Three types of psycholinguistic measures are used alongside their antecedent judgements; reaction timing, confidence scales and knowledge source attribution. The data shows clear patterns between the psycholinguistic measures themselves, and also antecedent judgements. Moreover, this is further mediated by the participants’ language background, proficiency and the stimuli type. Overall, there is a strong association between confidence and knowledge sources, namely the more confident a person is, the more likely they will select Intuition and Rule. The opposite exists for low confidence, which relates more with Guess. Timing varies with the degree of confidence selected, along with the knowledge source used. The benefits of the measures amplifying judgement data are discussed, and possible interpretations of what they claim to measure.
Proceedings of the 30th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 2016
This paper investigates how the French second
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Kor... more This paper investigates how the French second
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Korean learners of French. This is specifically
approached from an interlanguage pragmatics
research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of
the learners’ pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are
explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that
Korean learners of French will face difficulties
acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the
similarities between French and Korean second
person pronoun use in requests, mediated by
their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a
discourse completion task and an error correction
task, the findings support the hypothesis,
showing the interplay between language transfer
and their second language developmental status.
Moreover, this was detectible by using a
combination of tasks which allows pinpointing
of knowledge used. The implications for
explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to
the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed
against the degree of control learners have over
tu and vous.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2015
There has been a continued interest in discovering how learners of another language acquire a tar... more There has been a continued interest in discovering how learners of another language acquire a target language’s anaphoric system. While our understanding of the issues has improved, the development of methodologies to assess the interpretation of anaphora in a learner’s interlanguage has not. This paper is concerned with introducing a methodology named ‘Phased Choice’ to assess anaphoric reference, which more effectively tackles the issues facing anaphoric testing. The data was gathered from an experiment that focused on English and Korean learners of Chinese acquiring the Chinese reflexive ziji ‘self’, results showing that the Korean learners are at an advantage to their English counterparts due to the similar pragmatic strategies Korean and Chinese share. Moreover, the methodology in comparison to the literature shows its strength, dealing effectively with problems past tests faced.
The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts o... more The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts of the cooperative principle, maxims of conversation and their properties, to generalized and particularized implicatures, among others. The theory’s originator, Paul Grice, delivered his ideas at the William James lectures at Harvard University in 1967. This revolutionized the direction of pragmatics and opened new frontiers of research in linguistics and beyond. The theory of conversational implicature, a cornerstone of Grice’s thinking, aims to capture how language is used in communication to maximum effect while being efficient as possible. Since Grice’s proposal, a new generation of Gricean theorists has advanced the theory, while others have taken issue with Gricean explanations and moved to create other theoretical models of meaning, such as Relevance theory. Overall, this article is separated into two distinct parts. The first part is a review of Gricean theory and its evolution into the neo-Gricean framework, with a selection of key articles and books. This is followed by an overview of post-Gricean approaches, theories that compete with Gricean conversational implicature. The second part of the article attempts to bring together the wide-ranging applications of conversational implicature to different fields. This not only includes linguistics and its subfields but also areas such as business and literature.
Proceedings of Methods XIV: Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2011, 2014
This study presents experimental methodology in the area of Chinese dialectology, where the inter... more This study presents experimental methodology in the area of Chinese dialectology, where the interest lies in the frequency of the formal marking of the passive, disposal and causative constructions in five Chinese dialects. The study examines whether the frequency of these constructions’ usage is atypical of certain dialects or if they are uniform throughout. Using oral stories and responses, the results show that the North-South distinction between the dialects is problematic when considering the tested constructions, which has further implications for depicting the nature and limits of a ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar.
This is an experimental study of the frequency of formal passive and
disposal marking in five Chi... more This is an experimental study of the frequency of formal passive and disposal marking in five Chinese dialects — Beijing Mandarin, Taipei Mandarin, Guangzhou Yue, Shanghai Wu and Taiwan Southern Min. Using oral stories and oral responses, we observe whether usage frequency is dialect-specific or is relatively uniform throughout. The results provide a rather nuanced view of ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar, i.e. the usual distinction of Northern vs. Southern dialects is not fully predictive of the relative frequency at which the passive and disposal functions are formally marked.
25th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. East Asian Psycholinguistics: Recent developments, 2017
Reflexive pronouns are found in many different languages, and capturing their distribution is no ... more Reflexive pronouns are found in many different languages, and capturing their distribution is no easy task. There are many syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analyses of reflexive pronouns aiming for an unified analysis of all languages (e.g. Reuland 2011). The viewpoint adopted here is that a typology of anaphora can be captured according to languages’ use of either syntactic or pragmatic anaphoric strategies (Huang 2000). Namely, each language is placed differently on an anaphoric syntactic-pragmatic continuum. This hypothesis has received little experimental attention. Work by Sperlich (2016) supports this theory utilizing English and Korean learners of Chinese’s acquisition of ziji ‘self’. Through second language acquisition the anaphoric strategies of the first and target language can be discovered by observing which features are adopted in the interlanguage. Languages such as English and German are hypothesized to have syntactic reflexive pronoun regulation strategies, whilst languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese have pragmatic ones. The research question asked is, can L1 pragmatic strategies be found in a learner’s syntactic L2? Thus, this study makes dual contributions to the theory of anaphora and second language acquisition. In a self-paced reading experiment on Japanese learners of German (N=8, age range 20- 30, CEFR proficiency between B2-C1) acquiring the reflexive pronoun sich ‘self’, participants read 40 tokens, divided equally into ‘neutral’ and ‘biased’ conditions. In the neutral condition (control, example below) it is expected that learners will bind sich to John, following usual German syntax. In the biased sentences (experimental, example below) learners will respond to pragmatic bias (considering stereotypical relations) due to L1 influence. Thus, the main hypothesis is that the learners will have a higher timing increase in the biased condition’s critical zone as compared to the neutral condition. Moreover, against normal German local binding, learners will select for the LD antecedent due to their L1 influence. The reaction timing data shows significant differences in the pre-critical region (sich), but not in the critical zone (the verb after sich), showing the two conditions are treated similarly. Also significantly different is comparing the two regions in the biased condition (showing the biased effect), but not for the neutral condition. Learners select for the LD antecedent (Peter/der Gefangene) 43% of the time in both conditions, which is non-target-like. The data supports the hypothesis that there is L1 pragmatic influence in the learners’ L2, causing a non-native-like processing and interpretation of sich. This evidence combined with previous research (e.g. Schumacher et al. 2011) suggests that pragmatics plays an important role in anaphoric regulation in certain languages, especially with Japanese anaphora.
This thesis is concerned with the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic modes of communicat... more This thesis is concerned with the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic modes of communication, along the lines proposed by Givón (1979). More specifically Huang (2000) suggested that such a line be drawn between languages depending on how they regulate their anaphora. To test this distinction in my research, I assess the predictions of syntactic and pragmatic theories of anaphora against how learners of Chinese, from English and Korean backgrounds, acquire the Chinese simplex reflexive ziji. In terms of anaphora, English is a syntactically oriented language whilst Korean is pragmatically orientated, thus creating highly relevant experimental conditions when assessing for positive and negative transfer in their Chinese, which in turn regulates its anaphora largely by pragmatics. This is conducted via an experimental approach, making use of newly developed second language acquisition research methodology to investigate a learner’s interlanguage, yielding very robust data. The results demonstrate that the English learners of Chinese transfer their syntactic strategies, which hinders their acquisition of ziji (negative transfer), while the Korean learners of Chinese transfer their pragmatic strategies, which assists their acquisition of ziji (positive transfer). The results also confirm that Chinese and Korean are indeed languages which heavily regulate their reflexives by pragmatics, and English via syntax—but even in English it is also shown pragmatics has a role to play. Ultimately, the investigation conducted along an experimental approach shows that theoretically, pragmatic approaches to anaphora suit pragmatic languages better, and syntactic approaches suit syntactic languages better, which in turn confirms the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic languages in their anaphora along the lines of Huang (2000), and also adding further credence to Givón’s (1979) original proposal.
This paper investigates how the French second person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by Korea... more This paper investigates how the French second person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by Korean learners of French. This is specifically approached from an interlanguage pragmatics research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of the learners’ pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that Korean learners of French will face difficulties acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the similarities between French and Korean second person pronoun use in requests, mediated by their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a discourse completion task and an error correction task, the findings support the hypothesis, showing the interplay between language transfer and their second language developmental status. Moreover, this was detectible by using a combination of tasks which allows pinpointing of knowledge used. The implications for explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed agai...
This chapter is devoted to the data gathered by experimental means, in the areas of first languag... more This chapter is devoted to the data gathered by experimental means, in the areas of first language acquisition, second language acquisition, bilingualism, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and clinical studies, in that order. The six languages discussed in the theoretical section form the focus of our exploration.
The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts o... more The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts of the cooperative principle, maxims of conversation and their properties, to generalized and particularized implicatures, among others. The theory’s originator, Paul Grice, delivered his ideas at the William James lectures at Harvard University in 1967. This revolutionized the direction of pragmatics and opened new frontiers of research in linguistics and beyond. The theory of conversational implicature, a cornerstone of Grice’s thinking, aims to capture how language is used in communication to maximum effect while being efficient as possible. Since Grice’s proposal, a new generation of Gricean theorists has advanced the theory, while others have taken issue with Gricean explanations and moved to create other theoretical models of meaning, such as Relevance theory. Overall, this article is separated into two distinct parts. The first part is a review of Gricean theory and its evolution i...
Factivity is often taken advantage of in politeness, as ‘believe’ can be interpreted politely as ... more Factivity is often taken advantage of in politeness, as ‘believe’ can be interpreted politely as ‘know’ given contextual considerations. Korean has the distinction of being a language that has a productive non-factive ‘know’ (found in Altaic languages), -uro al-, which does not embed a factive presupposition complement, that is nonetheless supported by limited evidential justification (‘believe’ is not). In terms of politeness, this is an excellent way to indicate disagreement with a social superior, as it works both the negative and positive face of the superior. Therefore, this research aims to understand how non-factive ‘know’ is interpreted as compared to other expressions in terms of politeness and appropriateness, in different power situations. It is clearly demonstrated that non-factive ‘know’ is considered to be the most polite way to indicate disagreement. Moreover, participants’ politeness levels were measured psychometrically, revealing how their choices were influenced by their individual politeness characteristics. This factivity phenomenon is given a clear theoretical treatment in relation to politeness. In sum, researching the relationship between factivity and politeness opens new research avenues in languages which take advantage of the non-factive ‘know’ phenomenon.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2021
Implicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched... more Implicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched in areas such as syntax, however our understanding of how these knowledge constructs affect learner pragmatics is not well understood. Through an interlanguage pragmatic perspective we aim to understand how implicit and explicit knowledge intertwines with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence. This is investigated by testing for L1 politeness transfer in Korean learners of French regarding their acquisition of tu and vous, which provides a new perspective as past research focuses on Anglophone learners. By triangulating data from two test types, results show that the learners have difficulty with vous but not tu, attributed to negative language transfer of L1 politeness values. Moreover, learner variation of tu/vous use can be linked to the explicit/implicit status of their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, showing that the implicitization of their sociopragmatic knowledge is a challenging hurdle towards native-like tu/vous use.
This article introduces new Mandarin Chinese data on ziji ‘self’, namely it has been overlooked t... more This article introduces new Mandarin Chinese data on ziji ‘self’, namely it has been overlooked that ziji is able to take the collective suffix –men to form zijimen. This observation is gleaned from written material found in the mainstream Chinese news media, as well as among general Chinese websites. In evaluating this new reflexive data, there are two major theoretical traditions, syntactic and pragmatic, to consider. Assessing recent Minimalist anaphoric theories shows that there are challenges presented for these syntactic theories’ mechanisms when applied to zijimen. In the field of pragmatics however, this new form presents little challenge to the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora. Moreover, this new data sheds light on the distributivity problem of ziji, leading to a new pragmatic analysis. Consequently, in spite of recent syntactic advances in anaphoric theory, the best answer to Chinese reflexive pronouns is still a pragmatic one.
This chapter explores the pragmatics behind reflexive pronoun binding in Chinese, Korean and Engl... more This chapter explores the pragmatics behind reflexive pronoun binding in Chinese, Korean and English. It is argued that Chinese ziji is captured pragmatically by the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora. This theoretical paradigm shifts the viewpoint on ziji in the experimental literature as syntactic perspectives are dominant. The data involves native speaker and second language Chinese learners’ (English and Korean) binding judgements. Korean learners of Chinese are at an advantage over the English learners of Chinese, attributed to pragmatic transfer in the former and syntactic transfer in the latter. Together with the native speaker judgements, a pragmatic ziji is supported.
As learners of a second language progress past the advanced stage, there are certain features tha... more As learners of a second language progress past the advanced stage, there are certain features that may continue to set near-native speakers apart from native speakers. This may be apparent in non-native like acquisition of the phonology (retaining L1 features), having a non-native like control of the grammar, or not having a full sociopragmatic understanding. In this study, we examine bilinguals’ understanding of reflexive pronouns that straddle the syntactic-pragmatic interface due to how their L1 and L2 process reflexives. Exploratory by nature, we examine five native English speakers, one Spanish speaker and one Chinese speaker with a mixed background. The aim of this article is to understand their interpretation of the Chinese reflexive pronoun ziji ‘self’which is understood here to be pragmatically regulated (Huang 2000). The key question is whether the participants have a native-like interpretation of ziji, matched with native-like processing. This is achieved by using phased choice methodology (Sperlich 2015) and using subjective measures of confidence and knowledge source, including reaction timing, to arrive at a well-rounded understanding of how the judgement was made. Ultimately, it is found that pragmatic ziji does present some difficulties for our participants, namely they have continued difficulty in selecting for the long-distant antecedent given their preference for the local antecedent, which is reflected in timing measures. Thus, they have yet to fully transition their L2 anaphoric systems to a pragmatic-style one as is present in Chinese, presenting a possible area of fossilization. This issue gives raise to the System Exchange Hypothesis introduced in this study.
This article aims to understand the place of syntax and pragmatics in regard to Chinese ziji. Whi... more This article aims to understand the place of syntax and pragmatics in regard to Chinese ziji. While there has been continued theoretical debate on this topic, there is little experimental evidence to verify whether syntax or pragmatics plays the defining role in the regulation of ziji. This study achieves this by investigating the interpretation of the long-distance reflexive ziji by English and Korean learners of Chinese. English learners of Chinese are hypothesized to negatively transfer their syntactic anaphoric strategies into their L2 Chinese, while Korean learners of Chinese are hypothesized to positively transfer their pragmatic anaphoric strategies in their L2 Chinese, as Chinese reflexive pronouns are pragmatically regulated. The data gathered includes antecedent judgements and psycholinguistic observations, finnding that Korean learners of Chinese are at an advantage over their English counterparts. This is discussed against current syntactic and pragmatic anaphoric theory, arguing that this evidence supports the theory that ziji is pragmatic in nature.
Global Communication and Beyond: Language, Culture, Pedagogy and Translation: Selected Papers from the APLX 2015 International Conference on Applied Linguistics, 2016
This paper examines learners of Chinese from English and Korean linguistic backgrounds acquiring ... more This paper examines learners of Chinese from English and Korean linguistic backgrounds acquiring the Chinese reflexive ziji (‘self’). The data presented here focuses on how antecedent judgement data aligns with psycholinguistic measures. The theoretical perspective taken follows Huang (2000), who proposed that English reflexives are more syntactic in nature, while Chinese and Korean are more pragmatic. In order to assess his theory of anaphora, learners who have different first languages (and native speakers)judge both neutral and biased sentences, which also include psycholinguistic judgements. Judged is the potential local and long distance antecedent of ziji. The experiment itself took the form of an interpretative judgement test and truth-value judgement test. Three types of psycholinguistic measures are used alongside their antecedent judgements; reaction timing, confidence scales and knowledge source attribution. The data shows clear patterns between the psycholinguistic measures themselves, and also antecedent judgements. Moreover, this is further mediated by the participants’ language background, proficiency and the stimuli type. Overall, there is a strong association between confidence and knowledge sources, namely the more confident a person is, the more likely they will select Intuition and Rule. The opposite exists for low confidence, which relates more with Guess. Timing varies with the degree of confidence selected, along with the knowledge source used. The benefits of the measures amplifying judgement data are discussed, and possible interpretations of what they claim to measure.
Proceedings of the 30th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 2016
This paper investigates how the French second
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Kor... more This paper investigates how the French second
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Korean learners of French. This is specifically
approached from an interlanguage pragmatics
research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of
the learners’ pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are
explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that
Korean learners of French will face difficulties
acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the
similarities between French and Korean second
person pronoun use in requests, mediated by
their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a
discourse completion task and an error correction
task, the findings support the hypothesis,
showing the interplay between language transfer
and their second language developmental status.
Moreover, this was detectible by using a
combination of tasks which allows pinpointing
of knowledge used. The implications for
explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to
the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed
against the degree of control learners have over
tu and vous.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2015
There has been a continued interest in discovering how learners of another language acquire a tar... more There has been a continued interest in discovering how learners of another language acquire a target language’s anaphoric system. While our understanding of the issues has improved, the development of methodologies to assess the interpretation of anaphora in a learner’s interlanguage has not. This paper is concerned with introducing a methodology named ‘Phased Choice’ to assess anaphoric reference, which more effectively tackles the issues facing anaphoric testing. The data was gathered from an experiment that focused on English and Korean learners of Chinese acquiring the Chinese reflexive ziji ‘self’, results showing that the Korean learners are at an advantage to their English counterparts due to the similar pragmatic strategies Korean and Chinese share. Moreover, the methodology in comparison to the literature shows its strength, dealing effectively with problems past tests faced.
The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts o... more The theory of conversational implicature originates from Gricean pragmatics, involving concepts of the cooperative principle, maxims of conversation and their properties, to generalized and particularized implicatures, among others. The theory’s originator, Paul Grice, delivered his ideas at the William James lectures at Harvard University in 1967. This revolutionized the direction of pragmatics and opened new frontiers of research in linguistics and beyond. The theory of conversational implicature, a cornerstone of Grice’s thinking, aims to capture how language is used in communication to maximum effect while being efficient as possible. Since Grice’s proposal, a new generation of Gricean theorists has advanced the theory, while others have taken issue with Gricean explanations and moved to create other theoretical models of meaning, such as Relevance theory. Overall, this article is separated into two distinct parts. The first part is a review of Gricean theory and its evolution into the neo-Gricean framework, with a selection of key articles and books. This is followed by an overview of post-Gricean approaches, theories that compete with Gricean conversational implicature. The second part of the article attempts to bring together the wide-ranging applications of conversational implicature to different fields. This not only includes linguistics and its subfields but also areas such as business and literature.
Proceedings of Methods XIV: Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2011, 2014
This study presents experimental methodology in the area of Chinese dialectology, where the inter... more This study presents experimental methodology in the area of Chinese dialectology, where the interest lies in the frequency of the formal marking of the passive, disposal and causative constructions in five Chinese dialects. The study examines whether the frequency of these constructions’ usage is atypical of certain dialects or if they are uniform throughout. Using oral stories and responses, the results show that the North-South distinction between the dialects is problematic when considering the tested constructions, which has further implications for depicting the nature and limits of a ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar.
This is an experimental study of the frequency of formal passive and
disposal marking in five Chi... more This is an experimental study of the frequency of formal passive and disposal marking in five Chinese dialects — Beijing Mandarin, Taipei Mandarin, Guangzhou Yue, Shanghai Wu and Taiwan Southern Min. Using oral stories and oral responses, we observe whether usage frequency is dialect-specific or is relatively uniform throughout. The results provide a rather nuanced view of ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar, i.e. the usual distinction of Northern vs. Southern dialects is not fully predictive of the relative frequency at which the passive and disposal functions are formally marked.
25th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. East Asian Psycholinguistics: Recent developments, 2017
Reflexive pronouns are found in many different languages, and capturing their distribution is no ... more Reflexive pronouns are found in many different languages, and capturing their distribution is no easy task. There are many syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analyses of reflexive pronouns aiming for an unified analysis of all languages (e.g. Reuland 2011). The viewpoint adopted here is that a typology of anaphora can be captured according to languages’ use of either syntactic or pragmatic anaphoric strategies (Huang 2000). Namely, each language is placed differently on an anaphoric syntactic-pragmatic continuum. This hypothesis has received little experimental attention. Work by Sperlich (2016) supports this theory utilizing English and Korean learners of Chinese’s acquisition of ziji ‘self’. Through second language acquisition the anaphoric strategies of the first and target language can be discovered by observing which features are adopted in the interlanguage. Languages such as English and German are hypothesized to have syntactic reflexive pronoun regulation strategies, whilst languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese have pragmatic ones. The research question asked is, can L1 pragmatic strategies be found in a learner’s syntactic L2? Thus, this study makes dual contributions to the theory of anaphora and second language acquisition. In a self-paced reading experiment on Japanese learners of German (N=8, age range 20- 30, CEFR proficiency between B2-C1) acquiring the reflexive pronoun sich ‘self’, participants read 40 tokens, divided equally into ‘neutral’ and ‘biased’ conditions. In the neutral condition (control, example below) it is expected that learners will bind sich to John, following usual German syntax. In the biased sentences (experimental, example below) learners will respond to pragmatic bias (considering stereotypical relations) due to L1 influence. Thus, the main hypothesis is that the learners will have a higher timing increase in the biased condition’s critical zone as compared to the neutral condition. Moreover, against normal German local binding, learners will select for the LD antecedent due to their L1 influence. The reaction timing data shows significant differences in the pre-critical region (sich), but not in the critical zone (the verb after sich), showing the two conditions are treated similarly. Also significantly different is comparing the two regions in the biased condition (showing the biased effect), but not for the neutral condition. Learners select for the LD antecedent (Peter/der Gefangene) 43% of the time in both conditions, which is non-target-like. The data supports the hypothesis that there is L1 pragmatic influence in the learners’ L2, causing a non-native-like processing and interpretation of sich. This evidence combined with previous research (e.g. Schumacher et al. 2011) suggests that pragmatics plays an important role in anaphoric regulation in certain languages, especially with Japanese anaphora.
This thesis is concerned with the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic modes of communicat... more This thesis is concerned with the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic modes of communication, along the lines proposed by Givón (1979). More specifically Huang (2000) suggested that such a line be drawn between languages depending on how they regulate their anaphora. To test this distinction in my research, I assess the predictions of syntactic and pragmatic theories of anaphora against how learners of Chinese, from English and Korean backgrounds, acquire the Chinese simplex reflexive ziji. In terms of anaphora, English is a syntactically oriented language whilst Korean is pragmatically orientated, thus creating highly relevant experimental conditions when assessing for positive and negative transfer in their Chinese, which in turn regulates its anaphora largely by pragmatics. This is conducted via an experimental approach, making use of newly developed second language acquisition research methodology to investigate a learner’s interlanguage, yielding very robust data. The results demonstrate that the English learners of Chinese transfer their syntactic strategies, which hinders their acquisition of ziji (negative transfer), while the Korean learners of Chinese transfer their pragmatic strategies, which assists their acquisition of ziji (positive transfer). The results also confirm that Chinese and Korean are indeed languages which heavily regulate their reflexives by pragmatics, and English via syntax—but even in English it is also shown pragmatics has a role to play. Ultimately, the investigation conducted along an experimental approach shows that theoretically, pragmatic approaches to anaphora suit pragmatic languages better, and syntactic approaches suit syntactic languages better, which in turn confirms the distinction between syntactic and pragmatic languages in their anaphora along the lines of Huang (2000), and also adding further credence to Givón’s (1979) original proposal.
This book presents a comprehensive picture of reflexive pronouns from both a theoretical and expe... more This book presents a comprehensive picture of reflexive pronouns from both a theoretical and experimental perspective, using the well-researched languages of English, German, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In order to understand the data from varying theoretical perspectives, the book considers selected syntactic and pragmatic analyses based on their current importance in the field. The volume consequently introduces the Emergentist Reflexivity Approach, which is a novel theoretical synthesis incorporating a sentence and pragmatic processor that accounts for reflexive pronoun behaviour in these six languages. Moreover, in support of this model a vast array of experimental literature is considered, including first and second language acquisition, bilingual, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic and clinical studies. It is through both the intuitive and experimental data linguistic theorizing relies upon that brings out the strengths of the modelling adopted here, paving new avenues for future research. In sum, this volume unites a diverse array of the literature that currently sits largely divorced between the theoretical and experimental realms, and when put together a better understanding of reflexive pronouns under the auspices of the Emergentist Reflexivity Approach is forged.
Uploads
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Korean learners of French. This is specifically
approached from an interlanguage pragmatics
research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of
the learners’ pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are
explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that
Korean learners of French will face difficulties
acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the
similarities between French and Korean second
person pronoun use in requests, mediated by
their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a
discourse completion task and an error correction
task, the findings support the hypothesis,
showing the interplay between language transfer
and their second language developmental status.
Moreover, this was detectible by using a
combination of tasks which allows pinpointing
of knowledge used. The implications for
explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to
the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed
against the degree of control learners have over
tu and vous.
disposal marking in five Chinese dialects — Beijing Mandarin, Taipei
Mandarin, Guangzhou Yue, Shanghai Wu and Taiwan Southern Min.
Using oral stories and oral responses, we observe whether usage
frequency is dialect-specific or is relatively uniform throughout. The
results provide a rather nuanced view of ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar, i.e.
the usual distinction of Northern vs. Southern dialects is not fully
predictive of the relative frequency at which the passive and disposal
functions are formally marked.
person pronouns, tu and vous, are acquired by
Korean learners of French. This is specifically
approached from an interlanguage pragmatics
research viewpoint, focusing upon the status of
the learners’ pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic knowledge (whether they are
explicit or implicit). It is hypothesized that
Korean learners of French will face difficulties
acquiring vous, but not with tu due to the
similarities between French and Korean second
person pronoun use in requests, mediated by
their implicit/explicit knowledge. Using a
discourse completion task and an error correction
task, the findings support the hypothesis,
showing the interplay between language transfer
and their second language developmental status.
Moreover, this was detectible by using a
combination of tasks which allows pinpointing
of knowledge used. The implications for
explicit/implicit knowledge status in relation to
the use of pragmatic knowledge are discussed
against the degree of control learners have over
tu and vous.
disposal marking in five Chinese dialects — Beijing Mandarin, Taipei
Mandarin, Guangzhou Yue, Shanghai Wu and Taiwan Southern Min.
Using oral stories and oral responses, we observe whether usage
frequency is dialect-specific or is relatively uniform throughout. The
results provide a rather nuanced view of ‘Pan-Chinese’ grammar, i.e.
the usual distinction of Northern vs. Southern dialects is not fully
predictive of the relative frequency at which the passive and disposal
functions are formally marked.