Native Chinese Speakers Research Articles

Linguistic complexity measures of short narrative writings for modeling overall Chinese proficiency

This study investigates whether linguistic complexity measures of short narrative writings can model overall proficiency in Chinese as a second language. A sample of native Japanese undergraduate students with intermediate (n = 34) and advanced (n = 43) levels of Chinese proficiency, and a sample of native speakers of Chinese (n = 43) altogether provided 240 short narrative essays in Chinese, with a minimum length of 30 characters and an actual grand mean length of 45 characters. Linguistic complexity measures, as discussed in relevant literature, were identified and coded in the essays. Multivariate analyses of variance tests suggest that learners across proficiency levels performed significantly differently on 11 complexity measures of short narrative writings. Multinomial logistic regression further revealed that six of these measures (lexical diversity, high-difficulty vocabulary, complex noun phrase ratio, average sentence length, error-free T-unit ratio, and the first-person singular pronoun) could collectively distinguish student writers’ general Chinese proficiency levels, with an overall accuracy rate approaching 0.80. The implications of the findings of this study for writing assessments and writing instruction are discussed.

К ВОПРОСУ О ТРАНСКУЛЬТУРНОЙ ВАРИАТИВНОСТИ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ КОНЦЕПТА BARBIE В СОВРЕМЕННОМ АНГЛОГОВОРЯЩЕМ КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКОВОМ СООБЩЕСТВЕ

This article dwells on the verbalization of the Barbie concept in the modern Chinese mass media by native Chinese speakers in English language contexts. The research is aimed at identifying the specific variability of the value attributes of the North American concept in the mass media Chinese English discourse, which the authors consider as a transcultural linguistic space. Through contextual analysis of factual material collected by continuous sampling method from open printed online sources in English and the script of the film “Barbie” (2023), some culturally significant interpretative meanings of the value component belonging to the Barbie concept / the cultural phenomenon in the Chinese language community are identified. The authors conclude that the stereotypes of the Western world are at the heart of judgments about the doll and its active promotion in Asian countries. Their verbalization in Chinese English is of interest for further study.

Automatic speech analysis for detecting cognitive decline of older adults.

Speech analysis has been expected to help as a screening tool for early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild-cognitively impairment (MCI). Acoustic features and linguistic features are usually used in speech analysis. However, no studies have yet determined which type of features provides better screening effectiveness, especially in the large aging population of China. Firstly, to compare the screening effectiveness of acoustic features, linguistic features, and their combination using the same dataset. Secondly, to develop Chinese automated diagnosis model using self-collected natural discourse data obtained from native Chinese speakers. A total of 92 participants from communities in Shanghai, completed MoCA-B and a picture description task based on the Cookie Theft under the guidance of trained operators, and were divided into three groups including AD, MCI, and heathy control (HC) based on their MoCA-B score. Acoustic features (Pitches, Jitter, Shimmer, MFCCs, Formants) and linguistic features (part-of-speech, type-token ratio, information words, information units) are extracted. The machine algorithms used in this study included logistic regression, random forest (RF), support vector machines (SVM), Gaussian Naive Bayesian (GNB), and k-Nearest neighbor (kNN). The validation accuracies of the same ML model using acoustic features, linguistic features, and their combination were compared. The accuracy with linguistic features is generally higher than acoustic features in training. The highest accuracy to differentiate HC and AD is 80.77% achieved by SVM, based on all the features extracted from the speech data, while the highest accuracy to differentiate HC and AD or MCI is 80.43% achieved by RF, based only on linguistic features. Our results suggest the utility and validity of linguistic features in the automated diagnosis of cognitive impairment, and validated the applicability of automated diagnosis for Chinese language data.

Образ дороги в русских и китайских паремиях: сопоставительный анализ

The relevance of the study is due to the development of intercultural relations between Russian and Chinese societies, their interest in learning foreign languages. Russian and Chinese paremia with the road component, which have not been previously described, are considered from the standpoint of linguoculturology. The classification of Russian and Chinese proverbs with the road component from the point of view of verbalized cultural attitudes is presented. Particular attention is paid to stereotypical ideas about the road in two linguistic cultures. It has been established that cultural settings recorded in Russian and Chinese proverbs with the road component have more differences than similarities. It was found that common features are associated with the understanding of the road as a place for movement in the literal sense and as a way of life in a figurative sense. It has been established that in Russian proverbs the road is the path of a person, on which he must show wisdom, observe the law, and help his neighbor. In Chinese proverbs, a person is advised not to rush, gaining practical experience, and take care of his home. An associative experiment conducted with Russian and Chinese native speakers with the stimulus word the road revealed direct associations with the place of movement among Russian and Chinese respondents. In addition, Russians present the road as a way of life in interaction with other people, and the Chinese more often associate the road with ancient poetry, history, and the “One Belt, One Road” economic program.

Delayed predictive inference integration with and revision by low-competitive inference alternatives in Chinese narrative text reading.

When readers encounter information conflicting with the predictive inferences made earlier, they may update the outdated ones with new ones, a process known as predictive inference revision. The current study examined the revision of disconfirmed predictive inferences by the primarily weakly activated, thus low-competitive inference alternatives during Chinese narrative text reading among Chinese native speakers. We conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment to study the predictive inference revision with increasingly supportive information for the low-competitive predictive inference alternatives. It serves as the very first attempts to study the predictive inference revision mechanisms by combining a larger range of ERP components, including frontal-Post-N400-Positivity (f-PNP) as an index of revision to examine the influences of the alternative inferences at later stages of reading comprehension. Our results showed that readers could detect inconsistent information (P300), disconfirm the incorrect predictive inferences before successfully integrating the low-competitive alternative predictive inferences with their current situation model (N400), engaging themselves in a second-pass reanalysis process incurring processing costs (P600), and revising the disconfirmed predictive inferences (f-PNP) at a later stage of reading comprehension. Results of this study are supportive of relevant theories in assuming that predictive inference revision does not happen immediately upon encountering conflicting information but happens slowly and incrementally. Our results also unfold the post-revision mechanisms by suggesting the remaining activation and lingering influences of the disconfirmed inferences in the forthcoming reading process.

Use of Hedges in Spoken Discourse—A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study between Chinese English Majors and Native Speakers

Use of Hedges in Spoken Discourse—A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study between Chinese English Majors and Native Speakers

A Comparative Study on Stance Adverbial Positions between Academic Discourse of Chinese and English Native Speakers

A Comparative Study on Stance Adverbial Positions between Academic Discourse of Chinese and English Native Speakers

Features of purpose determination of meaningfulness of life in different cultures

The article is devoted to the study of purpose determination of human behavior and its connection with the meaningfulness of life. In modern psychological research the purpose determination of human behavior is considered as having a contextual character. A study was conducted to describe the contextual characteristics of goals and to identify the relationship of goals in the main life spheres with the meaningfulness of life among 143 native speakers of Russian and 150 native speakers of Chinese. As a result of correlation, factor and regression analyses, the following was established: regardless of cultural identity, the significance of a person’s goals in the main life spheres relates to the assessment of the possibilities of their achievement in his/her life situation; a person’s active life position and his/her satisfaction with his/her actual life are positively correlated with his/her life meaningfulness of life. Differences between representatives of Russian and Chinese cultures have also been revealed: in the Chinese sample, the presence of goals and the assessment of a high probability of their realization are associated with the readiness to change to achieve them, while in the Russian sample the presence of goals and a positive assessment of the situation do not ensure the propensity to change; for a native speaker of the Russian language, goals and the assessment of opportunities to achieve them have a significant impact on his sense of meaningfulness of life, while for the Chinese respondent the most important role is played by family values.

Хезитационные явления в устном монологе-рассказе на неродном языке (на материале русской речи китайцев)

The article analyzes the Russian oral spontaneous monologue story in a non-native language. The aim of the work is a comprehensive analysis of hesitation phenomena (HP) in Russian oral monologue stories presented by Chinese speakers. The main research methods used in the work are descriptive (contextual), quantitative (simple quantitative calculations), comparative and experimental (transcription of recorded texts). The material for the analysis was taken from 20 monologues of native Chinese speakers on the topic ‘How do you spend time on vacation?’ from the corpus of Russian monologue speech created at St. Petersburg State University and known as the ‘Balanced Annotated Text Library’. The paper describes different HP in such a monologue, calculates the frequency of their occurrence; the data obtained are compared with the results of similar studies conducted based on the material of the Russian speech of the Chinese. The analysis showed that in the Russian oral monologue story delivered by the Chinese, there are present not only all the types of HP known in the scientific literature but also some phenomena peculiar only to the speech of the Chinese. Physical hesitation pauses, non-speech sounds, vowel stretches, word breaks, and repetitions-hesitations are the most typical (top 5) HP in their speech. This is consistent with the results of other studies, based on the material of both monologues-stories and other types of monologue speech (reading, retelling, description of an image). The results of the research not only contribute to the study of spontaneous oral speech and phonetics of Russian as a foreign language, but can also be useful in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language, especially in the Chinese audience, because they can help the Chinese to improve the effectiveness of real communication in Russian.

The left-lateralized N170 for visual specialization in advanced L2 Chinese learners.

Visual word recognition is crucial for improving reading skills in second language learners (L2Ls). It is unclear whether L2Ls who are native speakers of languages that use alphabetic scripts can recognize Chinese characters at an early stage of visual processing and if their visual specialization can reach a level of word recognition comparable to that of native Chinese speakers. This study aims to uncover the visual specialization mechanism of Chinese L2Ls. A delayed-color matching task was carried out with participants who were Chinese first language speakers (L1Ss) and advanced Chinese L2Ls with Indonesian as their first language. The results of the event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated that L2Ls exhibited significant visual specialization with a predominant distribution of the left-lateralized N170, along with some activation in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that the early processing stage of Chinese characters by advanced L2Ls is similar to that of adult native speakers, although it is still influenced by their first language and its writing system.

Adult L2 learners’ morphological sensitivity in a morphosyllabic language

Abstract This study examined adult L2 learners’ morphological sensitivity in Chinese, a morphosyllabic language, and explored whether there is any modulating effects of L2 proficiency. Two word naming experiments (segment shifting and standard word naming) were administered to three participant groups, including native Chinese speakers, higher L2 Chinese proficiency learners, and lower L2 Chinese proficiency learners. In both experiments, reaction times (RTs) displayed only main effects of Chinese proficiency group and word type. This suggests that the morphological processing of L2 learners did not differ from that of native speakers, although the RTs of L2 learners were longer and exhibited more variability. Concerning error rates, both experiments showed that learners with higher and lower L2 proficiency had significantly higher error rates for words with unreliable morphological cues compared to those with reliable cues. Taken together, these findings indicate that L2 learners developed sensitivity to intraword morphological structure and employed decompositional strategies when reading Chinese words, irrespective of their L2 proficiency levels.

제2언어 습득에서의 전이 현상 연구

We are living in an era of acquiring more than two languages in an internationalized and multicultural society. As a second language in the international community, standard Chinese is still one of the languages that receives a lot of attention. This study examined the influence of the second language on the first language in the process of learning Chinese as a second language. Specifically, an experiment was conducted on the calculation of closed sounds in standard Chinese and Korean for native Chinese speakers and Korean students studying in China to compare and analyze the acoustic characteristics (H1-H2) of the vocal type. As a result of the analysis, significant changes were found in the realization of H1-H2 of the Korean stop, which is the native language, by a group of high-level speakers using a second language as a standard Chinese. These results of this study are significant as another basis for supporting the impact of the language environment faced by bilingual users on the output of second languages and the backward transfer phenomenon of their first language during second language acquisition.

Examining Automatic Generated Language Features of Chinese Spontaneous Speech for Early Detection of Cognitive Decline

AbstractBackgroundConnected speech is sensitive on detecting cognitive decline in early Alzheimer disease. In this study, we apply artificial intelligence to develop an automatic assessment for analyzing speech data.Method79 samples of picture description speech data were collected. All participants were native Chinese speakers including 31 normal controls (59‐88 yrs) and 49 patients (amnestic mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s disease) (58‐88 yrs). We extracted 16 linguistic features from the manually transcribed text. These linguistic features were generated by well‐trained linguists or automatically processed by the machine. We also trained decision tree models with those two sets of linguistic features. Seventy percent of the data was used for training and the remainder was used for testing. We also applied a cross‐validation method to avoid overfitting.ResultTotal words, unique words, and content words generated from linguists or machines were highly correlated (about r = 0.99, p < .001). However, the correlations between verb ratio, mean length of sentences, and filler ratio were relatively low (about r = 0.75, p < .001). With manually corrected features, the model could achieve 91.67% accuracy. Among them, the pronoun ratio and MLU (mean length of utterance) appeared to be equally crucial for model prediction. By contrast, with automatically generated features, the model achieved 83.33% accuracy only. MLU and MLS (mean length of sentences) were essential features for prediction.ConclusionAutomatic assessment could also achieve a good accuracy rate compared to humans (83.33% v.s. 91.67%). Some linguistic features such as fillers or sentences were still highly dependent on the expert’s judgment. Interestingly, MLU was critical in the prediction model of automatic or experts.

The Anaphor Features and Antecedent Retrieval of Mandarin Ta

The studies of antecedent retrieval of Chinese personal pronouns have been the focus of semantic and syntactic scholars. It has also been a difficult problem for learners. This study works on the actual mastery of native Chinese speakers regarding the pronoun Ta (, he) in the third person singular in terms of anaphor features and antecedent retrieval. Two experiments, Ancient Chinese vs. Modern Standard Chinese and uncommon usage vs. common usage, reveal native speakers antecedent retrieval regarding the pronoun Ta (, he) in the third person singular. Experiment 1 found that native Chinese speakers had an error rate of about 25% when analyzing sentences containing Ta in Old Chinese and about 2% in Modern Standard Chinese. The results of Experiment 2 illustrate that native Chinese speakers made about 14% of the errors in the analysis of the uncommon usage of Ta, while only about 1% of the errors were made in the common usage. Therefore, Chinese learners do not need to know all the usage of Ta in Ancient Chinese and uncommon usage, but they need to learn all the usage in Modern Standard Chinese and common usage to achieve the goal of good understanding.

Do pictures influence memory and metamemory in Chinese vocabulary learning? Evidence from Russian and Colombian learners.

Despite the increasing interest in learning non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, research about its learning process for alphabet users is scarce. Research conducted on Latin alphabet users on learning languages written in Latin alphabet, or on Chinese language learning in Chinese native speakers, users is undoubtedly useful but it does not inform about the peculiarities of leaning Chinese language by other alphabet users. Additionally, several authors have highlighted the need to inform and extend the current second language acquisition theories on the particular challenges of learning a language that uses another script. In this research we aim to contribute filling this research gap and studied the learning process of Chinese vocabulary by users of scripts different from Chinese. In particular, we examined the role of pictures and translations as learning aids for Chinese language vocabulary learning in participants familiarized with either one or two alphabetical scripts (different from the Chinese logographic script). One hundred thirteen participants studied word-aid pairs in different conditions: Hanzi (Chinese in Chinese characters)-picture; Pinyin (Chinese in Latin alphabet)-picture; Hanzi-translation; Pinyin-translation. Participants evaluated the future recallability of the words and their meanings (i.e., judgements of learning) and completed two recognition tests. Words in Pinyin and words-translation pairs were judged to be easier to remember than Hanzi and word-pictures pairs. Participants remembered the meaning of words written in Hanzi better than in Pinyin, and word-translations pairs better than pictures, but they were more confident about word-picture pairs. These results suggest that pictures boost confidence in learning Chinese, but do not affect performance. These findings suggest that while pictures may boost confidence in learning Chinese, they may not necessarily lead to better performance. Our study provides valuable insights into the interaction of learning aids and writing system in (meta)memory during vocabulary acquisition.

The evasive responses of learners of Chinese as a foreign language in daily interaction: A speech act point of view

AbstractIn this paper, I explore the interactional phenomenon of evasion by using Edmondson and House's (1981) typology, which divides speech act categories into ‘Substantive’ and ‘Ritual’ speech acts. First, I examined which speech acts are used by native Chinese speakers and learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) to realise evasive interactional responses in the Chinese linguaculture. Second, I compared the ways in which native speakers of Chinese and CFL learners realise evasions. Data were collected from 20 CFL learners and 20 native Chinese speakers, who completed a Discourse Completion Test featuring conflict scenarios such as a choice between lying and hurting someone's feelings. The results showed that the most frequented speech in evasive responses are Opine and Tell. Native Chinese speakers tend to use internal modification in the form of downgraders and honorifics, while CFL learners tend to use external mitigators.

Self‐praise on social media WeChat Moments in L1 and L2 Chinese

AbstractTo date, second language (L2) pragmatics research has predominantly focused on learners’ oral communication, with digital communication being much less examined. In addition, although L2 pragmatics has mainly investigated speech acts, self‐praise has not been examined from the L2 perspective. Therefore, this study investigates instances of self‐praise posted by learners of Chinese on social networking sites. Data were collected from 20 advanced learners of Chinese who were asked to share instances of self‐praise they posted on their WeChat Moments. Altogether, 61 learners’ self‐praise posts in L2 Chinese and 100 instances of self‐praise from 20 Chinese native speakers were collected. The learners’ Chinese self‐praise was analyzed in terms of different pragmatic strategies and emoji uses, with comparisons against the native speakers’ practices. Similarities and differences were analyzed between the two groups’ self‐praise strategies and their emoji use in self‐praise posts. The findings showed that the advanced learners were able to employ the three major types of self‐praise strategies in their self‐praise posts on WeChat Moments. However, their repertoires of individual self‐praise strategies and emojis were not as wide as those of native speakers. In addition, the learners showed divergences from the native speakers in terms of their preferred self‐praise strategies and culture‐relevant emojis.

Speech acts and interaction in L2 pragmatics: Insights from Chinese as the target language

AbstractThe articles in this special issue contribute to second language (L2) pragmatics by investigating different speech acts and interactions in Chinese as the target language. The studies all examined learners’ pragmatic performance in different contexts and compared their performance with that of native Chinese speakers. The findings of the articles showed what the learners could achieve and what they still had problems in. In this commentary, I first analyze and discuss the aspects in these articles that impress me the most, including research design and focus on L2 pragmatics, theoretical contributions, and methodological considerations. Then, I will address some important implications that the articles provide for future research in L2 pragmatics.

The role of auditory processing in L2 vowel learning: evidence from recasts

Developing adequate second language (L2) speech has increasingly become one of the important goals in today’s globalized world. The current study set out to investigate how the provision of recasts can facilitate English vowels /i/-/ɪ/ learning by Chinese native speakers and how such learning gains resulting from recasts can be tied to individual differences in auditory processing. An experimental group of thirty young adults was engaged in ten treatment sessions of recasts lasting ninety minutes each to notice and practice English vowels /i/-/ɪ/. Their learning gains were tested through a forced-choice identification task, a controlled word-reading task, and a spontaneous picture-narrative task before and after receiving recasts. A control group of the same number of participants was also included to receive comparable sessions without receiving any recasts to check for test-retest effects. Quantitative analysis showed that recasts significantly helped Chinese native speakers facilitate their learning of English vowels /i/-/ɪ/ regardless of time and lexical context. Such learning gains resulting from recasts were significantly correlated with specific constructs of auditory processing. Namely, perceptual acuity was significantly correlated with gains from recasts in identifying L2 vowels, and audio-motor integration with gains from recasts in controlled/spontaneous production of L2 vowels. The findings suggest that recasts can serve as ideal instructional techniques of L2 vowel learning for Chinese native speakers and that the auditory processing profiles of individuals can suggest how they can benefit the most from recasts.

Images of a Good and Evil Person in Russian and Chinese Paremiological Pictures of the World

The linguoculturological studies in paremiology make one of the most actively developing, researchers have repeatedly analyzed the concepts of GOOD and EVIL on the material of paremias of a particular language. However, the study of character traits «good» and «evil» on the basis of the proverbs of the Russian and Chinese languages has not yet been considered, which is the novelty of this study. The article studies paremiological units of the Russian and Chinese languages, representing a good and evil person. The goal of the work is to identify common and peculiar ethno-specific features reflected in the proverbs of the Russian language against the background of their counterparts in the Chinese language, as well as to establish their motivation. To achieve this goal, methods of comparative and linguoculturological analyses were applied. The sources of the material were the proverbs dictionary, as well as data from Russian and Chinese corpora. The paper concludes that there are much more different cultural attitudes contained in the proverbs we are interested in than common ones, which causes a big difference in understanding the character traits of «good» and «evil» between native Russian and Chinese speakers. Understanding the universal and nationally marked ideas of Russians and Chinese effectively contributes to cultural communication between peoples.