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Journal articles on the topic 'Cantonese first language'
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UCHIKOSHI, YUUKO. "Development of vocabulary in Spanish-speaking and Cantonese-speaking English language learners." Applied Psycholinguistics 35, no. 1 (September 12, 2012): 119–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716412000264.
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ABSTRACTThis study examines vocabulary growth rates in first and second languages for Spanish-speaking and Cantonese-speaking English language learners from kindergarten through second grade. Growth-modeling results show a within-language effect of concepts about print on vocabulary. Language exposure also had an effect on English vocabulary: earlier English exposure led to larger English vocabulary in kindergarten. There was no interference of early English exposure on native-language vocabulary. Moreover, Cantonese-speaking children had higher English expressive vocabulary scores than Spanish-speaking children and this difference remained for the 3 years. In contrast, although there were no significant differences in first language vocabulary at the start of kindergarten, Spanish-speaking children had steeper growth rates in first-language vocabulary than Cantonese-speaking children, after controlling for language of instruction and first-language concepts about print.
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Yao, Yao, Angel Chan, Roxana Fung, Wing Li Wu, Natalie Leung, Sarah Lee, and Jin Luo. "Cantonese tone production in pre-school Urdu–Cantonese bilingual minority children." International Journal of Bilingualism 24, no. 4 (November 1, 2019): 767–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367006919884659.
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Aim: In this study, we examine the production of Cantonese tones by preschool Urdu–Cantonese children living in Hong Kong. Methodology: 21 first language Urdu second language Cantonese children (ages 4–6) and 20 age-matched first language Cantonese children participated in a picture-naming experiment with 86 words (109 syllables in total). Data and Analysis: Acoustic analysis was carried out for perceptually correct and incorrect tone productions of each tone. Comparisons were also made across speaker groups regarding accuracy rates and error patterns. Findings: Overall, first-language Urdu participants had lower accuracy and greater tone confusion than first language Cantonese participants. The pattern is attributable to influence from Urdu prosody, ongoing Cantonese tone mergers, and general sensitivity to phonetic information. Originality: This is the first empirical study on the acquisition of Cantonese tones by children who are heritage speakers of a non-tone language. Significance: This study extends the literature of early bilingual phonology by furthering our understanding of an under-studied bilingual population, that is, heritage children of a non-tone language acquiring a tone language as the majority language. The findings of this study also produce implications for the practice of language educators and speech therapy professionals working with bilingual children.
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Zhou, Yang. "Exploring the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 in Cantonese." Language and Linguistics / 語言暨語言學 19, no. 2 (March 15, 2018): 333–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lali.00012.zho.
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Abstract Sin1 先 as a function word in contemporary Cantonese encodes a number of grammatical and pragmatic meanings. As its most prominent feature in syntax, it predominantly occurs in the postverbal position while indicating the meaning of ‘first’. This paper explores the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese. We first examine the word order typology on the element for ‘first’ in the languages and dialects of southern coastal China. In this linguistic area, the postverbal elements for ‘first’ in Chinese dialects are contact-induced by Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages; whereas sin1 先 ‘first’ in the mainstream Cantonese shows a stronger tendency to be placed in the postverbal position than its counterparts in other Chinese dialects. We then discuss the word order and semantic changes of sin1 先 from 1820s to 1960s based on Cantonese historical materials. Besides the pressure of language contact, the formation of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ has been further triggered by the semantic motivation to formally differentiate the ‘precedent-subsequent’ polysemy within sin1 先 itself. In short, the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese has been a two-stage process, dually driven by external and internal causes, respectively.
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Mai, Ziyin, Chung-yin Kwan, and Virginia Yip. "Expressing displacement in heritage Cantonese: Cross-linguistic influence and structural vulnerability." International Journal of Bilingualism 22, no. 6 (December 1, 2016): 603–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367006916681084.
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Aims and objectives: Heritage languages spoken by speakers in overseas communities can diverge significantly from the language spoken in the home country. Recent investigations have suggested that some grammatical structures or features are more vulnerable than others. This paper investigates the role of cross-linguistic influence, incomplete acquisition and attrition in heritage Cantonese in contact with English, focusing on the grammar of the pretransitive zoeng-construction in displacement contexts. Methodology: An elicited oral production task modelled on the fruit cart experiment was used to elicit displacement instructions in Cantonese. Fourteen heritage speakers and thirteen émigré speakers participated. All had acquired Cantonese as their first language but experienced a shift of language dominance to English due to immigration and education. Seventeen native speakers of Cantonese in Hong Kong served as the baseline. Data and analysis: The utterances were manually transcribed and coded. Production and error rates were calculated. Statistical results revealed quantitative differences among the three groups of Cantonese speakers. The baseline speakers preferred the zoeng-construction in displacement contexts, whereas the heritage and émigré speakers made greater use of canonical and topicalization structures. Nevertheless, the zoeng-sentences produced by the heritage and émigré speakers were all grammatical and felicitous. Findings: The basic structure of the zoeng-construction is kept intact in less than half of the heritage and émigré speakers’ Cantonese grammar. The zoeng-construction is thus vulnerable to intergenerational language change induced by language contact and individual differences, which is partially attributable to cross-linguistic influence from English. Originality: This is the first experimental study to investigate the grammar of heritage Cantonese. Significance: The study provides new empirical evidence of structural vulnerability and variability of heritage grammar and sheds light on the role of incomplete acquisition, cross-linguistic influence and attrition in such vulnerability.
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Wu, Yujia, Jingwen Ma, Lei Cai, Zengjian Wang, Miao Fan, Jianping Chu, Yue Zhang, and Xiuhong Li. "Brain Activity during Visual and Auditory Word Rhyming Tasks in Cantonese–Mandarin–English Trilinguals." Brain Sciences 10, no. 12 (December 4, 2020): 936. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10120936.
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It is unclear whether the brain activity during phonological processing of second languages (L2) is similar to that of the first language (L1) in trilingual individuals, especially when the L1 is logographic, and the L2s are logographic and alphabetic, respectively. To explore this issue, this study examined brain activity during visual and auditory word rhyming tasks in Cantonese–Mandarin–English trilinguals. Thirty Chinese college students whose L1 was Cantonese and L2s were Mandarin and English were recruited. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted while subjects performed visual and auditory word rhyming tasks in three languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, and English). The results revealed that in Cantonese–Mandarin–English trilinguals, whose L1 is logographic and the orthography of their L2 is the same as L1—i.e., Mandarin and Cantonese, which share the same set of Chinese characters—the brain regions for the phonological processing of L2 are different from those of L1; when the orthography of L2 is quite different from L1, i.e., English and Cantonese who belong to different writing systems, the brain regions for the phonological processing of L2 are similar to those of L1. A significant interaction effect was observed between language and modality in bilateral lingual gyri. Regions of interest (ROI) analysis at lingual gyri revealed greater activation of this region when using English than Cantonese and Mandarin in visual tasks.
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Wong, Tak-Sum, and John S. Y. Lee. "Corpus-based learning of Cantonese for Mandarin speakers." ReCALL 28, no. 2 (March 17, 2016): 187–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0958344015000257.
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AbstractThis article presents the first study on using a parallel corpus to teach Cantonese, the variety of Chinese spoken in Hong Kong. We evaluated this approach with Mandarin-speaking undergraduate students at the beginner level. Exploiting their knowledge of Mandarin, a closely related language, the students studied Cantonese with authentic material in a Cantonese-Mandarin parallel corpus, transcribed from television programs. They were given a list of Mandarin words that yield a range of possible Cantonese translations, depending on the linguistic context. Leveraging sentence and word alignments in the parallel corpus, the students independently searched for example sentences to discover these translation equivalents. Experimental results showed that, in both the short- and long-term, this data-driven learning approach helped students improve their knowledge of Cantonese vocabulary. These results suggest the potential of applying parallel corpora at even the beginners’ level for other L1-L2 pairs of closely related languages.
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Zheng, Yifan, Qi Wu, Fengjuan Su, Yingying Fang, Jinsheng Zeng, and Zhong Pei. "The Protective Effect of Cantonese/Mandarin Bilingualism on the Onset of Alzheimer Disease." Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 45, no. 3-4 (2018): 210–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000488485.
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Background: Several studies have found that bilingualism can delay the age of onset of Alzheimer disease (AD). The interpretation of these findings is that switching between two languages can enhance cognitive reserve. However, some studies have provided inconsistent results. Diverse language pairs used by the bilinguals in different studies may contribute to the discrepancies. Cantonese and Mandarin are widely used in southern China, and regarded as bilingualism. The present study aims to determine if Cantonese/Mandarin bilingualism can delay the onset of AD. Methods: The data of 129 patients diagnosed with probable AD, including 48 Cantonese monolinguals, 20 Mandarin monolinguals, and 61 Cantonese/Mandarin bilinguals were analyzed. Results: Cantonese/Mandarin bilinguals were found to have an older age at AD onset, and older age at the first clinic visit than Mandarin monolinguals and Cantonese monolinguals. Both Mandarin monolinguals and Cantonese/Mandarin bilinguals had a higher education level and higher occupation status than the Cantonese monolinguals. Mandarin monolinguals did not differ from Cantonese/Mandarin bilinguals significantly in years of education and occupation status. The multiple linear regression analyses indicated that Cantonese/Mandarin bilingualism can delay the onset of AD independently. Conclusion: Constantly speaking both Cantonese and Mandarin from at least early adulthood can delay the onset of AD.
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Kan, Pui Fong, Shirley Huang, Ellie Winicour, and Jerry Yang. "Vocabulary Growth: Dual Language Learners at Risk for Language Impairment." American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 29, no. 3 (August 4, 2020): 1178–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_ajslp-19-00160.
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Purpose This research project examined the vocabulary growth patterns of typically developing (TD) Cantonese–English dual language learners (DLLs) and their peers who are at risk for language impairment. Method Two studies were done. Study 1 examined the concurrent validity of a pilot vocabulary screening measure, the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test, that was designed for Cantonese–English preschool DLLs. Participants were 53 preschool children who learned Cantonese as their first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Their scores on the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test were examined in relation to their language sample measures, including number of different words and mean length of utterance, in L1 and in L2. Study 2 examined the vocabulary growth patterns of 24 TD Cantonese–English DLL preschoolers and 24 DLLs who are at risk for language impairment (At-Risk group). Each child was tested 3 times during an academic year. Results Results of Study 1 showed that children's vocabulary scores ( n = 53) were significantly correlated with their language sample measures in each language. In Study 2, hierarchical linear models were used to compare the TD and At-Risk groups. Results showed that children in the At-Risk group had lower L1 receptive vocabulary scores and children in the TD group had relatively higher L2 expressive vocabulary gains. Conclusions Children who are at risk are likely to continue to have lower vocabulary knowledge compared to their TD peers. The growth trajectories of DLLs provide valuable information for early identification and intervention.
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PERRY, CONRAD, MAN-KIT KAN, STEPHEN MATTHEWS, and RICHARD KWOK-SHING WONG. "Syntactic ambiguity resolution and the prosodic foot: Cross-language differences." Applied Psycholinguistics 27, no. 3 (July 2006): 301–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716406060292.
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In this study we examined syntactic ambiguity resolution in two different Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin, which are relatively similar grammatically but very different phonologically. We did this using four-character sentences that could be read using two, two-syllable sequences (2-2) or a structure where the first syllable could be read by itself. The results showed that when both potential readings were semantically congruent, Mandarin speakers had a strong preference for the 2-2 structure and they preferred that structure much more than Cantonese speakers did. We attribute this to Mandarin having a more dominant bisyllabic prosodic foot than Cantonese. When the 2-2 meaning was semantically incongruent, however, the alternative structure was preferred by both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. Overall, the results suggest that, in silent reading tasks and semantically neutral conditions, the prosodic foot is generated automatically and can affect syntactic choices when ambiguity arises.
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So, Lydia K. H., and Barbara J. Dodd. "The acquisition of phonology by Cantonese-speaking children." Journal of Child Language 22, no. 3 (October 1995): 473–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900009922.
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ABSTRACTLittle is known about the acquisition of phonology by children learning Cantonese as their first language. This paper describes the phoneme repertoires and phonological error patterns used by 268 Cantonese-speaking children aged 2;0 to 6;0, as well as a longitudinal study of tone acquisition by four children aged 1;2 to 2;0. Children had mastered the contrastive use of tones and vowels by two years. While the order of acquisition of consonants was similar to that reported for English, the rate of acquisition was more rapid. The developmental error patterns used by more than 10% of children are also reported as common in other languages. However, specific rules associated with Cantonese phonology were also identified. Few phonological errors were made after age four. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the ambient language influences the implementation of universal tendencies in phonological acquisition.
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Kan, Pui Fong, Annaliese Miller, Shirley Cheung, and Angela Brickman. "The Distributed L1 and L2 Language-Learning Environments of Dual Language Learners Across Home and School Settings." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 4 (October 2, 2020): 1007–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00112.
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Purpose This study explored the language-learning environments of typically developing dual language learners (DLLs) who learned Cantonese (first language [L1]) at home and English (second language [L2]) in preschool settings through direct and indirect measures. Method Nine typically developing Cantonese–English DLLs participated in this study. Participants' daylong activities were audio-recorded using the digital language processor of the Language ENvironment Analysis system. A manual coding scheme was developed to examine the audio recordings with the focus of the amount of L1 and L2 used by participants, adults, and their peers across home and school settings. In addition, participants' language use was indirectly examined using parent questionnaires, teacher reports, and classroom observations. Results The results of the audio recordings showed that Cantonese was the primary language used at home, and both Cantonese and English were used in school settings, consistent with the parent and teacher reports. Correlation analyses revealed that the amount of L1 used by the participants was associated with the L1 used by their peers: and the amount of L2 used by participants was positively related to the L2 used by adults at home. Conclusions The findings illustrate how parent/teacher reports and daylong audio recordings could complement each other in the investigation of DLLs' language-learning environments.
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Paternicò, Luisa M. "Shaping Cantonese Grammar – Early Western Contribution." Histoire Epistémologie Langage 41, no. 1 (2019): 15–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/hel/2019006.
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The first Westerners to learn and describe Cantonese were Protestant missionaries who arrived in China in the 19th century. Given the almost total lack of local linguistic tools, they began to present Cantonese in grammars, dictionaries, primers and phrasebooks, also devising Romanization systems to transcribe its sounds. The first attempt at describing Cantonese grammar was made by Robert Morrison in a section of his Grammar of the Chinese Language (1815). Many other works followed, compiled also by Catholic missionaries or lay scholars, and dedicated to the analysis and pedagogy of Cantonese. This paper will firstly offer an overview of the very early impressions of the language carried out by Westerners; it will then show how their analyses evolved, becoming more refined and detailed, and eventually − with to the work of T. O’Melia − grew more conscious and independent from the analyses of Mandarin, contributing ante litteram at debunking the myth of “one universal Chinese grammar”.
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Novita, Sherly, Dwi Widayati, and Bahagia Tarigan. "THE SOUND CORRESPONDENCE OF TEOCHEW, HAKKA, AND CANTONESE." HUMANIKA 27, no. 2 (December 2, 2020): 105–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/humanika.v27i2.33140.
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This research is based on a theory in Historical Comparative Linguistics. This theory is also called a diachronic theory, which involves the analysis of the form and regularity of changes in common languages such as those accompanied by sound changes. The objects of the research are Teochew (TC), Hakka (HK), and Cantonese (CO) dialects used in Medan city. These three dialects are categorized into the Sino-Tibetan family. Sino-Tibetan (ST) as one of the largest language families in the world, with more first-language speakers than even Indo-Europeans, is having more than 1.1 billion speakers of Sinitic (the Chinese dialects) constitute the world's largest speech community. According to STEDT (Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus), Chinese is considered as a Sino-Tibetan language family. The research method used is the qualitative method. The data collection method and technique used to refer to the conversation method with the techniques of recording and writing. The data were analyzed using the qualitative method of glottochronology. The result of the research shows that TC, HK, and CO were related in terms of sound correspondences and were separated thousands of years ago. TC and HK were related and both corresponded identically one similar vowel, one similar consonant, and one different phoneme, and one similar syllable. TC and CO were related and both corresponded to one similar vowel, one similar vocalic cluster, one similar consonant, and one different phoneme, and one similar syllable. HK and CO were related and both corresponded identically, one similar vowel, one similar consonant, one different phoneme, one different vocalic cluster, and one similar syllable. From all the findings and discussion in this research, the writer has concluded that HK and CO are the closest dialects among the three compared dialects.
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Cheung, Andrew K. F. "The use of reported speech by court interpreters in Hong Kong." Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 14, no. 1 (April 6, 2012): 73–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/intp.14.1.04che.
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This is a corpus-based study that investigates instances in which court interpreters in Hong Kong deviate from using direct speech and the first person, notwithstanding the requirement to use both of these when rendering statements made by witnesses or defendants. Quantitative data indicate that court interpreters do adhere to this requirement when interpreting Cantonese into English, but deviate from it when interpreting English into Cantonese. These data suggest that the use of reported speech and/or of the third person has identification functions that help Cantonese-speaking witnesses and defendants follow court proceedings and serve the pragmatic function of adding illocutionary force to interpreted utterances. Data from interviews with interpreters and legal professionals suggest that some latitude is exercised and tolerated when interpreters deviate from using direct speech and/or the first person when the target language is Cantonese. The findings indicate that court interpreters in the corpus observe strict professional guidelines by using direct speech most of the time, but occasional deviation from the direct approach suggests that court interpreters are able to make discretionary decisions to facilitate communication.
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Lai, Mee Ling. "Power redistribution of languages in Hong Kong under a new national flag." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 25, no. 1 (June 15, 2015): 141–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.25.1.08lai.
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Four years after the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China, a Matched-guised Test (MGT) was conducted to examine the subjective reactions of students to speakers of the three major spoken languages used in the city (i.e. Cantonese, English and Putonghua). Respondents were the first cohort of students under the mandatory mother tongue education policy, which was implemented one year after the political handover. Eight years after, when further socio-economic changes had taken place in Hong Kong, the MGT was administered again to find out the attitudes of the younger generation towards the three languages. Although English and Cantonese distinctly excelled in different domains in the first test, the second MGT shows signs of power redistribution among the languages. This paper is to report a comparison between the two tests and thereby uncover the directions of language shift in Hong Kong.
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Coblin, W. South. "Robert Morrison and the Phonology of Mid-Qīng Mandarin." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, no. 3 (November 2003): 339–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1356186303003134.
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AbstractRobert Morrison (1782–1834; Chinese name: Maˇ Liˇxùn) was the London Missionary Society's first representative in China and is generally viewed as the father of Protestant missionary work there. Modern scholarly interest in him has in the main focused on his role as a Bible translator (see, for example, Zetzsche 1999, especially Chapter 2). As part of his missionary activities, Morrison studied both written and spoken Chinese; and these researches yielded grammars of both Mandarin (i.e. Guānhuà “the language of the mandarins or officials”; Morrison, 1815) and Cantonese (1815: appendix, pp. 259–280), plus a major dictionary of written Chinese (1815–1823) and a smaller lexicon of Cantonese (1828). In order to transcribe spoken Chinese, Morrison developed romanisations for both Mandarin and Cantonese. These orthographic systems shed light on the pronunciation of the underlying languages as they were spoken two hundred years ago. The purpose of the present paper is to examine Morrison's romanisation of Mandarin for clues about the pronunciation of early nineteenth-century standard Chinese.
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Yan, Xi. "A study of Macao tertiary students’ attitudes to issues in postcolonial Macao’s language policy and planning." Language Problems and Language Planning 43, no. 3 (December 3, 2019): 241–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00033.yan.
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Abstract This study focuses on Macao, a former Portuguese colony and a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China after 1999. A questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2012 and 2013 respectively among freshmen of the University of Macau to investigate their attitudes to issues in Macao’s language policy and planning (LPP). Findings of this study reflect their practical attitudes, as reflected in their attitudes towards the choice of English or Portuguese as the first foreign language in Macao public schools. At the same time, their attitudes also reflect their strong local allegiances and resistance to Mainland China’s cultural practices, as reflected in their views on the issue of the official status of Putonghua in the Macao SAR, the choice of Putonghua or Cantonese as the medium of instruction, and the maintenance of traditional Chinese characters, written Cantonese, and Cantonese Romanization System in Macao.
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Tang, Ivy N. Y., Carol K. S. To, and Brendan S. Weekes. "Riddle Appreciation and Reading Comprehension in Cantonese-Speaking Children." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 44, no. 4 (October 2013): 348–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2013/12-0091).
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PurposeInference-making skills are necessary for reading comprehension. Training in riddle appreciation is an effective way to improve reading comprehension among English-speaking children. However, it is not clear whether these methods generalize to other writing systems. The goal of the present study was to investigate the relationship between inference-making skills, as measured by riddle appreciation ability, and reading comprehension performance in typically developing Cantonese-speaking children in the 4th grade.MethodForty Cantonese-speaking children between the ages of 9;1 (years;months) and 11;0 were given tests of riddle appreciation ability and reading comprehension. Chinese character reading and auditory comprehension abilities were also assessed using tests that had been standardized in Hong Kong.ResultsRegression analyses revealed that riddle appreciation ability explained a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension after variance due to character reading skills and auditory comprehension skills were first considered. Orthographic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic riddles were also significantly correlated with reading comprehension.ConclusionRiddle appreciation ability predicts reading comprehension in Cantonese-speaking 4th-grade children. Therefore, training Cantonese speakers in riddle appreciation should improve their reading comprehension.
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Lee, Albert, and Peggy Mok. "Acquisition of Japanese quantity contrasts by L1 Cantonese speakers." Second Language Research 34, no. 4 (November 5, 2017): 419–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658317739056.
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This article explores the acquisition of Japanese vowel and consonant quantity contrasts by Cantonese learners. Our goal is to examine whether transfer from first language (L1) is possible when L1 experience is phonemic but restricted to a small set of sounds (short vs. long vowels) and when the experience is non-phonemic, derived only at morpheme boundaries (short vs. long consonants). We recruited 20 Cantonese learners (beginner and advanced learners) and 5 native speakers of Japanese, who produced target stimuli varying in consonant and vowel quantity framed in a carrier sentence. The resultant data were converted into several durational ratios for analyses. Results showed that both the beginners and advanced learners were able to distinguish between short vs. long vowels and consonants in Japanese, but only the native speakers enhanced the contrasts in slower speech. It was also found that in most cases the learners were able to lengthen the vowel before a geminate (i.e. long consonant), a secondary cue to Japanese consonant quantity known to be rare across languages. These results are discussed in terms of current theories of second language acquisition.
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Gómez, David M., Peggy Mok, Mikhail Ordin, Jacques Mehler, and Marina Nespor. "Statistical Speech Segmentation in Tone Languages: The Role of Lexical Tones." Language and Speech 61, no. 1 (May 9, 2017): 84–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830917706529.
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Research has demonstrated distinct roles for consonants and vowels in speech processing. For example, consonants have been shown to support lexical processes, such as the segmentation of speech based on transitional probabilities (TPs), more effectively than vowels. Theory and data so far, however, have considered only non-tone languages, that is to say, languages that lack contrastive lexical tones. In the present work, we provide a first investigation of the role of consonants and vowels in statistical speech segmentation by native speakers of Cantonese, as well as assessing how tones modulate the processing of vowels. Results show that Cantonese speakers are unable to use statistical cues carried by consonants for segmentation, but they can use cues carried by vowels. This difference becomes more evident when considering tone-bearing vowels. Additional data from speakers of Russian and Mandarin suggest that the ability of Cantonese speakers to segment streams with statistical cues carried by tone-bearing vowels extends to other tone languages, but is much reduced in speakers of non-tone languages.
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Chen, Xinyu, Liang Ke, Zhipeng Lu, Hanjian Su, and Haizhou Wang. "A Novel Hybrid Model for Cantonese Rumor Detection on Twitter." Applied Sciences 10, no. 20 (October 12, 2020): 7093. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app10207093.
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The development of information technology and mobile Internet has spawned the prosperity of online social networks. As the world’s largest microblogging platform, Twitter is popular among people all over the world. However, as the number of users on Twitter increases, rumors have become a serious problem. Therefore, rumor detection is necessary since it can prevent unverified information from causing public panic and disrupting social order. Cantonese is a widely used language in China. However, to the best of our knowledge, little research has been done on Cantonese rumor detection. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid model XGA (namely XLNet-based Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiGRU) network with Attention mechanism) for Cantonese rumor detection on Twitter. Specifically, we take advantage of both semantic and sentiment features for detection. First of all, XLNet is employed to produce text-based and sentiment-based embeddings at the character level. Then we perform joint learning of character and word embeddings to obtain the words’ external contexts and internal structures. In addition, we leverage BiGRU and the attention mechanism to obtain important semantic features and use the Cantonese rumor dataset we constructed to train our proposed model. The experimental results show that the XGA model outperforms the other popular models in Cantonese rumor detection. The research in this paper provides methods and ideas for future work in Cantonese rumor detection on other social networking platforms.
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Tse, Holman. "Variation and change in Toronto heritage Cantonese." Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2, no. 2 (December 31, 2016): 124–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aplv.2.2.02tse.
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Abstract This paper presents the first sociophonetic study of Cantonese vowels using sociolinguistic interview data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Corpus. It focuses on four allophones [iː], [ɪk/ɪŋ], [uː], and [ʊk/ʊŋ] of two contrastive vowels /iː/ and /uː/ across two generations of speakers. The F1 and F2 of 30 vowel tokens were analyzed for these four allophones from each of 20 speakers (N = 600 vowel tokens). Results show inter-generational maintenance of allophonic conditioning for /iː/ and /uː/ as well as an interaction between generation and sex such that second-generation female speakers have the most retracted variants of [ɪk/ɪŋ] and the most fronted variants of [iː]. This paper will discuss three possible explanations based on internal motivation, phonetic assimilation, and phonological influence. This will illustrate the importance of multiple comparisons (including inter-generational, cross-linguistic, and cross-community) in the relatively new field of heritage language phonology research.
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Liejiong, Xu, and Alain Peyraube. "On the Double Object Construction and the Oblique Construction in Cantonese." Studies in Language 21, no. 1 (January 1, 1997): 105–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.21.1.05lie.
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The double-object construction has always been a controversial issue in linguistic theory. In Chinese we encounter an interesting and peculiar situation: both Mandarin and Cantonese have the dative construction with the indirect object (IO) introduced by a dative preposition (V + DO + Prep. + IO), but when the preposition is absent, the indirect object always precedes the direct object (DO)) in Mandarin (V + IO + DO), while the reverse order is predominant in Cantonese (V + DO + IO). What is the origin of the Cantonese form V + DO + IO? In many previous studies, V + DO + IO is said to come from V + IO + DO. In this paper we first show that neither synchronic nor diachronic evidence favors the Movement Hypothesis that V + DO + IO is derived from V + IO + DO. The former is not a free variant of the latter. We then argue, synchronically and diachronically, that V + DO + IO is derived from V + DO + Prep. + IO by Preposition Deletion. The two forms share the same constraints in relation to the semantic nature of the verbs and the focus information transmitted by the two objects (DO and IO).
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Yim, Odilia, and Richard Clément. "“You’re a Juksing”: Examining Cantonese–English Code-Switching as an Index of Identity." Journal of Language and Social Psychology 38, no. 4 (July 27, 2019): 479–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261927x19865572.
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Code-switching, the spontaneous switching from one language to another, shows unique structural and functional patterns in different bilingual communities. Though historically viewed as negative, it has been documented as an acceptable way of speaking in certain contexts, namely multilingual communities. We investigated the implications of code-switching on bilinguals’ language attitudes and identities in Toronto, a distinctly multilingual and multicultural metropolis. Twelve Cantonese–English bilinguals participated in a semi-structured interview discussing their code-switching and language attitudes. Interviews were then evaluated using a critical realist framework and analysed via first and second cycle coding. Code-switching elicited mixed emotions: It was a source of pride, but also a reminder of weak Cantonese language skills due to others’ metalinguistic comments and judgments. Participants’ code-switching indexed them as juksings, labelling them as Chinese individuals born and raised overseas, de-authenticating their Chinese group membership. Results are discussed with regard to ethnic identity and intra-group communication.
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Luke, K. K., and Adams Bodomo. "A comparative study of the semantics of serial verb constructions in Dagaare and Cantonese." Languages in Contrast 3, no. 2 (December 31, 2001): 165–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lic.3.2.02luk.
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The serial verb construction (SVC) is a productive syntactic phenomenon in many Asian and African languages and has been the subject of various studies. Many of these studies are, however, mainly based on data from the individual Asian and African languages or language groups (e.g. Jayaseelan 1996 for Malayalam; Schiller 1991 for Khmer; Chang 1990 for Mandarin; Bodomo 1997, 1998 for Dagaare and Akan; and Awoyale 1988 for Yoruba). There is a near lack of comparative studies involving Asian and African languages with regards to SVCs. Given the wide variety of syntactic and semantic manifestations that are characteristic of SVCs, cross-linguistic studies are crucial in developing a clear universal typology of SVCs as a first step towards a universal account of their syntax and semantics. Based on Dagaare (a Gur language of West Africa) and Cantonese (a Yue dialect of Chinese), this paper proposes a semantic typology of SVCs including benefactive, causative (resultative), inceptive, instrumental, and deictic serialization.
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Leung, Chi Hong, and Winslet Ting Yan Chan. "SOCIOLINGUISTIC PHENOMENON OF CODE MIXING IN HONG KONG: FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS." Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews 4, no. 1 (March 6, 2016): 20–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2016.413.
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Code mixing is an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon in Hong Kong, where people integrate English words into their host language (Cantonese) for more effective communication. This paper first reviewed the previous research findings on code mixing and then discussed the results of a recent study on the usage of code mixing between English and Cantonese in Hong Kong particularly from the perspective of the marketing communications.
The research results revealed various reasons of applying code mixing in marketing communications, including awareness, impression, referential usage, pun/joke, original quotation, emphasis, convenience, euphemism, and cyberspace convention. At the end of the paper, sociolinguistic implications are discussed.
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AU, TERRY KIT-FONG, WINNIE WAILAN CHAN, LIAO CHENG, LINDA S. SIEGEL, and RICKY VAN YIP TSO. "Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?" Journal of Child Language 42, no. 2 (April 7, 2014): 323–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000913000627.
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ABSTRACTTo fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.
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CHEN, Hui, Dahliane LABERTONIÈRE, Hintat CHEUNG, and Thierry NAZZI. "Infant learning of words in a typologically distant nonnative language." Journal of Child Language 47, no. 6 (May 6, 2020): 1276–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000920000161.
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AbstractInfants attune to their native language during the first two years of life, as attested by decreases in the processing of nonnative phonological sounds and reductions in the range of possible sounds accepted as labels for native words. The present study shows that French-learning infants aged 1;8 can learn new words in an unfamiliar language, Cantonese, after just 6 repetitions of each word. This shows that word learning in a nonnative language remains possible during the second year of life even in a nonnative language that is typologically distinct from the native language.
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Liu, Yuqing. "Sinicizing European Languages: Lexicographical and Literary Practices of Pidgin English in Nineteenth-Century China." Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (November 1, 2022): 135–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/15982661-10040867.
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Abstract This article reconsiders the social, economic, and literary significance of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in Chinese society by exploring lexicographical and literary practices of pidgin in nineteenth-century China. Resituating the history of CPE in Chinese language history, this article problematizes the concept of pidgin and pursues three arguments. First, the author maintains that CPE arose from the marginalized status of the Euro-American traders who were restricted from learning the Chinese language in Canton. Second, by exploring foreign-language glossaries, this article foregrounds the key role of sinographs and Chinese topolects in mediating and remolding foreign languages. Last, by examining the appropriation of foreign sounds in Cantonese folk songs and Pan Youdu's poetry, this article demonstrates the complex flow of these sounds among different languages and the power of pidgin in transgressing linguistic boundaries.
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Kirkpatrick, Andy. "‘Chinese English or English Chinese?’." Global Chinese 1, no. 1 (April 1, 2015): 85–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2015-1004.
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Abstract A question which is frequently asked in discussions about the future roles of English and Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or Putonghua and often also referred to as Mandarin) in the Asia-Pacific region is whether Chinese will replace English as the primary regional language or lingua franca. In this article, I shall first consider the roles that each language is playing in China itself and within the Asia-Pacific region. I shall argue that it is important to take these languages together, as the combination of Modern Standard Chinese and English is threatening regional languages, including other major Chinese languages such as Cantonese. In dealing with these two major languages in combination, I shall also consider how each language has influenced and continues to influence the other linguistically, illustrating this with examples at the levels of lexis, syntax, rhetoric and pragmatic norms. I shall conclude by tentatively suggesting how the roles of these two languages may develop in future, and the potential sociolinguistic consequences of this.
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Rose, Kenneth R. "AN EXPLORATORY CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY OF INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22, no. 1 (March 2000): 27–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100001029.
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This paper reports the results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmatic development among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who completed a cartoon oral production task (COPT) designed to elicit requests, apologies, and compliment responses. The first two of these speech acts are among the most well represented in the pragmatics literature and are also included in the Hong Kong English language syllabus for primary schools. The latter has also been studied extensively but is not part of the syllabus. Data was collected in Cantonese using the same instrument. Although a number of developmental patterns are revealed—particularly in choice of request strategy, frequency of supportive moves, and use of adjuncts with apologies and compliment responses—there is little evidence of sensitivity to situational variation or pragmatic transfer from Cantonese. This study adds to the small, but growing, body of research on pragmatic development in a second language.
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Derwing, Tracey M., and Murray J. Munro. "ACCENT, INTELLIGIBILITY, AND COMPREHENSIBILITY." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 19, no. 1 (March 1997): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263197001010.
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This study was designed to extend previous research on the relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness. Accent and comprehensibility ratings and transcriptions of accented speech from Cantonese, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish intermediate ESL students were obtained from 26 native English listeners. The listeners were also asked to identify the first language backgrounds of the same talkers and to provide information on their familiarity with the four accents used in this study. When the results of this study were compared with the Munro and Derwing (1995, Language Learning, 45, 73–97) study of learners of high proficiency, speaker proficiency level did not appear to affect the quasi-independent relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness; however, the relative contributions of grammatical and phonemic errors and goodness of prosody differed somewhat. Ability to identify the speakers' first languages was influenced by familiarity.
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Moutinho, Ricardo, and Weng I. Lao. "use of utterance particles as assessment resources in Cantonese conversation." East Asian Pragmatics 4, no. 2 (November 12, 2019): 191–215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/eap.37219.
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It has been reported in the literature that each language has very particular resourcesthat show how participants mark their epistemic positions (Hayano, 2011;Iwasaki & Yap, 2015; Kärkkäinen, 2003, 2007; Thompson, 2002). Our main objectivein this article is to discuss and explicate the use of these resources in a conversationcarried out by young adults in Cantonese. We discuss how conversationalistsmark and manage their epistemic positions through assessment devices carried outby certain utterance particles (? ma, ge, and gám) and other combining resources(such as use of first person plural pronouns, modal adverbs, and tag questions). Todo so, we focus on the competition of rights to make assessments, turn design, andthe sequential positioning of each participant during the interaction. Our resultsshow that participants always search for ratification of their assessments and thatthe use of the three particles analysed herein play a fundamental role in this process.This work seeks to contribute to other studies that have analysed specific resourcesthat participants use when claiming or defeating rights during the evaluation processof a matter at hand in languages other than English.
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Chan, Sheila S. L., and Lawrence Y. L. Cheung. "Morpho-Syntax of Non-VO Separable Compound Verbs in Cantonese." Studies in Chinese Linguistics 41, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 185–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/scl-2020-0007.
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Abstract Verb-object (VO) separable compound verbs (SCVs), for example, lí-le-hūn ‘divorced’, have long been studied. A small group of non-VO compounds in Cantonese are also separable, but have not yet been addressed. In this study, a preliminary judgment test was used for the first time, to look into the separation of non-VO compounds. We found that the separation of non-VO compounds, though limited, is different from that of VO compounds in terms of their ways of separation. There seems to be an effect of the ways of separation and the morphological structures of the verbs on the separability. We also showed that the underlying identity of non-VO SCVs is lexical, as most of them do not have a phrasal form. This group of separable verbs, which was neglected before, could have an impact on related morpho-syntactic theories.
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Zhang, Ling. "Tunes of different speech styles in Cantonese." Chinese Language and Discourse 6, no. 2 (December 30, 2015): 183–204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cld.6.2.04zha.
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Different speech styles come with different tunes. This paper reports the first empirical study of the tunes of different speech styles; namely, opera speaking versus opera singing, opera speaking versus normal speaking, and normal speaking versus normal singing. In all these speech styles, Cantonese lexical tones are well preserved. The data analyses show that speaking and singing differ mainly in pitch slope. Speaking styles are associated with a declining intonation, while singing styles show a slightly ascending tendency. The acoustic data also indicate that a higher pitch register is usually employed when a speech type is considered more conspicuous, such as opera speaking (compared with normal speaking) and normal singing (compared with normal speaking).
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RAMACHERS, STEFANIE, SUSANNE BROUWER, and PAULA FIKKERT. "No perceptual reorganization for Limburgian tones? A cross-linguistic investigation with 6- to 12-month-old infants." Journal of Child Language 45, no. 2 (June 15, 2017): 290–318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000917000228.
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AbstractDespite the fact that many of the world's languages use lexical tone, the majority of language acquisition studies has focused on non-tone languages. Research on tone languages has typically investigated well-known tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. The current study looked at a Limburgian dialect of Dutch that uses lexical pitch differences, albeit in a rather restricted way. Using a visual habituation paradigm, 6- to 12-month-old Limburgian and Dutch infants were tested for their ability to discriminate Limburgian tones. The results showed that both Limburgian and Dutch infants discriminate the Limburgian tones throughout their first year of life. The role of linguistic experience, acoustic salience, and the degree of similarity to the native prosodic system are discussed.
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Leung, Janny H. C., and John N. Williams. "CROSSLINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES IN IMPLICIT LANGUAGE LEARNING." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36, no. 4 (July 28, 2014): 733–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263114000333.
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We report three experiments that explore the effect of prior linguistic knowledge on implicit language learning. Native speakers of English from the United Kingdom and native speakers of Cantonese from Hong Kong participated in experiments that involved different learning materials. In Experiment 1, both participant groups showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and noun animacy. In Experiment 2, neither group showed learning of a mapping between articles and a linguistically anomalous concept (the number of capital letters in an English word or that of strokes in a Chinese character). In Experiment 3, the Chinese group, but not the English group, showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and a concept derived from the Chinese classifier system. It was concluded that first language knowledge affected implicit language learning and that implicit learning, at least when natural language learning is concerned, is subject to constraints and biases.
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Saito, Kazuya, and Xianghua Wu. "COMMUNICATIVE FOCUS ON FORM AND SECOND LANGUAGE SUPRASEGMENTAL LEARNING." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36, no. 4 (May 23, 2014): 647–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263114000114.
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The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the categorical distinctions of Mandarin tones through a range of communicative input and output activities. During these activities, the instructors provided CF only to students in the FFI-CF group by recasting and pushing them to repair their mispronunciations of the target features (i.e., output enhancement). The control group received comparable meaning-oriented instruction without any FFI. The effectiveness of FFI was assessed via a forced-choice identification task with both trained and untrained items for a variety of tonal contrasts in Mandarin (high-level Tone 1 vs. mid-rising Tone 2 vs. high-falling Tone 4). According to statistical comparisons, the FFI-only group attained significant improvement in all lexical and tonal contexts, and such effectiveness was evident particularly in the acquisition of Tone 1 and Tone 4—supposedly the most difficult instances due to their identical phonological status in the learners’ first language, Cantonese. The FFI-CF group, however, demonstrated marginally significant gains only under the trained lexical conditions. The results suggest that FFI promotes learners’ attentional shift from vocabulary to sound learning (generalizable gains in trained and untrained items) and facilitates their access to new phonetic and phonological categories. Yet the relative advantage of adding CF to FFI as output enhancement remains unclear, especially with respect to the less experienced L2 learners in the current study.
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Rogers, John, and Anisa Cheung. "Input spacing and the learning of L2 vocabulary in a classroom context." Language Teaching Research 24, no. 5 (October 15, 2018): 616–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1362168818805251.
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This study examined the optimal learning schedule for second language vocabulary within an authentic classroom setting in Hong Kong. Following a pretest, treatment, delayed posttest design, fifty-two primary school students (Cantonese first language) studied 20 English adjectives over two learning episodes under spaced-short (1-day interval) or spaced-long (8-day interval) learning conditions. The spacing of the vocabulary items was manipulated within-participants, and learning was assessed on a multiple-choice posttest, administered following a four-week delay. In contrast to previous laboratory-based findings, the results here indicated superior learning of the items presented under the spaced-short format, suggesting that lag effects might be attenuated by age, learning context and teaching procedure.
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Liu, Binmei, Pengpeng Feng, Qingtao Feng, Jihong Li, and Yuping Li. "Language attitudes by university students in mainland China." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 28, no. 2 (August 10, 2018): 345–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.00017.liu.
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Abstract Through a questionnaire survey of non-local university students, this study examined direct language attitudes of English, Putonghua, and local dialects in the first-tier city Guangzhou, second-tier city Tianjin, and small city Yan’an. The significance of this study lies in two aspects: few of the previous studies examined language attitudes of non-local subjects; few of the previous studies compared attitudes toward three varieties across economically diverse cities. The study adopted Gardner & Lambert’s (1972) motivation theory to measure direct attitudes of the participants. Findings included that non-local students showed positive attitudes toward Cantonese both integratively and instrumentally but not toward the Tianjin and Yan’an dialects. Furthermore, students had positive integrative and instrumental attitudes toward Putonghua in all three cities. Finally, they showed high and positive integrative and instrumental attitudes toward English, with the means of Guangzhou and Tianjin higher than those of Yan’an. Future research should incorporate qualitative measures to provide a deeper understanding of language attitudes.
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Sio, Joanna Ut-Seong. "The Dual Identity of the Post-Verbal Can1 in Cantonese: A Non-Specific Resultative Particle and a Free Choice Item." Studies in Chinese Linguistics 41, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 139–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/scl-2020-0005.
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Abstract This paper discusses the syntactic and semantic properties of the two functions of the post-verbal can1 in Cantonese. The first function of the post-verbal can1 is a non-specific resultative particle that denotes any degree on a “bodily harm” scale. The non-specific nature of can1 ensures that the scale is always a simplex scale (containing only a beginning and an end) and thus [V-can1] predicates behave like achievement verbs. The second function of the post-verbal can1 is a free choice item (FCI). It appears only in non-episodic sentences, specifically in dou1 (iota operator)-conditionals or zau6 (necessity operator)-conditionals.
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Hui, Nga-Yan, Manson Cheuk-Man Fong, and William Shiyuan Wang. "Bilingual Prefabs: No Switching Cost Was Found in Cantonese–English Habitual Code-Switching in Hong Kong." Languages 7, no. 3 (July 29, 2022): 198. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages7030198.
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Previous studies on the comprehension of code-switched sentences often neglected the code-switching habit of the specific community, so that the processing difficulty might not have resulted from the change in language but from unnatural switching. This study explores the processing cost of habitual and nonhabitual code-switching. Thirty-one young adults participated in the sentence-reading task with their eye movement tracked. A two-by-two factorial design was used, with Habit (habitual/nonhabitual) and Language (unilingual/code-switched) as the factors. The main effect of Language was observed only in First Fixation Duration, suggesting that the language membership was already identified in an early processing stage. However, for habitual switches, no switching cost in overall processing effort was found, as reflected by Total Fixation Duration and Visit Counts. Our results indicate that the cognitive load was only larger when the switch occurred nonhabitually, regardless of the language membership. In light of this finding, we propose that habitual code-switching might promote the formation of bilingual collocations, or prefabs, which are then integrated into the mental lexicon of the dominant language. Despite a conscious language tag of a foreign origin, these bilingual prefabs are not processed as a language switch in the lexicon.
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Cheng, Qijin, King-wa Fu, Eric Caine, and Paul S. F. Yip. "Why Do We Report Suicides and How Can We Facilitate Suicide Prevention Efforts?" Crisis 35, no. 2 (March 1, 2014): 74–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000241.
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Background: The Hong Kong news media report suicide-related events more frequently and sensationally than Western countries. Little is known about Hong Kong media professionals’ experiences and thoughts about such reporting. Aims: To understand Hong Kong media professionals’ experiences and perceptions of suicide reporting and whether the news media can be better engaged into suicide prevention. Method: We conducted three focus groups of journalists from both the Cantonese and English language news media. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methods. Results: We discerned three rationales from participants regarding their intense coverage of suicide-related events: (1) satisfying commercial competitiveness, (2) addressing social problems, and (3) responding to readers’ interests. The first rationale was a dominant and vigorous motivating factor, and often influenced suicide reporting among local Cantonese media. Media professionals recommended engagement strategies targeted at frontline journalists, media managers, and general media consumers. Conclusion: We see potential to involve news media professionals in Hong Kong as working partners in suicide prevention. To succeed, this effort requires engagement in a proactive, consistent, and sustained fashion.
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Johnson, Maree, Cathy Noble, and Clair Mathews. "Towards culturally competent health care: Language use of bilingual staff." Australian Health Review 21, no. 3 (1998): 49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/ah980049.
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The presence of diverse language skills within health staff provides opportunitiesto better meet the needs of a multicultural population. A cross-sectional survey ofall staff within the South Western Sydney Area Health Service was undertaken tocompare language skills with population needs and examine the context of languageuse. Thirty-one per cent of staff (n = 964) were bilingual or multilingual, with the predominant languages spoken being Tagalog (Filipino), Cantonese, Hindi, Spanish, Vietnamese and Italian. Thirty-seven per cent of bilingual staff used theirlanguage skills at least weekly, predominantly in situations of simple conversation and giving directions. Bilingual staff are a valuable resource for the organisation and the presence of a similar overall proportion of bilingual and bicultural staff may engender tolerance and adaptability in providing care to a diverse population. However, supply does not directly match community demand. This mismatch will continue unless recruitment is focused towards identified language groups. The high proportion of staff who rarely used their language skills (37%) may be due to lack of opportunity or limited need, and suggests that further research needs to examineservice models that locate bilingual workers close to client need. This study takesa crucial first step towards realising equitable and culturally appropriate careutilising the principles of productive diversity.
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Cheung, Andrew K. F. "Listeners’ perception of the quality of simultaneous interpreting and perceived dependence on simultaneous interpreting." Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 24, no. 1 (November 18, 2021): 38–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/intp.00070.che.
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Abstract With the rise of the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), the number of conference speakers and attendees who use English is increasing. Simultaneous interpreting (SI) into and from English may be provided at conferences to meet the needs of individuals with differing levels of English ability. This paper reports on the findings obtained from two sets of experiments that explored the link between listeners’ perceived dependence on SI and their perceptions of its quality. The first set of experiments was conducted onsite and the second using a remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) setting. Native Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking participants were divided into two groups: one with Russian as the source language (SL) (Russian group) and the other with English as the SL (English group). Both groups listened to the same prerecorded simultaneous interpretation into Cantonese performed by a non-native interpreter. In the onsite setting, the Russian group perceived the non-native-accented interpretation more favorably than the English group did. This suggests that in onsite settings, perceived dependence on SI may be associated with perceptions of its quality; the greater the perceived dependence on SI, the higher the perceived SI quality. However, no significant differences were found between the two groups in the RSI setting. Factors such as the inaudible SL in the background, similar levels of perceived dependence, negative feelings about online learning and tensions in the state-society relationship may contribute to the similar quality perception ratings across the two RSI groups.
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Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews, and Geoff Smith. "China Coast Pidgin." Pidgins and Creoles in Asian Contexts 25, no. 1 (February 5, 2010): 63–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25.1.03ans.
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In this paper we revisit some long-standing questions regarding the origins and structure of China Coast Pidgin (CCP), also known as Chinese Pidgin English. We first review the historical context of the China Trade which formed the ecology for the development of CCP. We then review the available sources, focusing on newly transcribed data from Chinese-language instructional materials. These sources provide fresh evidence for grammatical structure in CCP, and demonstrate strong influence from Cantonese as the major substrate language. Comparison with English-language sources shows systematic contrasts which point to likely variation between Anglophone and Sinophone lects, as in the case of wh-questions which show regular wh-fronting in English sources and pervasive use of wh-in-situ in Chinese sources. This conclusion helps to resolve the debate over the Sinitic features of CCP.
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Tse, Sou-Mee, and David Ingram. "The influence of dialectal variation on phonological acquisition: a case study on the acquisition of Cantonese." Journal of Child Language 14, no. 2 (June 1987): 281–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900012939.
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ABSTRACTThe phonological acquisition of a young girl whose parents spoke two dialects of Cantonese was examined. The father's dialect had a phonological distinction between initial /l/ and /n/ which was merged into /l/ in the mother's dialect. The child was followed bi-weekly for approximately one year. The results indicate that she acquired neither the mother's nor the father's dialect. Instead, she acquired [l] and [n] as freely varying allophones of a single phoneme. In the first months, [n] was the most frequent realization of the phoneme, with [l] becoming the most frequent one in later sessions. The results are interpreted as supporting the claim that children use all available input in acquiring language rather than limiting themselves to a primary language model.
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Philp, Jenefer, Margaret Borowczyk, and Alison Mackey. "Exploring the Uniqueness of Child Second Language Acquisition (SLA): Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Practice." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 37 (September 2017): 1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0267190517000174.
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This issue was designed to include a wide range of research on children's second language learning. Here we provide a short overview of each of the articles contained in this issue, many of which bring up novel ideas and topics, as well as new takes on familiar themes that sometimes challenge prior conceptions and, ideally, inspire new understandings of child language acquisition, and policies, and practices in instructed settings. The 15 articles in this issue are based in instructed and naturalistic settings and include reviews and experimental work, and collectively represent learners between 5 to 18 years old. The language backgrounds include Mandarin (first language [L1]), Arabic (L1), Basque (L1), Cantonese (L1), English (second language [L2]), Hebrew (L1, L2), Spanish (L1, L2), and Thai (L1). Topics include the uniqueness of child second language acquisition (SLA); learning in majority language classrooms; best practices in bilingual schooling, cognition, and SLA in younger learners; testing and assessment relating to age and language choice; and methodological contributions that arise from the particular challenges of researching child second language development in instructed and naturalistic settings.
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Bhambra, Nishaant, Morgan Spencer Gold, Darya Naumova, Kenzy Abdelhamid, David Lessard, and Bertrand Lebouché. "Assessing needs for linguistic interpretation in hospital settings: A retrospective analysis of ad hoc interpreter requests." Journal of Medicine Access 6 (January 2022): 275508342211052. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/27550834221105215.
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Background: In Canada, healthcare professionals often rely on ad hoc interpreters, who are untrained volunteers recruited via intercom hospital announcements to interpret for patients with language barriers. This study analyzed the frequency of ad hoc interpreter requests via intercom announcements to estimate hospital interpretation needs. Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis from intercom requests for medical interpretation collected from five hospitals of the McGill University Health Center. Requests included date, time, language requested, hospital location, and extension for who placed the request. Results: A total of 1265 intercom requests were placed for 48 languages, with the top five languages being Mandarin (17.8%), Punjabi (10.1%), Inuktitut (9.8%), Arabic (7.3%), and Cantonese (6.4%). Almost 69.8% of requests were made during working hours, 13.2% on workday evenings, and 14.8% on weekends. Requests came from urgent care (42.3%), outpatient (29.5%), and inpatient (23.3%) settings. Conclusion: This is the first published study that measures interpretation needs via intercom requests. We propose that our method can be replicated to inform implementation of professional medical interpretation services. We conclude that linguistic interpretation needs are significant in the Montreal area, and likely in Canada in general and pose a barrier to effective medical care.
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WEEKES, BRENDAN STUART. "Learning written word vocabulary in a second language: Theoretical and practical implications." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21, no. 3 (June 27, 2017): 585–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728917000141.
Full textAbstract:
Short-term memory (STM) is required for second language learning. However, it is not clear what components of STM are necessary for the acquisition and lexicalisation of new written words. Studies suggest that memory for serial order is a critical cognitive process in spoken word acquisition although correlated mechanisms such as executive control also play a role. In this study, bilingual Cantonese–English speakers who are learning written expert words in a non-native language were tested over a one year period in their first year of instruction. Written word lexicalisation was measured using lexical decision and spelling to dictation tasks. Results showed measures of executive control (Stroop performance) and serial order memory capacity predict recognition and recall of written expert words at different stages. Whereas serial order memory predicts improvements to lexical decision accuracy, executive control predicts spelling to dictation performance after one year. The conclusion is that STM processes do constrain written word lexicalisation in a second language. However, executive control and serial order memory capacity have differential effects during word lexicalisation.