In this thesis I investigate the preverbal positioning of wh and non-wh-phrases in Late Archaic Chinese (LAC) and the Intervention Effect (Beck 1996a). I first explore non-wh-fronting and discover two landing sites for preposed DPs. Non-wh-objects fronted to the higher position in the left periphery are consistent with a topical interpretation, yet those moved to the lower position between the subject and negation are consistent with a focal interpretation. In the context of negation, pronouns normally move to negation and target a position exclusively for them. I then discuss two types of wh-preposing in LAC. D-linked which-phrases in LAC are topical, therefore they appear in an internal topic position. With respect to non-D-linked wh-DPs, they target one of the two focused positions in the medial domain, either between the internal topic position and negation or between negation and vP. The higher focus position above negation is expected to exclusively permit wh-phrases base-generated above negation, and the lower focused position below negation accommodates wh-adverbials base-generated between negation and vP. I also propose that the inverted order of wh-P is generated via PP inversion followed by separate preposing of wh and P. I finally explore the Intervention Effect. Negation, rather than focus or quantificational phrases, functions as a barrier for the Q-binding of wh-phrases in LAC. Wh-items that have the option to stay in-situ, along with wh-arguments and adverbials that usually move to the lower focus position below negation, are subject to the Intervention Effect caused by negation. As a consequence, these wh-phrases have to land in the higher focus position above negation which is expected to accommodate ‘high’ adverbials exclusively. I propose that the Intervention Effect in LAC is a consequence of Q-binding as feature movement of [wh], interacting with fronting into the hierarchy of clause-internal positions driven by [Topic] or [Focus] features.

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In Taiwan, many children grow up in a bilingual environment, namely Mandarin and Taiwanese. They learn Zhuyin Fuhao – a semi-syllabic transparent orthography – at the beginning of the first grade before learning traditional Chinese characters. However little is known about the acquisition of literacy in this complex context, especially about the role of phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN) and other spoken language skills. This longitudinal study is the first systematic attempt to investigate the trajectory of literacy acquisition in Mandarin-speaking children and the impact of instruction in both Zhuyin Fuhao and character. The study was carried out in Taipei. A sample of 92 children were tested in their first grade (mean age of 6;7), and then followed up a year later in their second grade. A comprehensive PA battery was designed to measure implicit and explicit PA of syllables, onset-rime, phonemes and tones. RAN, spoken language skills and literacy skills, including reading accuracy and comprehension in Zhuyin Fuhao and character were also measured, alongside non-verbal intelligence and children’s home languages. It was found that the role of PA in early literacy development of Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan varies as a function of the orthography system. PA was closely linked to ZF-related tasks and reading comprehension, but not character reading where it had no predictive role. On the other hand, graphological RAN was found to be a good predictor of reading performance in both scripts, both concurrently and longitudinally. Additionally, non-graphological RAN had a role in predicting lexical-related literacy skills. Lastly, all spoken language skills, except semantic fluency, were significantly associated with reading comprehension indicating that oral language competence contributes major variances in reading comprehension. Moreover, vocabulary and auditory memory were associated longitudinally with many CH-related tasks. However, the variance of ZF word reading or spelling could not be explained by any spoken language skills. Investigation of children with atypical development revealed that children with reading difficulties performed less well on RAN and PA tasks while children with speech difficulty performed less well on sub-syllabic PA, Zhuyin Fuhao literacy tasks and character recognition, but no differently to their peers on RAN and character reading accuracy and character knowledge in radical form or position. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The present work sets out to investigate the stylistic profiles of two modern Chinese versions of Cervantes’s Don Quijote (I): by Yang Jiang (1978), the first direct translation from Castilian to Chinese, and by Liu Jingsheng (1995), which is one of the most commercially successful versions of the Castilian literary classic. This thesis focuses on a detailed linguistic analysis carried out with the help of the latest textual analytical tools, natural language processing applications and statistical packages. The type of linguistic phenomenon singled out for study is four-character expressions (FCEXs), which are a very typical category of Chinese phraseology. The work opens with the creation of a descriptive framework for the annotation of linguistic data extracted from the parallel corpus of Don Quijote. Subsequently, the classified and extracted data are put through several statistical tests. The results of these tests prove to be very revealing regarding the different use of FCEXs in the two Chinese translations. The computational modelling of the linguistic data would seem to indicate that among other findings, while Liu’s use of archaic idioms has followed the general patterns of the original and also of Yang’s work in the first half of Don Quijote I, noticeable variations begin to emerge in the second half of Liu’s more recent version. Such an idiosyncratic use of archaisms by Liu, which may be defined as style shifting or style variation, is then analyzed in quantitative terms through the application of the proposed context-motivated theory (CMT). The results of applying the CMT-derived statistical models show that the detected stylistic variation may well point to the internal consistency of the translator in rendering the second half of Part I of the novel, which reflects his freer, more creative and experimental style of translation. Through the introduction and testing of quantitative research methods adapted from corpus linguistics and textual statistics, this thesis has made a major contribution to methodological innovation in the study of style within the context of corpus-based translation studies.

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This thesis is concerned with how to build adaptive language models of Chinese text, which can be used in different Chinese natural language processing (NLP) applications. The Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM) language model has been widely used in many NLP areas. To apply this model for Chinese, many problems arise that originate from the language's large alphabet. In this thesis, the PPM-ch model is introduced first to improve the traditional PPM model, by first using preprocessing techniques, then a frequency sorting technique and a variation of PPM that performs no exclusions. PPMO, a novel variant of the PPM model is then proposed. Unlike traditional PPM models, which output an escape symbol when a novel symbol occurs in a context model, PPMO separates the coding process into two streams, named the orders stream and the symbols stream. This algorithm is the first PPM variant that does not use the escape mechanism and it achieves the best compression results. We have also investigated Chinese Word segmentation by using our PPM-ch and PPMO model. Although our PPMO models havenot been carefully crafted for segmentation usage, we still achieve satisfactory results.

This study identifies two syntactically distinguishable types of Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Mandarin Chinese (MC) and Jinjiang Southern Min (JSM), corresponding to the nuclear and core distinction made in Role and Reference Grammar (Foley and Van Valin 1984, Foley and Olson 1985, Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). This distinction is also made on the basis of a general consensus of the cross-linguistic classifications of the processes of monoclausal multi-verb construction formation (e.g., Butt 1993, 1997, Baker and Harvey 2010): namely, predicate fusion and argument fusion. In this study, I propose two sets of diagnostics to establish the distinction; these go beyond the range covered in previous studies (e.g., Olson 1981, Foley and Olson 1985, Crowley 2002, Chang 2007). In the first set of diagnostics in this study, seven inter-clausal diagnostics are considered as the threshold where the behaviours of bi-clausal structures and SVCs split. These diagnostics include independent negation, passivisation of the object of V2, independent modification by temporal adverbial, independent marking of viewpoint aspect, independent modification by manner adverbial, prosodic structure and the Coordinate Structure Constraint (Ross 1967) that is employed in a more restricted manner. In the second set of diagnostics, four intra-clausal diagnostics are adopted to make the distinction between nuclear and core SVCs, which include passivisation of O1, insertion of intervening material, coordination within the SVC, and obligatory topicalisation of undergoer argument. Of particular interest is the possibility that the same string of verbs may occur in superficially similar, but structurally different, SVCs: for example, the Cause-Effect SVC and the Excessive SVC. The diagnostics employed in this study are proposed as a novel method to establish the distinction between the SVCs and the bi-clausal structures, and more importantly, between core and nuclear types of SVC. Contributing to the originality of the new method of diagnosing the status of the SVCs proposed in this study, I add five novel diagnostics, such as passivisation of the object of V2, independent marking of viewpoint aspect, tone sandhi between adjacent verbs, coordination within the SVC and obligatory topicalisation of the undergoer argument, in addition to those that have been employed in the literature. I restrict myself to data of MC and JSM in discussing the rationale of the diagnostics. However, this novel method of identifying SVCs is expected to be cross-linguistically applicable with consistent results, while at the same time allowing for the possibility of cross-linguistic differences in the semantic sub-types of SVCs identified in each language.

Situated at the crossroads of Translation Studies, Semiotics and Chinese Studies, this thesis examines the non-localisation (NL henceforth) strategy adopted by Apple for its official website. Website layouts, multi-media information, textual information, such as names of products, services and technological solutions are kept unchanged on the Chinese target-language website. Focusing on the non-localised features, this thesis has three major aims. First of all, it seeks to verify a foreignising impact of the NL strategy on the Chinese translation tradition and Sino-centric values. Secondly, it tries to reconcile translation studies with merits of the localisation industry, namely digital technology and industrial management. Thirdly, regarding global power struggles, this thesis aims to verify that the foreignness of currently ‘dominant’ Anglo-American cultures, NL, is still mediated by the ‘dominated’ Chinese system that has long been a culture centre itself. However, the Chinese system cannot keep its own culture untouched by foreignness either. In order to achieve these three aims, a framework built on semiotics, digital-media, socioeconomics was established, giving birth to the following critical findings. First, NL has a foreignising impact on the Chinese translation traditions. In terms of how this impact is achieved and its efficacy, NL is fundamentally different from Lawrence Venuti’s paradigmatic model in translation studies. Venuti’ suggests translators in target cultures should take the initiative to achieve a foreignising impact by only using target language codes, in the literary domain. On the contrary, NL’s foreignising impact is achieved through:1) Apple’s technological and linguistic control over the development and dissemination of NL items, (such as iPhone and iPad) into the Chinese target culture through digital media, which minimise interference from Chinese publishers and editors who are mainly powerful in print media; 2) In Charles Peirce’s terms, NL items, being source language codes, are signs signifying Apple products that function as objects ubiquitously available in both source and target cultures (e.g. iPhone, a verbal sign, signifies Apple smartphone, an object popular in both U.S. and China); thus, no target code is needed for NL items to be understood in China, highlighting immediate foreignness, with substantially reduced target semiotic mediations; 3) Consumerism which is a foreign-oriented dimension of the Chinese society, conflicts with China’s domestic-oriented translation traditions. Due to China’s booming consumerism, a large and continuous consumption of Apple products in China socially consolidates the foreignising impact, and this cultural impact becomes measurable. The second key finding is the relationship between localisation and translation, and the implication on translation studies. Addressing existing attempts to explore the relationship between localisation and translation, (i.e. ‘localisation is just specialised translation’ vs ‘localisation includes translation’) this thesis discovers that localisation and translation are merely two different text production methods. In other words, both have equal status. Text production method refers to the entire information creation and dissemination process between source and target cultures. The difference between the localisation and translation is the historical, media, and technological context in which both are developed. Drawing on a review of media history, the thesis reveals that translation, as a text production method, includes source text composition, source text selection, translator selection, translation, translation editing and publishing. As print media matured, translation publishers and editors in the target cultures took and continue to take control over almost everything of translation apart from source text composition. The domesticating power of the publishers in the Anglo-American world, pointed out by Venuti, is actually a natural result of the industrial development; accordingly, it’s not difficult to understand why translators’ initiative to challenge the domestication tradition has been difficult. Localisation, as another text production method, includes, source content development and internationalisation, source content rendition, finalisation, and target content release. Multinational high-tech companies like Apple takes control over the entire process of localisation, witnessing a major shift of power from target to the source. This power shift is one of the major propelling forces for NL’s foreignising impact on the Chinese context. The macro-structural differences between localisation and translation pointed out in this thesis have significant implications on the current understanding of how translation creates cultural impacts in academia i.e. what translators do textually, such as a change of language style for instance, is only a part of the entire text production process. Overall this thesis argues that the study of translation impact should include much more than texts per se; instead social-economic and industrial circumstances under which texts are produced and disseminated must be factored in too.

Dans cette thèse est analysée la morphophonologie du chinois standard (CS), dans un essai de transposition du modèle CVCV, un modèle phonologique post -génératif. Dans la Partie 1, nous situons l’analyse dans son contexte historique, pour comprendre l’état de l’art qui résulte des consitions internes et externes à la science et mettre en perspective la partie 2, dédiée à l’étude phonologique même.Dans la Partie 2, nous proposons, en adoptant une approche déductive, d’unifier l’explication d’ un grand nombre de phénomènes en CS à la fois en phonologie (syllabe), tonologie (représentation du ton, sandhi tonal, ton neutre) et morphologie (composition , réduplication), jusqu’alors traités séparément, de façon isolée et dans des cadres différents, tout en restant économique et cohérent, avec le même dispositif théorique : le modèle CVCV. / In this phd thesis is analyzed the morphophonology of Standard Chinese, in an attempt to transpose the CVCV theory, a post-generative phonological model.Part 1 situates the analyses in their historical context, in order to understand the state of the art resultingfrom internal and external conditions to the science and to put into perspective Part 2, dedicated to the phonological studies themself.Part 2 proposes adopting a deductive approach to unify the explanation of many phenomena in StandardChinese in phonology (syllable), tonology (representation tone, tone sandhi, neutral tone) and morphology(composition, reduplication), previously treated separately, in isolation and in different frameworks, while remaining economical and coherent, with the same theoretical tool: the CVCV theory.

En effectuant des analyses contrastives des versions chinoises d’un traité appartenant aux Moralia de Plutarque, cette thèse vise à découvrir la substance de l’acte traductif, à exposer l’hétérogénéité des conceptions relevant des cultures éloignées, ainsi qu’à présenter les obstacles traductifs se trouvant aux niveaux différents et aux époques diverses. Afin de proposer une solution efficace permettant de résoudre ou de contourner ces difficultés, Geyi (interprétation analogique) est examinée d’une manière approfondie avec sa légitimité confirmée et ses limites discernées. / With contrastive analysis on three different Chinese versions of a Plutarch's essay—Consolation to his wife, this thesis aims to discover the nature of translative operation, expose the heterogeneity of conceptions belonging to distant cultures, and reveal the obstacles in the translation of different levels in different phases. In order to suggest an effective solution, Geyi (analogical interpretation) is presented and examined, with his legitimacy confirmed and his limits divided.