published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

This longitudinal study aims to trace the developmental route from nominal to pronominal reference to person in a bilingual first language acquirer of two typologically distinct languages : Mandarin and English. The study reveals that experiencing different types of input influences the speed and movement by which personal pronouns are learned in language production. The study provides some exploration into the role of the weaker language in bilingual language development as well as the nature and extent of the early separation and interaction of two linguistic systems in a language environment which is fundamentally unlike the one parent-one-language setting. The data-set of the work consists of over 65 tape recorded sessions of naturalistic speech collected over 30 months in context-based language use in either Mandarin or English, where Mandarin is the home(and minority) language spoken by both parents and other family members while English is the(dominant)language of all other environments. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-234). / Microfiche. / xvii, 234 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Yang Xiaolu. / "December 1999." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-268). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

The study aims to investigate how deaf learners with impoverished linguistic input in early life acquire Chinese passives and to what extent it impacts their ultimate attainment of the target structures defined in terms of knowledge representations and processing efficiency. While research on how deaf learners acquire syntactic movement remains scanty, available evidence with English, Hebrew, Arabic and Italian as target languages suggests difficulty in acquiring structures derived by A’-movement generally invoked in object relative clauses, object questions, and OVS topicalizations (Friedmann & Szterman,2006, 2011; Friedmann & Haddad,2008; Volpato & Adani, 2009; etc.). / In this study, we focused on Chinese passives because they involve non-canonical word order (i.e. O-BEI-(S)-V) as well as long distance dependencies. To account for the base-generated NP which is associated with the object of the embedded VP of Chinese bei-passives, Huang(1999) and Huang et al. (2009) argue for A-movement of PROin short bei-passives and A’-movement of a null operator in long bei-passives, assuming that the empty category merges with the embedded V in Chinese bei-passives and is subsequently coindexed with the grammatical subject through control or predication. Semantically, canonical Chinese passives are said to impose constraints on verb transitivity (Huang, 2013),and under some specific conditions, telicity of the embedded VP(Yang, 1995; Yang, 2012), the latter of which usually requires specific verb complement structures. / Three experiments were designed to investigate these issues.The picture selection task investigated how deaf learners developed knowledge of syntactic derivations involved in long bei-passives and short bei-passives; the grammaticality judgment task tested whether deaf learners acquired knowledge that intransitive verbs, like unaccusative and unergative verbs, are not allowed in canonical Chinese passives; and lastly,the elicited production task investigated deaf learners’ production of verb complements targeted in this study, namely activity-resultative complement [V+R], activity-completive complement [V+C], and activity-locative/directional complement [V+L], as it has been argued by Yang (1995) and Yang (2012) that these verb complements encode a telic event. In addition to examining their knowledge of Chinese passives, we also measured their response time in the first two tasks as a means to examine their efficiency in processing the structures in question. / Thirty five deaf learners aged between 14 and 24 took part in the current study. They were divided into three groups based on levels of Chinese proficiency. From the perspective of knowledge representations, their acquisition outcomes were highly variable, unlike the first language acquirers but similar to second language learners. In general, only those deaf learners at Level 3 completely acquired the syntactic derivations involved in passives while a great majority of the deaf learners at Levels 1 and 2 failed to demonstrate full mastery of the relevant linguistic structures. In addition, about half of the deaf learners at Levels 1 and 2 failed to recognize the verb transitivity constraint of the embedded VP in Chinese bei-passives, as they wrongly judged the passives with an intransitive verb to be grammatical. As for the knowledge of encoding telicity using verb complement structures, deaf learners at all levels experienced much difficulty and resorted to adopting the perfective aspect marker ‘le’ instead. Such difficulty persisted for a long time, as even deaf university students failed to acquire such knowledge ultimately, implying that verb complement structures for encoding a telic eventmight become a vulnerable residual domain to deaf learners in acquisition terms. / In terms of types of passives, the results showed that they developed Chinese passives in the order pseudo passives > short bei-passives > long bei-passives, similar to the Mandarin-speaking children, albeit at a slower rate (Xu & Yang, 2008).Also, deaf learners found it easy to acquire A-movement of an overt NP in pseudo passives. However, they experienced much difficulty with short passives and long passives. We argue that the cause of such difficulty is the syntactic movement which in this case involves an empty category (i.e. PRO and NOP) that needs to be coindexed with the grammatical subject in order to yield a correct interpretation regarding the thematic role of the subject NP.The extremely late acquisition of long bei-passives, as we argue, shares a similar acquisition process involved in first language acquisition of English tough constructions (Guasti, 2002; Anderson, 2005; Wexler, 2012; etc.). In their analysis, the late acquisition might be due to maturation of the null operator or Universal Phase Requirement that holds among children whose developing grammar takes the aP (i.e. the adjective Phrase as in ‘Everyone is tough for us to please.’) in the tough constructions to bea phase, preventing T from probing beyond the edge of aP leaving the phi-features of T remain unchecked. / Another aspect of ultimate attainment as measured in the current study is response time used by the deaf learners to process the relevant linguistic structures. Results showed that deaf learners’computational capacities are highly constrained. Even deaf university students who performed just as well as the native controls on the comprehension and judgement of linguistic knowledge of passives still demonstrated low processing efficiency. It is suggested that impoverished linguistic input in the early years, as well as continually inadequate input impedes language acquisition and language processing. / 本文旨在研究聋人在早期语言输入贫乏的环境下如何获得汉语被动式，以及它在何种程度上影响聋人目标语的最终获得状态，包括语言知识的呈现(knowledge representations) 和语言处理的效率(processing efficiency)。长期以来，关于聋人如何获得句法移位(syntactic movement)的研究极少，现有的研究主要来自英语，希伯来语，阿拉伯语和意大利语，并且发现聋人在获得通过非论元移位(A’-movement)派生而来的语法结构时存在许多困难，如宾语关系子句(object relative clause)，宾语疑问句(object questions)，以及宾语位于句首的话题句(OVS topicalizations) (Friedmann & Szterman, 2006, 2011; Friedmann et al., 2008; Volpato & Adani, 2009; etc.)。 / 研究聋人汉语被动式的获得，不仅因为被动式的非典型语序(i.e. O-BEI-(S)-V)，还因为汉语长短被动句句式中蕴含的长距离依赖关系。Huang (1999)和Huang et al. (2009)提出汉语短被动句的生成源自大代词(PRO)的论元移位(A-movement)，长被动句的生成源自空算子(null operator)的非论元移位(A’-movement)，通过移位，这两个空语类通过控制(control)或述谓(predication)与长短被动句中基础生成的(base-generated)主语同指。从语义的角度来看，典型的汉语被动式内嵌动词短语(embedded VP)具有及物性(transitivity)(Huang, 2013)；而且在某些特定语境下，还需具有终结性(telicity)，终结性的表达往往通过特定的动词补足语结构(verb complement structures)(Yang, 1995; Yang, 2012)。 / 为探讨以上问题，我们设计了三个实验：图片选择任务(picture selection task)旨在探讨聋人如何获得长被动句和短被动句中蕴含的不同句法移位；语法判断任务(grammaticality judgment task)用于测试聋人是否获得典型汉语被动式不允许不及物动词的知识；最后，诱导产出任务(elicited production task)用于研究聋人被动式中动词补足语的使用，以及他们是否能够掌握通过补足语来表达状态或位置的改变，从而满足被动式的终结性特征。该任务中涉及的动词与补足语的结合类型包括：“活动动词-结果类补足语(activity-resultative complement)” [V+R]，“活动动词-完成类补足语(activity-completive complement)” [V+C]，以及“活动动词-方位词/方向性短语(activity-locative/directional complement)”[V+L]。除此以外，我们还测量聋人在图片选择和语法判断这两个任务中的反应时长，以考察聋人加工处理汉语被动式的效率。 / 35位14岁到24岁的聋人参与了该研究，并且通过汉语水平测试分数将他们分到三个不同的组别。从掌握语言知识的角度来看，聋人汉语被动式的获得表现出高度的多样性，虽然不同于一语学习者，但与二语学习者相似。简言之，只有高级组(Level 3)的聋人才完全掌握汉语被动式的句法生成，大部分初级组(Level 1)和中级组(Level 2)的聋人都未能完全掌握相关的语言知识。另外，将近一半的初级组和中级组的聋人尚未获得汉语被动式中内嵌动词及物性的要求，他们错误地认为汉语被动句中使用不及物动词是合语法的。最后，关于被动句内嵌动词短语使用各类动词补足语来表达终结性，所有组别的聋人普遍遇到困难，并且用完成体标记‘了’来替代。这种困难一直持续很长时间，即使是聋人大学生都未能系统完整地获得，意味着使用各类动词补足语来表达终结性可能是缺乏早期语言输入的聋人学习汉语被动式最终难以完全获得的。 / 关于不同类型汉语被动句的获得，结果显示聋人获得的先后顺序与健听儿童一致(Xu & Yang, 2008)，即：假被动句(pseudo passives) > 短被动句> 长被动句。整体而言，假被动句中显现成分(overt element)的论元移位对聋人来说比较容易获得；但是，他们在获得长被动句和短被动句的句法移位，以及正确解读空算子或大代词与句子主语的共指方面存在许多困难。对于长被动句的最迟获得，我们认为这与以英语为母语的儿童延迟获得‘tough-句式’类似(Guasti, 2002; Anderson, 2005; Wexler, 2012; etc.)，有可能因为空算子的成熟(the maturation of null operator)要到6至7岁，或者是未成熟儿童坚持普遍阶段要求(Universal Phase Requirement)，而导致句法生成受阻。 / 本研究所定义的最终获得的另一方面即加工处理相关语言结构所用反应时长。结果显示聋人的加工处理能力高度受限，即使是较好地获得了汉语被动句相关知识的聋人大学生依然表现出较低效率的加工处理能力。这些研究结果表明早期贫乏的语言输入以及随之的不充足语言输入都会阻碍语言的最终获得及加工处理的效率。 / Li, Qun. / Thesis M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-253). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 09, September, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

In Experiments 3 and 4, event-related potentials were recorded to verify the findings of the first two behavioral experiments. Similarly, Experiment 3 employed the lexical decision task and Experiment 4 used the position decision task. First, results revealed that a series of ERP components (P150, P200, and N400) were found to be related to the effect of position-specific radical frequency when the lexical decision task was used (Experiment 3). However, when replacing the lexical decision task with the position decision task but keeping illegal characters as fillers, the effect of position-specific radical frequency became quite weak, which was only associated with P200 (Experiment 4a). Moreover, when using the position decision task but replacing illegal characters with geometric figures as fillers, there were no effects of position-specific radical frequency any more (Experiment 4b). Second, the task was found to influence the time course for effects of position-free radical frequency, which was reflected by P200 in the lexical decision task (Experiment 3) and by N400 in the position decision task (Experiments 4a and 4b). Finally, simple character frequency could play a role in processing compound characters in which simple characters were used as radicals, but such effect was significant only in the position decision task and it was reflected by a change in N400 (Experiments 4a and 4b). / These findings indicate that position-specific radicals could play a role in character recognition, but this effect appears to be constrained by the task and/or the composition of materials. In contrast, effects of position-free radicals keep stable across different tasks and composition of materials. In addition, the findings also suggest that simple character information could exert influence on compound character processing, but only when characters are processed implicitly (e.g., in the position decision task). Implications of this research and future directions are discussed. / This research was designed to examine the processing of different kinds of radical frequency information, i.e. frequency as a position-free radical, frequency as a position-specific radical, and frequency as a stand alone character. Whether the task or the composition of materials could influence the processing of such information was also examined. The first two were behavioral experiments and results indicated that effect of the position-free radical frequency was stable across the lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and the position decision task (Experiment 2). Effect of the position-specific radical frequency emerged only when the lexical decision task was available (Experiment 1). / Wu, Yan. / Adviser: Hsuan Chih Chen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-108). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; includes Chinese characters in Appendix A-C.

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts