Huang Pai-yuan. / Thesis submitted in: December 1999. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-140). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / List of Abbreviations --- p.vi / List of Tables and Figures --- p.vii / Abstract --- p.xi / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Goal of Child Language Research and Bilingual First Language Acquisition --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2. --- Single System Hypothesis Vs. Separate Systems Hypothesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.1. --- Single System Hypothesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.2. --- Separate Systems Hypothesis --- p.8 / Chapter 1.3. --- Autonomous Development Hypothesis Vs. Interdependent development Hypothesis --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.1. --- Autonomous Development Hypothesis --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.2. --- Interdependent Development Hypothesis --- p.12 / Chapter 1.4. --- The Present Study --- p.17 / Chapter 1.4.1. --- On the Issue of Transfer in BFLA --- p.17 / Chapter 1.4.2. --- A review of Peng (1998) --- p.18 / Chapter 1.5. --- Preview of Other Chapters --- p.20 / Notes to Chapter One --- p.21 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Methodology --- p.22 / Chapter 2.0 --- Introduction --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1. --- Source of Data --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1.1. --- Family Background and Linguistic Input --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1.2. --- Collection of Data --- p.24 / Chapter 2.1.2.1. --- Audio Recording --- p.24 / Chapter 2.1.2.2. --- Data Transcription --- p.25 / Chapter 2.1.2.3. --- Transcription of Cantonese data --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2. --- General Development of the Two Languages in the Bilingual Child --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- Language Dominance --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- Indices of Timmy's Bilingual Development --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.1. --- MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.2. --- Syntactic Complexity --- p.36 / Chapter 2.3. --- Hypothesis and Predictions --- p.37 / Chapter 2.4. --- Analysis of Data --- p.38 / Notes to Chapter Two --- p.38 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Development of Null Subjects in the Bilingual Subject's English --- p.39 / Chapter 3.0 --- Introduction --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1. --- Null Subject Phenomenon in Child Language --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1.1. --- Competence Accounts --- p.40 / Chapter 3.1.2. --- Performance Accounts --- p.43 / Chapter 3.1.3. --- Null Subjects in Timmy's English --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2. --- Properties of Null Subjects in Monolingual Child English --- p.45 / Chapter 3.3. --- Findings from Bilingual Corpus Data --- p.48 / Chapter 3.3.1. --- The Null Subject Rate in Timmy's English over the Period of Study --- p.48 / Chapter 3.3.2. --- Null Subject with INFL Properties --- p.50 / Chapter 3.3.2.1. --- Null Subject and Inflected “be´ح --- p.51 / Chapter 3.3.2.2. --- Null Subjects and Modals / Semi-auxiliaries --- p.52 / Chapter 3.3.2.3. --- Null Subjects and Morphemes (/ Verbal Affixes) “-ed´ح，“-s´ح --- p.59 / Chapter 3.3.2.4. --- Null Subjects in Finite Subordinate Clauses --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.2.5. --- Expletive Subjects and Null Subjects --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.3. --- Null Subjects and Person: Sub-divisions --- p.66 / Chapter 3.4. --- General Development of Grammatical Subjects in Timmy's English Data --- p.68 / Chapter 3.5. --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.72 / Chapter 3.6. --- Conclusion --- p.73 / Notes to Chapter Three --- p.74 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Development of Null Objects in the Bilingual Subject's English --- p.75 / Chapter 4.0 --- Introduction --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1. --- Null Object Phenomenon in Child English --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1.1. --- Competence Accounts --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1.2. --- Performance Accounts --- p.76 / Chapter 4.2. --- Properties of Null Objects in Child English --- p.77 / Chapter 4.3. --- Findings from Bilingual Subject's English Corpus Data --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.1. --- Rate of Null Objects in Timmy's English over the Period of Study --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.2. --- Comparison with Monolingual English Child Data --- p.82 / Chapter 4.3.3. --- Null Objects and Persons: Sub-division --- p.84 / Chapter 4.4. --- General Development of Grammatical Object --- p.86 / Chapter 4.5. --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.89 / Chapter 4.6. --- Conclusion --- p.90 / Notes to Chapter Four --- p.90 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Development of Null Subjects and Null Objects in the Bilingual Subject's Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.0 --- Introduction --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1 --- An Overview of Null Arguments in Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1.1. --- Null Arguments as a Grammatical Option in Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1.2. --- Distribution of Null Arguments in Cantonese Sentences --- p.96 / Chapter 5.2 --- Rate of Null Subjects and Null Objects in Adult Cantonese --- p.98 / Chapter 5.3. --- Development of Null Subjects in Monolingual Cantonese Children --- p.100 / Chapter 5.4. --- Development of Null Subjects in Timmy's Cantonese --- p.103 / Chapter 5.4.1. --- The Rate of Null Subjects Over the Period of Study --- p.103 / Chapter 5.4.2. --- Comparison with Monolingual Cantonese Child Data --- p.108 / Chapter 5.5. --- Development of Null Objects in Monolingual Cantonese Children --- p.109 / Chapter 5.6. --- Development of Null Objects in Timmy's Cantonese --- p.112 / Chapter 5.6.1. --- The Rate of Null Objects in Timmy's Cantonese Over the Period of Study --- p.112 / Chapter 5.6.2. --- VP-ellipsis in Timmy's Cantonese Corpus Data --- p.115 / Chapter 5.6.3. --- Comparison with Monolingual Cantonese Child Data --- p.116 / Chapter 5.7 --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.117 / Chapter 5.8 --- Conclusion --- p.119 / Notes to Chapter Five --- p.120 / Chapter Chapter Six: --- Discussion of Findings and Conclusions --- p.121 / Chapter 6.0 --- Introduction --- p.121 / Chapter 6.1. --- A Summary of the Findings in the English Data --- p.122 / Chapter 6.2. --- A Summary of the Findings in the Cantonese Data --- p.124 / Chapter 6.3. --- Possibility of Interaction between the Two Language Systems and the Nature of Transfer --- p.125 / Chapter 6.4. --- Un-learning Null Arguments in Ll English --- p.129 / Chapter 6.5. --- Conclusions --- p.129 / Chapter 6.6. --- Suggestions for Further Study --- p.130 / Notes to Chapter Six --- p.130 / Appendices --- p.131 / References --- p.133

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Engineering. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 403-416. / Ph.D.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

There is consensus among scholars that there is not just one English language but a family of “World Englishes”. The umbrella-term “World Englishes” provides a conceptual framework to accommodate the different varieties of English that have evolved as a result of the linguistic cross-fertilization attendant upon colonization, migration, trade and transplantation of the original “strain” or variety. Various theoretical models have emerged in an attempt to understand and classify the extant and emerging varieties of this global language. The hierarchically based model of English, which classifies world English as “First Language”, “Second Language” and “Foreign Language”, has been challenged by more equitably-conceived models which refer to the emerging varieties as New Englishes. The situation in a country such as multi-lingual South Africa is a complex one: there are 11 official languages, one of which is English. However the English used in South Africa (or “South African English”), is not a homogeneous variety, since its speakers include those for whom it is a first language, those for whom it is an additional language and those for whom it is a replacement language. The Indian population in South Africa are amongst the latter group, as theirs is a case where English has ousted the traditional Indian languages and become a de facto first language, which has retained strong community resonances. This study was undertaken using the methodology of corpus linguistics to initiate the creation of a repository of linguistic evidence (or corpus), of Indian South African English, a sub-variety of South African English (Mesthrie 1992b, 1996, 2002). Although small (approximately 60 000 words), and representing a narrow age band of young adults, the resulting corpus of spoken data confirmed the existence of robust features identified in prior research into the sub-variety. These features include the use of ‘y’all’ as a second person plural pronoun, the use of but in a sentence-final position, and ‘lakker’ /'lVk@/ as a pronunciation variant of ‘lekker’ (meaning ‘good’, ‘nice’ or great’). An examination of lexical frequency lists revealed examples of general South African English such as the colloquially pervasive ‘ja’, ‘bladdy’ (for bloody) and jol(ling) (for partying or enjoying oneself) together with neologisms such as ‘eish’, the latter previously associated with speakers of Black South African English. The frequency lists facilitated cross-corpora comparisons with data from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of London Teenage Language and similarities and differences were noted and discussed. The study also used discourse analysis frameworks to investigate the role of high frequency lexical items such as ‘like’ in the data. In recent times ‘like’ has emerged globally as a lexicalized discourse marker, and its appearance in the corpus of Indian South African English confirms this trend. The corpus built as part of this study is intended as the first building block towards a full corpus of Indian South African English which could serve as a standard for referencing research into the sub-variety. Ultimately, it is argued that the establishment of similar corpora of other known sub-varieties of South African English could contribute towards the creation of a truly representative large corpus of South African English and a more nuanced understanding and definition of this important variety of World English.

The phrasal verb is a unique type of verb phrase that consists of a main verb, usually of only one or two syllables, followed by a particle, that works as a single semantic unit. Such meaning, however, is characteristically expressed in idomatic terms, which poses a formidable problem for students of English as a second language. To be understood, this meaning must be figuratively interpreted as well as literally translated.

Analysis on most heavily overused and underused syntactic features shows that, when compared with native speakers, Hong Kong students favour the use of present tense, tentative style, simple noun phrase structure and explicit clause-relation marking in oral presentations. They prefer using present tense constructions, adopting pronouns for nominal functions and using an interactive tone in written essays. In both the learner speech data and the learner writing data, quite a number of the overused and underused syntactic features are closely related to the differences between speech and writing found in Biber (1988), hinting at Hong Kong students' inadequate sensitivity to mode differences in English. / Analysis on textual dimensions suggests that Hong Kong students' oral presentations differ from comparable native-speaker oral production by being more written-like in terms of the use of explicit/situation-dependent reference and the inclusion of abstract/non-abstract information. Hong Kong students' written essays deviate from comparable native-speaker written production by being more spoken-like in terms of the involved/informational focus and the use of explicit/situation-dependent reference. Moreover, both the learner speech data and the learner writing data bear some resemblance to common native-speaker genres in the opposite mode. / The present study clearly demonstrates that Hong Kong students have limited sensitivity to the conventional usage of syntactic features in spoken and written English. The teaching profession should help the students develop better sociolinguistic competence when teaching grammar, speaking and writing. Future research on second language acquisition should also focus more on the learners' sociolinguistic development so that second language learners' communicative ability can be better understood. / This thesis investigates Hong Kong secondary school students' sensitivity to differences between spoken and written English by examining their use of 67 syntactic features. A model specifying how native speakers vary their use of syntactic features across speech and writing, Biber (1988), has been adopted as the theoretical framework. Fifty-two oral presentations delivered by Form 6 students and 52 public examination essays written by Form 7 students, both of which total about 10,000 words, have been analysed. The students' performance is compared with native speakers' performance in similar spoken and written production on the level of syntactic features and the level of textual dimensions. / Chui, Sze Yan. / "December 2010." / Adviser: Gerald Nelson. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-266). / 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, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; some appendixes also in Chinese.