This thesis is the first comprehensive reference grammar of Kilen, a lesser known and little studied language of the Tungusic Family. At present, Kilen is a moribund language with less than 10 bilingual speakers in the eastern part of Heilongjiang Province of P.R.China. Since the language does not have a writing system, the examples are provided in IPA transcription with morpheme tagging. This thesis is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 states the background information of Kilen language in terms of Ethnology, Migration and Language Contact. Beginning from Chapter 2, the language is described in the aspects of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax. This thesis is mainly concerned with morphosyntactic aspects of Kilen. Chapters 6-8 provide a portrait of Kilen syntactic organization. The sources for this description include the work of You Zhixian (1989), which documents oral literature originally recorded by You himself, a fluent Kilen native speaker; example sentences drawn from previous linguistic descriptions, mainly those of An (1985) and You & Fu (1987); author’s field records and personal consultation data recorded and transcribed by the author and Wu Mingxiang, one of the last fluent native speakers. The aim is to provide a portrait of a Chinese Tungusic language on the brink of extinction. This thesis does not adopt any particular syntactic theoretical framework. The terminology in this thesis is tended to be theory-free and descriptive. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this research study is to explore first graders’ understanding of parental involvement in a rural high school, to investigate students’ feeling and attitude towards their parents’ participation in high school education, to understand rural students’ expectation of parent-teacher collaboration, and further to examine potential differences caused by gender, degree of parental involvement, and level of academic performance. Qualitative data was collected by means of individual interviews and questionnaires among first-grade students in a rural high school in Heilongjiang Province. The research involves 12 interview participants and 115 students for questionnaires. After transcribing verbally all the individual interviews, both line-by-line coding and software N-Vivo were utilized to analyze transcriptions in order to generate main codes and themes to describe students’ understanding and perception and further explore differences across individual interview participants. Questionnaire data was entered into Excel program to create figures supporting findings of interviews. Findings show that rural high school students understand parental involvement as interactions involving parents, teachers and students in four aspects- material, supportive, communicative and environmental. Effective communication, initiation of providing supports, good relationship, and comfortable environment were highlighted in students’ expectations. Secondly, the feelings of confident, proud, warm, happy, relax, pressure, and distrust were related by students to their parents’ various practices of involvement in high school education. Moreover, students identified three different attitudes towards parental involvement: positive, negative, and dependent. It was found that students’ attitude towards the communicative parental involvement was highly depended on the content and the frequency. Besides, students tend to express their neutral attitude towards activities that were not implemented in the high school such as participation in school decision making and parent-teacher association. Thirdly, academic scores and motivation of study were discovered to be affected by parents’ involvement. Parent involvement with positive feeling and positive attitude were more likely to be related to positive effects on academic outcomes by students. The research suggests a three-way communication among parents, teachers and students at school and in the community. Findings imply that it is necessary for rural high schools and rural parents to work together with students in the establishment of home-school cooperation. Students’ reaction and expectation provide valuable implications for practices of parental involvement in rural high school. Individual differences are also recommended to be taken into considerations in the practices. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

In this thesis, I take Yunnan and Heilongjiang as a sample to discuss the border trade in China. I find that there are obvious difference between southern and northern border trade because of the demand and supply of natural resource, the industrial structure, the structure of import and export, the step of economic growth of the neighbor countries, as well as the open policy and the foreign relationship among those countries.

published_or_final_version / Biological Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-136).