Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-139).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1988.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-104).

The study of Arabic as a foreign language in the US has witnessed a tremendous increase in recent decades, especially in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Implementation of modern communicative language teaching methodologies has been complicated by the diglossic nature of the Arabic language, as well as the wide variations between the many varieties of spoken colloquial Arabic; only recently has the field seen a widespread shift towards the teaching of the Arabic dialects at beginning levels of study. As a result of this shift, there exist increasing numbers of Arabic learners who have been exposed to one or more Arabic dialects in addition to the formal written language. This thesis presents the results of an interview-survey of Arabic learners who had studied more than one dialect of Arabic in structured classroom contexts, either in the US or the Arab world, with the goal of determining to what extent such instruction had helped or hindered their progress in the language. Results indicated that a majority of participants believe that despite increased challenges, exposure to multiple Arabic dialects was beneficial to their learning experience, and would advocate for such exposure in beginning and intermediate-level Arabic courses. However, many respondents also cautioned that alternate dialect forms should not be presented with the expectation of active production in class. Participants also commented on the ways in which they felt Arabic dialect instruction could be improved; frequently mentioned issues included further development of formal written materials for dialect study, and increased flexibility and understanding on the part of instructors with regard to classroom use of alternate dialectal forms. / text

Hong Kong Chinese and Mandarin are two different varieties of the Chinese Language in terms of lexicology. For over three decades, new words from Hong Kong Chinese have swarmed into Mandarin and related researches also flourished. Yet the reverse is a trend somehow going about more or less unnoticed, which is perhaps mostly due to the scantiness of amount of words involved as a contrast. However, its importance has surfaced along with a growing number of Putonghua words imported into Hong Kong Chinese in the early twenty-first century, as a result of the increasing interaction between Mainland China and Hong Kong. Therefore, the thesis sets to examine the phenomenon of language migration to the South by investigating the use of Putonghua words in Hong Kong written Chinese, so as to better observe the language exchange between Hong Kong and Mainland China. The main body of this paper comprises three parts. First it seeks to identify a body of such Putonghua words entering Hong Kong in a vast corpus of formal publications and web publications and look into the lexicological significance of such words. A total number of 359 words have been collected and semantic categories have been identified based on selected Hong Kong texts. Meanwhile, the semantic meaning, pragmatic meaning and contexts of the words collected have been analysed. Second, this paper examines this body of borrowed Putonghua words from a wide span of aspects in lexicology, including its syntactic and pragmatic features, its different levels of being accepted in Hong Kong, its significance and migration incentives. Meanwhile, The thesis also conducts a diachronic comparison study of this body of loanwords centered on last decade. Third, This paper carries out a synchronic comparison of borrowed words in both directions (Hong Kong Chinese to Mandarin and Mandarin to Hong Kong Chinese), to map out possible similarities and differences that reflect linguistic exchange. It is found that the northward language migration prevails over its southward counterparts regarding time, number, impact and other aspects. Theories and research methods from social linguistics are widely employed in this paper, in hopes of studying the language migration to the south in a scientific and systematic way. It is found that southward migration of words into Hong Kong will be a long-term and slow process, and that the bilateral language exchange between Hong Kong and Mainland China will last continuously, thus allowing Mandarin and Hong Kong Chinese share greater similarities while preserving differences. / published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

This research targets the gender differences in the use of utterance-final particles in Cantonese with respect to the act of sajiao (撒嬌) under the speech act framework proposed by J. L. Austin. Sajiao is defined as the adorable petulance of a spoiled child or young woman who seeks material or immaterial benefits from an unwilling listener. It is hypothesized in this study that the use of utterance-final particles is not generally gender-linked. It is further suggested that some of the utterance-final particles are loaded with gender features which could feminize the utterances, thus performing the act of sajiao. This research has identified five utterance-final particles, including a newly emerged particle that has never been examined in the previous literature, which are believed to be gender-linked, namely 添 “tim1”, LU “lu3”, 噃 “bo3”, 喇喎 “laa3wo3” and 咖呵 “gaa3ho2”, and it has also analyzed meanings that are denoted by these five particles and the two genders’ usage of them. The investigator proposed that the first three particles could help soften the tone of an utterance, while at the same time, they add cuteness, so that the speakers present a more amiable impression of themselves, and thus could help them please or flatter the opposite sex. The two utterance-final particle clusters 喇喎 “laa3wo3” and 咖呵 “gaa3ho2”, on the other hand, are related to implicit demands. By skillfully employing these seemingly softer particles, female speakers could make the men who are appeared to be stronger to yield and satisfy their demands without creating any hard feelings. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

The setting up of the lexical category ‘adjective’ in Chinese has been a controversial topic in linguistics. This is due to the phenomenon that in Chinese, among the group of words which denote properties of noun phrases, there is a notable amount manifesting the characteristics of verbs. That is, they can be potentially qualified as both verbs and adjectives. Over the years, studies on syntactic distributional patterns and semantics on this group of words have been carried out in order to address the problem. However, a theory which adequately describes this multifunctional category in the Chinese language still seems to be lacking. To shed light on the issue, the current thesis investigates the behavior of words which are potentially considered as ‘adjectives’ occurring naturally in a Cantonese-English bilingual child’s corpus data. Patterns of child language development can provide a new perspective to the adjective-verb controversy in Cantonese from the viewpoint of language acquisition. At the same time, they might review whether interference between English and Cantonese occur. In this thesis, the use of adjectival verbs for attribution and predication, and the manner of their being modified are discussed. While the results in our data set do not show that English has prominent influence on the development of Cantonese in our subject, one of our major findings is that the distributional pattern of adjectival verbs in the child’s Cantonese is predominantly predicative. The current results contrast with theories supporting attributive use of adjectives as being the prototype. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Tone matching, judgment and segmental judgment tasks conducted in silent reading and listening conditions are devised to test the hypothesis that musical training improves tone and segmental (onset, rime) perception in a tone language, Cantonese, in native Cantonese-speaking individuals. Four-word sequences (in which two words are primes and two are targets, or three words are primes and one is target) were presented to three groups of participants: professional musicians, amateur musicians and non-musicians in the silent reading condition, whereas four sound stimuli of Chinese characters were presented in the listening condition, and their accuracy and response time were recorded. Musicians, both professional and amateur, performed significantly better in tone and segmental perception than their musically naïve counterparts. Moreover, the response time exhibited a contrastive pattern in the two conditions: musicians tended to respond faster in the silent reading condition, but took a longer time in the listening condition. These results clearly demonstrate that musical training facilitated the perceptual processing of Cantonese tone and segmental phonemes by native Cantonese- speakers. Music-to-language transfer effects are highlighted and the non-significant differences exhibited between professional musicians and amateur musicians in five out of six tasks show that musical training need not be pursued to an advanced level for participants to gain perceptual benefits. The results shed light on possible forms of remedial programme development and interventions for children with language disorders such as dyslexia. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

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