This study investigates the acquisition of conventional metaphorical expressions by Chinese learners of English. A conventional metaphorical expression, following the definition of cognitive semantics, refers to the use of a conventionalised non-literal meaning of a lexical item in a multi-word phrase. For example, the word 'attack' in the phrase 'attack one's idea', which should be interpreted as 'to criticise somebody or something severely', clearly departs from the literal meaning 'to use violence to try to hurt or kill somebody', and thus should be seen as a metaphorically used word. Consequently, the phrase 'attack one's idea' is a conventional metaphorical expression. This study explores learners' behaviour towards and acquisition of metaphorical expressions from two major perspectives: (1) possible cross-linguistic influence in the process of acquisition and factors that could affect cross-linguistic influence; and (2) the organisation of learners' bilingual lexicon and the status of metaphorical expressions in a bilingual lexicon. These two perspectives are considered to be the main factors that can influence learners' acquisition of metaphorical expressions: in order to acquire a metaphorical expression, learners should be able to integrate it into the bilingual lexicon, while the process of integration can be impacted by cross-linguistic influence. Previous research has mainly been conducted on the acquisition of certain figurative expressions in a second language, predominantly idioms; however, a combination of the two perspectives and a joint analysis on the acquisition of figurative language has yet to be accomplished. This study presents a first attempt of such analysis on the acquisition of a specific type of figurative language. The results of the experiments reported in this dissertation show that learners react differently to metaphorical expressions with different cross-linguistic availabilities (shared between Chinese and English or exclusively available in Chinese or English) but in general they encounter difficulty to achieve native-like performance when reading metaphorical expressions available in their second language. Persistent cross-linguistic influence is observed in two aspects, even among highly proficient learners: (1) learners encounter obstacles when acquiring the metaphorical expressions that are only available in their second language; and (2) learners seem to still activate the metaphorical meanings that are only available in their first language even when they read in their second language. These results altogether reflect that metaphorical expressions, regardless of cross-linguistic availability, are more difficult to acquire than literal expressions in a second language.

This paper looks at the relationship between emotion and vowel length in spontaneous speech, specifically during narratives. It is hypothesized that during emotionally-laden speech, vowel length will be longer in duration than when in non-emotional speech. Data is drawn from the Univerisity of California, Santa Barbara linguistic corpus, with conversations focused on individuals in and around Southern California. The paper builds on work by Dabbs et al., Banse & Scherer, Estes & Adelman, and others regarding the nature of cognitive monitoring, as well as stance as discussed by Ochs & Schieffelin, Ochs, Kärkkainen, Local & Walker, and how emotion is displayed in speech. Tokens chosen for analysis are /ɑ/, /ɑɪ/, and /ə/. Three of each token in first syllable position is collected for analysis from both emotional and non-emotional speech. Analysis of tokens then takes place by (mean) averaging each token's length for each speaker in each stance, then the total vowel average time is calculated again for each speaker in each stance. Beyond intra-vowel, intra-speaker averages, inter-speaker average is calculated to assess consistency of the vowel length changes between stances. The paper finds that the length of tokens shows an average increase during intraspeaker emotional speech.

Semantic memory includes vocabulary and word meanings, conceptual information, and general facts about the world (Tulving, 1972). According to the standard view of semantic memory in cognitive neuroscience, the hippocampus is necessary to first acquire new semantic information (Gabrieli, Cohen, & Corkin, 1988), but these representations are then consolidated in the neocortex and become independent of the hippocampus with time (McClelland, McNaughton, & O'Reilly, 1995). Remote semantic memory is considered independent of the hippocampus, and the hippocampus is not thought to play a critical role in the processing and use of such representations. The current work challenges the notion that previously acquired semantic knowledge, and its use during communication, is independent of the hippocampus. A group of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe impairments in declarative memory were tested. Intact naming and word-definition matching performance in amnesia, has led to the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Motivated by perspectives of word learning as a protracted process where additional features and senses of a word are added over time, and by recent discoveries about the time course of hippocampal contributions to on-line relational processing, reconsolidation, and the flexible integration of information, we revisit the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in amnesia. Using measures of semantic richness and vocabulary depth from psycholinguistics and first and second language-learning studies, we examined how much information is associated with previously acquired, highly familiar words in hippocampal amnesic patients. Relative to healthy demographically matched comparison participants and a group of brain-damaged comparison participants, the patients with hippocampal amnesia performed significantly worse on both productive and receptive measures of vocabulary depth and semantic richness. In the healthy brain, semantic memory appears to get richer and deeper with time. Healthy participants of all ages were tested on these measures and strong correlations are seen with age as older healthy adults displayed richer semantic knowledge than the younger adults. The patient data provides a mechanism: hippocampal relational binding supports the deepening and enrichment of knowledge over time. These findings suggest that remote semantic memory is impoverished in patients with hippocampal amnesia and that the hippocampus supports the maintenance and updating of semantic memory beyond its initial acquisition. The use of lexical and semantic knowledge during discourse was also examined. Amnesic patients displayed significantly lower levels of lexical diversity in the speech they produced, and showed a strong trend toward producing language with reduced levels of semantic detail suggesting that patients cannot use their semantic representations as richly during communication. These results add to a growing body of work detailing a role for the hippocampus in language processing more generally. By documenting a role for the hippocampus in maintaining, updating, and using semantic knowledge, this work informs theories of semantic memory and it's neural bases, advances knowledge of the role of the hippocampus in supporting human behavior, and brings more sensitive measures to the neuroscientific study of semantic memory.

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The present body of research examined adult bilinguals who acquired a second language (L2) from an early age and who subsequently developed language dominance in that language. The question investigated is whether such "early L2-dominant bilinguals" attain a native level of proficiency in their second language. This possibility was explored by comparing bilinguals who had Cantonese L1 (logographic, morphosyllabic), Vietnamese L1 (alphabetic, morphosyllabic) or some "Other" L1 (alphabetic, non-morphosyllabic) to English monolinguals on various tasks in English (L2). The ability to process spoken stimuli was examined using phoneme deletion, spelling-to-dictation, and auditory comprehension tasks. The results showed that bilinguals from all backgrounds had greater difficulty than monolinguals on tasks that required sublexical skills, with the morphosyllabic groups performing the most poorly. The processing of print was investigated using reading aloud and reading comprehension tasks. In contrast to the auditory tasks, only Cantonese L1 bilinguals displayed any discernable difference from monolinguals on reading. Cantonese L1 bilinguals did, however, outperform monolinguals on orthographic memory tasks, such as the spelling of idiosyncratic L2 words. The findings therefore indicated that L1 linguistic structure influences L2 processing in adulthood, despite the former having become subordinate. In order to elucidate whether transfer effects arise solely from early exposure to L1, or whether L1 maintenance also plays a role, the L1 and L2 proficiency of a separate sample of Cantonese L1 bilinguals was examined. However, no meaningful relationship between L1 and L2 proficiency was found. Finally, a sample of late bilinguals were also tested in order to determine whether the L1-specific effects observed in early bilinguals are simply an attenuated version of those in late bilinguals,. The results revealed that the development of language dominance in L2 does lead to qualitatively different outcomes in L2 for early bilinguals. The findings from the present research are most consistent with the Competition Model (e.g., Hernandez, Li, & MacWhinney, 2005), which espouses the notions of L1 transfer and entrenchment to explain second language acquisition. Overall, the research indicates that native attainment in L2 is not assured for all early L2-dominant bilinguals.

Social and textual aspects of the language assimilation of German exile writers are studied. Major differences concern the length of their exile, their foreign language learning ability and their attitude to assimilating, and the primary sources are letters and diaries. Descriptive analysis is performed on the prose, mainly in the area of crosslinguistic influences. Despite their differing assimilation, the prose contains similar crosslinguistic influences. There are consistent changes in crosslinguistic influences during the course of language assimilation, initially determined by the extent of second language acquisition. However, language learning factors give way to social factors with crosslinguistic infuences ultimately governed by the functional independence of the second language. Lexically triggered code-switching is usually a step towards functionally motivated code-switching. Finally a tentative, schematic model of how the process of language assimilation causes and modifies crosslinguistic influences is proposed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study investigates the translation process of three translator students and their production of translated non-fiction texts. The students are followed from an initial examination task over a period of time of 5 years. The translated texts produced during this period are analysed with selected methods of text analysis, which is compared to their source texts. The text analysis focuses on certain grammatical features that are known to generate problems for translators with the language pair Russian – Swedish. The results of the analysis show that the systematic differences in the languages involved are not as problematic as expected for the participants. Writing skills in the TL, translation principles and initial beliefs as well as the individual’s approach concerning the task of a translator turn out to have the most significant influences on the participants’ performance. In a complementary analysis, introspection data obtained from concurrent verbalisations are analysed according to a model that allows indicating and classifying marked processing in the translations. The role of contrastive language knowledge is especially emphasised in this part of the study. The results are put in relation to each other to obtain a picture of the individual development of the participating translator students. The three case studies show that each participant developed his/her competence during the time of the study. They also show that this development stays within a conceptual frame set by the participants before they started their training as translators. The implications for translator training that can be drawn from this study are mainly concerned with the importance of writing skills in the TL, contrastive language knowledge and the importance of questioning individual beliefs and principles concerning the task of the translator as well as approaches to translating.

In the study of language production in aging, an important question relates to the relationship between lexical retrieval and syntactic production. Studies have reported changes in syntactic production across the lifespan, but their underlying cause remains unclear. In younger adults, it has been suggested that lexical factors, such as an item‟s semantic or phonological representation influence syntactic production; however, the full nature of this influence remains unclear. Studies investigating the type of sentence produced have found semantic facilitation and phonological interference (e.g., Bock, 1986, 1987), but studies investigating response time (e.g., Meyer, 1996) have found the opposite effects. This investigation sought to examine the influence of lexical level information on sentence production in younger and older adults. This was accomplished by concurrently examining reaction time and sentence type effects. In Experiment 1, 61 adults (mean age: 21.8 years) were presented with pictures and distractor words (unrelated, or semantically or phonologically related). Three stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) were used (-1000ms, -150ms and 150ms). Participants were required to describe each picture. Using an analysis of variance, response time was compared across the different conditions and using generalized estimating equations, the type of sentence produced and the position of the primed word were compared. In Experiment 2, phonological distractors were excluded, and one SOA (-150ms) was used. Testing involved 83 younger adults (mean age: 22.9 years) and 56 older adults (mean age: 74.7 years). In Experiment 1, semantic distractors resulted in related nouns being produced more often in the subject position. This effect was observed in the analysis of the position of the target noun, but not in the analysis of the type of sentence produced. There were no effects of phonological distractors. In Experiment 2, semantic distractors influenced the type of sentence produced for both age groups. The groups differed only in error production. No reaction time effects were observed in either experiment. This investigation successfully demonstrated an influence of lexical level information on the syntactic productions of younger and older adults. The two groups were similar in their productions, suggesting that aspects of syntactic production are preserved in older adults.

A language comprehension mechanism that immediately starts processing language as it is encountered is typically thought of as one that speeds and facilitates spoken language comprehension. However, there exist cases where the earliest parts of a word or phrase encode information that is somewhat at odds with the remainder of the word or phrase in full. Examples of these "potentially misleading" cases include compound words where the initial subpart of the compound belongs to a different syntactic category than the entire compound (e.g., "popcorn", "greyhound"), or noun phrases where the initial element of the phrase signals perceptual properties possessed by the referent of the noun phrase (e.g., some Chinese Cantonese classifier-noun phrases). Using a visual-world methodology, this dissertation explores the kinds of unintended or "impulsive" activation that are triggered when listeners encounter such cases, as well as how syntactic and contextual cues can constraining this impulsive activation. Experiment 1 examines whether hearing compound subparts (e.g., "pop-" in "popcorn") activates conceptual associates across syntactic categories, and Experiment 2 examines whether this activation is moderated by listeners' expectations about the syntactic structure of the sentences they encounter. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the processing of compounds whose initial subparts correspond to colour terms (e.g., "greyhound"). Experiment 3 explores whether these colour subparts trigger the activation of phrasal-level descriptions of non-target objects in the visual display, and whether this activation is influenced by the presence/absence of motivation to use colour descriptions when naming screen objects. Experiment 4 further explores whether a perceptual mismatch between a target object and the colour term in its name increases this impulsive activation. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates whether listeners use the perceptual information encoded in pre-nominal classifiers in Cantonese Chinese to guide their consideration of referential candidates whose perceptual properties do or do not match the classifier semantics. The findings from this dissertation point to the highly interactive nature of spoken language comprehension, suggesting that the kinds of impulsive activation under current discussion are rampant and automatic, but can also be suppressed to varying degrees by the syntactic, semantic, and contextual cues available to the listener.

In the study of language production in aging, an important question relates to the relationship between lexical retrieval and syntactic production. Studies have reported changes in syntactic production across the lifespan, but their underlying cause remains unclear. In younger adults, it has been suggested that lexical factors, such as an item‟s semantic or phonological representation influence syntactic production; however, the full nature of this influence remains unclear. Studies investigating the type of sentence produced have found semantic facilitation and phonological interference (e.g., Bock, 1986, 1987), but studies investigating response time (e.g., Meyer, 1996) have found the opposite effects. This investigation sought to examine the influence of lexical level information on sentence production in younger and older adults. This was accomplished by concurrently examining reaction time and sentence type effects. In Experiment 1, 61 adults (mean age: 21.8 years) were presented with pictures and distractor words (unrelated, or semantically or phonologically related). Three stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) were used (-1000ms, -150ms and 150ms). Participants were required to describe each picture. Using an analysis of variance, response time was compared across the different conditions and using generalized estimating equations, the type of sentence produced and the position of the primed word were compared. In Experiment 2, phonological distractors were excluded, and one SOA (-150ms) was used. Testing involved 83 younger adults (mean age: 22.9 years) and 56 older adults (mean age: 74.7 years). In Experiment 1, semantic distractors resulted in related nouns being produced more often in the subject position. This effect was observed in the analysis of the position of the target noun, but not in the analysis of the type of sentence produced. There were no effects of phonological distractors. In Experiment 2, semantic distractors influenced the type of sentence produced for both age groups. The groups differed only in error production. No reaction time effects were observed in either experiment. This investigation successfully demonstrated an influence of lexical level information on the syntactic productions of younger and older adults. The two groups were similar in their productions, suggesting that aspects of syntactic production are preserved in older adults.