Volume 6, Issue 2 -

Second language learners often make errors when they use their target language for communication. People perceive some of these errors as humorous. Many factors influence these perceptions. The purpose of this study is to investigate how these factors affect people’s perceptions when they read CSL (Chinese as a second language) learners’ humorous errors. The factors mainly refer to error stimuli and readers’ backgrounds. The researcher collected 25 error stimuli from two popular and often-cited online articles. 57 participants responded to these errors and rated them in the following three categories: Very Funny, Somewhat Funny, and Not Funny. These participants included 51 Native Speakers (NSs) of Chinese and six Non-Native Speakers (NNSs). The NSs consisted of 28 females and 23 males. Out of the participants, 17 were Chinese teachers and 40 were non-teachers. The results indicate that teachers perceived these texts as less funny than non-teachers; No significant gender difference was found; NNSs seemed to perceive these error stimuli as less funny than NSs, however, readers should be cautious in interpreting this result because of the limited number of NNSs. In addition, this study compared the humorous texts that were perceived as the funniest and the ones perceived as the least funny. The results demonstrate that an error-evoked “Very Funny” joke text had two overlapping and opposing scripts. The more overlapping and opposing the two scripts within a joke text were, the more humorous enjoyment a reader experienced. These findings improve our understanding of the interrelationship of language and humor that has been neglected in CSL, Chinese linguistics, and humor literature.

Auditory perception is generally used by raters who are asked to evaluate the accuracy of tone production by non-native speakers (hereafter NNSs) who are learning Mandarin Chinese. However, its validity needs to be examined as the native speaking (hereafter NS) listeners’ lexical knowledge (i.e., knowing the possible combination of syllables and tones) may affect their judgments in different listening contexts. This lexical effect has been reported at the segmental level in non-tonal languages (McClelland et al. 2006; Norris et al. 2000). The present study extends to the suprasegmental dimension and compares NS listeners’ judgment on NNSs’ tonal performance of high frequency disyllabic word covering Mandarin disyllabic tonal combination in three lexical contexts, namely (1) hearing pairs of humming tones (syllables removed via Praat ); (2) hearing disyllabic words (syllables + tones); (3) hearing disyllabic words + seeing target pinyin orthography. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect of lexical contexts on the perceived tone accuracy, which increased when auditory and visual lexical cues were available, as in Conditions 2 and 3. Acoustic analyses further revealed the nature of the two lexical effects. Hearing words had a positive effect on the precision of the NSs’ tonal perception compared to hearing tones only. However, the visual presence of pinyin misled NSs to compensate for learners’ tone production deficiencies. The findings have implications for future research involving the rating of tones using auditory approach and also shed light on the teaching of Mandarin tones to NNSs.

This study examines the acquisition of Mandarin dative constructions by second language (L2) and heritage learners of Mandarin Chinese. Three groups of speakers (L2, heritage, and native, 20 in each group) participated in this study by completing a questionnaire consisting of sentence translation and grammaticality judgment tasks on Mandarin dative constructions. In both tasks, native speakers outperformed the heritage learners, who in turn outperformed the L2 learners. The variance of performance in the two tasks across groups can be attributed to several factors, including linguistic universal, first language (L1) transfer, and individual difference. This study shows that L2 acquisition is a complex system and no single factor can fully explain or predict L2 learning outcomes. The findings of this study also have important pedagogical implications for L2 Chinese teaching.

提要 汉语双数量结构的表达式为 “数量短语 A+V+数量短语 B”（如 “十个人吃一锅饭”）。这一结构有两个句法特征：一是动词在语境中可以省略；二是部分双数量结构的数量短语可以易位，且有着制约易位实现的特殊因素。英语中也有双数量结构，其形态与汉语有所不同（英语中为 “动词+数量短语 A+数量短语 B” 或 “动词+数量短语 A+介词+数量短语 B”），且不具备汉语这一结构的两个句法特征。本文采用可接受性判断测试和组句测试，主要通过 “物量短语+V+物量短语” 和 “时量短语+V+动量短语” 这两类结构，考察英语母语者对汉语双数量结构句法特征的习得情况。结果显示，中级水平的学习者已经意识到双数量结构的句法特征，但直到高级阶段仍未达到汉语母语者水平。经过分析，一语负迁移和对结构中动词掌握的不充分，导致了以上结果。

提要 二语动机自我体系理论通过揭示学习者的自我愿景来展现学习动机。本文通过开放式笔头问卷和一对一口头采访对九名美国大学生进行深入研究，透过汉语自我愿景揭示了学习者的理想汉语自我；同时揭示实现自我过程中面对的主要挑战。 结果显示，学习者的理想汉语自我有以真实语境、跨文化交流为导向，以流利表达为目标的特点，结果还显示，为了实现理想汉语自我，学习者面临各种挑战，包括掌握声调、词汇、句子结构、以及听力理解不足、交流缺乏自信心等。研究结果表明，初级学习阶段强调发音准确度具有重要意义，指出美国外语教育协会（ACTFL, 2014）颁布的外语教学标准对培养跨文化交流能力的课堂教学有借鉴、指导作用；研究结果也肯定了融入型动机和实用型动机在二十一世纪全球化时代是推动外语学习的双重动力。由于研究结果支持当前的几个主流教学理念，即沉浸式教学、使用真实语料、培养跨文化交流能力，作者即针对学习者理想汉语自我的特征和实现理想自我中面临的挑战，就如何应用这些教学理念提出了具体操作建议。

提要 本文分别以“字”、“词”为单位统计了100万字韩国学生汉语中介语的平均句长和句长分布发展情况，并与目标语（本族语者语料）、教学输入语言（教材语料）使用情况进行了对比。研究发现，初、中、高三级汉语水平的韩国学生中介语平均句长分别为8.94字/5.97词、10.07字/6.57词和10.87字/7.08词，中介语平均句长的发展经历了一个从初级到高级逐步上升并不断靠近目标语水平的过程。在句长分布上，中介语、目标语和教学输入语言均呈“长尾”分布态势，且最高峰分布区间一致，两者的差异主要表现在中介语句长分布范围小于本族语者语料和教材语料，短句、长句均发展不足，中介语句长的发展还表现出不受教学输入语言制约的特点。