Band 4, Heft 2 -

Two groups of non-native adult learners of Mandarin in Australia were directly compared in their ability to perceive monosyllabic Mandarin words contrasting in lexical tones. They differed in their linguistic experience (non-heritage (n=10), heritage (n=12)). A group of eight native Mandarin speakers and a group of ten functionally monolingual speakers of Australian English were included as controls. All non-native learners used English as their primary language of communication. However, the heritage learners were able to communicate in Cantonese as well as English. The primary question of interest was whether heritage learners’ knowledge of contrastive tone in Cantonese might give them an advantage over English-speaking learners in perceiving tone contrasts in Mandarin. In general, there were more similarities than differences between the two groups of learners in their response patterns. Of the six tone contrasts examined (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4, T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4), the two groups significantly differed only on T1-T4. The heritage learners were less accurate on T1-T4 than the non-heritage learners who are monolingual speakers of Australian English. On the other hand, the non-heritage learners were more accurate than Australian English speakers with no prior experience with Mandarin on all tone contrasts. Thus, we conclude that simply having an exposure to and functional knowledge of another tonal language since early childhood does not guarantee accurate perception of Mandarin tones in comparison with adult learners without prior experience with tonal languages.

This paper aims at providing a semantic account of the mechanism informing the use of negative modals in standard Chinese. Based on the notion of modal suppletion and negation placement strategies (de Haan 1997), it will be shown that: (i) in the negative form each modal takes on its prominent value; (ii) this prominent modal value displays the normative source orientation (Hsieh 2005), where the Situation-oriented normative source can include the Speaker-oriented normative source and, in particular cases in the domain of Possibility, also the Subject-oriented one; (iii) a negative modal admits different modal meanings only if there is no pragmatic conflict between them, as in the case of epistemic and non-epistemic modalities. Moreover, I will show that in non-epistemic modalities the suppletion mechanism is related to the need for normative disambiguation and is characterized by pragmatic exclusion and semantic inclusion (respectively in the Necessity and Possibility domains). In the epistemic area, on the other hand, the mandatory suppletion of the Speaker-oriented adverbs fulfills the condition of semantic well-formedness of the sentence and, for the other epistemic items, a major role is played by the strategy of negation placement (with the result that the syntactic negation mirrors the semantic property of this modality).

This article analyzes patterns of comprehension of zero anaphor by native-English-speaker learners of Mandarin in recordings and transcriptions of four naturally occurring Mandarin telephone conversations. Because many anaphoric pronouns have no overt expression in Mandarin, comprehension of even basic clause constituents of Mandarin texts can require discourse-level inferencing that English does not require. Despite these differences between English and Mandarin, intermediate to advanced level Mandarin learners in this study were able to successfully interpret and translate zero anaphor in these telephone conversation texts about 72% of the time. The greatest difficulties with zero anaphor were related to a) instances in which the initial, explicitly expressed antecedent was misinterpreted, and b) shifts in footing, or verbal activity, in which speakers moved, for example, from narrative description to direct address of interlocutor or personal evaluation of a situation just described. These patterns suggest that greater awareness of discourse level structures in naturally occurring verbal interaction – which could be taught through explicit instruction – might help intermediate and advanced Mandarin learners to correctly interpret a broader range of zero anaphora.

提要 本文探讨了施格语言小句的一组结构特征, 主要涉及格标记和一致、逆被动结构、双及物结构等三个方面。在对 78 种施格语言进行取样分析的基础上, 得出了施格语言小句结构的 16 条形态、句法共性, 并据此提出名词施格比代词施格更常见、逆被动/被动结构和施格格局之间没有必然联系、双及物结构的次类与施格格局的下位类型关系密切, 等等。文章也指出了汉语非宾格现象与类型学施格格局的差异, 认为前者的本质是动词的及物性问题, 而后者是核心论元与动词之间语法关系的标记模式问题。

提要 “虽” 作连词是上古汉语就已产生的用法, 古代汉语中的连词 “虽” 具有表达转折和让步两种差别较大的语义功能。本文针对这种比较奇怪的现象, 旨在弄清出现这种现象的原因和机制, 并试图找到这两种语义功能之间的内在关联。本文的研究思路是:先简要回顾动词的叙实性研究的历史并梳理跟叙实性相关的概念, 进而指出古代汉语连词 “虽” 的两种语义功能可以纳入叙实性进行研究。通过跟现代汉语中的 “虽然” 和 “即使” 进行类比分析, 我们发现, 具有叙实和反叙实两种语义功能的连词 “虽” 都可以表达转折关系, 都是种反预期的表达方式, 这是它们在语义上的共通之处; 而反叙实作用的 “虽” 由于引入了一个 “可能世界”, 所以还可以表达 “假设” 和 “让步” 关系, 这是它们在语义上的不同点。最后从语言编码和解码的角度审视古代汉语中的“虽”的两种语义功能。

提要 本文通过多项选择问卷对 60 名华裔和 60 名非华裔学习者在汉语模糊表达语用理解上的差异进行了考察。在考察这两组学习者时，根据汉语水平将华裔和非华裔平均划分为高水平组和低水平组，其汉语水平由新 HSK 成绩衡量，模糊表达依据所含模糊词语分为数量类、近似类、频率类和可能类，每类选取五个常用模糊词语。每个模糊表达依据交际情景中对话方社会地位高和社会地位平等各设计一道多项选择题。此外，用另一问卷测量其语义理解能力，需要被试在具体的句子里判断模糊表达的语义界限。研究结果显示，汉语水平和语义理解对华裔和非华裔学习者的语用理解均有显著影响，华裔学习者在整体上对模糊表达的语用理解要显著好于非华裔学习者。当进一步区分不同模糊表达类型时，组间方差分析表明，华裔学习者在频率类模糊表达语用理解上的分值要显著高于非华裔学习者，而在其余三类模糊表达语用理解上两者不存在显著差异。在语境中当对话方社会地位平等时，华裔学习者模糊表达的语用理解分值显著高于非华裔学习者，而当对话方社会地位高时两者不存在显著差异。组内方差分析表明，华裔学习者对不同模糊表达类型语用理解的敏感度要低于非华裔学习者，而对语境中不同社会地位的敏感度要高于非华裔学习者。