Evidence of sensitivity to graphotactic and morphological patterns in English spelling has been extensively examined in monolinguals. Comparatively few studies have examined bilinguals' sensitivity to spelling regularities. The present study compared late Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals on their sensitivity to systematic…

This study investigated second language distribution of Chinese connectives by tallying responses on a mini-discourse completion test taken by English-speaking learners with different language learning backgrounds and at different proficiency levels. The results showed that an underuse pattern underlay practically all Chinese connectives as a…

The present study aimed to profile the developmental patterns of discourse in second language (L2) writings among different first language (L1) groups. Applying the list of metadiscourse markers proposed by Ken Hyland to learner language, this study investigates variation of metadiscourse across proficiency levels, as well as across L1…

Limited research has investigated advanced language learners' acquisition of English verbs. The current study examines and compares the acquisition pattern of English verbs among Chinese second language (L2) learners at both intermediate and advanced levels to answer the following questions: (1) Do L2 learners acquire regular verbs and irregular…

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At…

This dissertation examines the particle "ye" in the IV century BCE Chinese Guodian manuscripts by providing a synchronic analysis of its functions and a diachronic hypothesis relating all functions to focus marking. I have subdivided the around 600 occurrences of "ye" into four main functions: focus marker, topic marker, clause connection…

This dissertation explores the robust confluence of syntactic and cultural factors involved in the structure and content of chengyu. It unpacks a number of structural tendencies in the data sample, and illuminates selected underlying cultural themes. The presence of syntactic and semantic parallelism within chengyu, as an expression of the…

An analysis of correlative constructions in Chinese that: (1) gives a principled account of the distribution of correlative markers; and (2) offers an explanation for some puzzling facts about distribution of anaphoric pronouns is presented. It is suggested that previous research has misidentified instances of verb phrase coordination as…

The Chinese numerical system and its contrastive aspects with the English system are discussed, as well as some implications of the numerical system in the spoken language. (RM)

Substitutes in English (such as "he,""she,""it,""one,""do so,""thus,""there," and "such") participate in an intricate network of systems. This study aims to identify those English substitutes which are words or word sequences and to describe their workings in some of…

Twenty texts in the Chinese dialect of Shanghai city are presented as a tool for those familiar with some dialect of Chinese who are learning this variety. The texts, recorded as spontaneous speech, were originally collected for grammatical analysis and have been revised somewhat for print form. They are arranged in approximate order of…

An analysis of long-distance anaphora, a binding phenomenon in which reflexives find their antecedents outside their local domain, is presented, using data from English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, and Italian. It is found that no approach deals with long-distance anaphors exclusively and elegantly. The binding domain…

Because the conceptual and grammatical constructions of English and Chinese vary drastically, Chinese students often have difficulty learning to think and write in English. Cultural conflicts of young Chinese in America compound their difficulties with the English language. The old values expressed by Chinese affect students' abilities to write…

An analysis of "de" sentences in Chinese in order to capture their syntactic and semantic features and, as a result, to state rules for generating them. The study is organized under eight headings and provides 147 examples in Chinese and English. (AMH)