This study expands on previous research into filler-gap dependency processing in second language (L2) English, by means of a replication of Canales's (2012) self-paced reading study. Canales, among others, found that advanced L2-English speakers exhibited the same processing behavior that Stowe (1986) found for native English processing: On…

The selection of standards and norms constitutes the first and most important step for language standardisation. In this paper, we examine the standard establishment for Huayu (or Singapore Mandarin), a new Chinese variety that has emerged in Singapore as a result of centralised planning and inter-linguistic contact. Huayu is the officially…

English ditransitive verbs show a complex alternation between the double object construction (DOC, (1)) and prepositional object datives (POD, (2)). This dissertation examines the acquisition, representation, and learnability of the dative alternation among L2 English learners, presenting experimental data from participants with L1 backgrounds of…

This article reports on an experimental study on the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in second language European Portuguese by Chinese native speakers. It focuses on the role of resumption, mandatory in prepositional relative clauses in Chinese (the native language of the learners) and non-conventional in European Portuguese (the…

The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and…

This study evaluates attitudes toward nonnative Englishes among students, faculty, and staff at a STEM-focused U.S. university. The study utilizes the verbal-guise technique: Participants listened to and rated three summaries of the same short story as told by native speakers of U.S. English, Chinese, and Arabic. This adapted verbal-guise…

Based on the Communicative Action Theory, intersubjectivity theory and the interpersonal classification of metadiscourse, this study makes a comparison between the source texts and the English-translated texts of Chinese company profiles with a self-built parallel corpus, along the dimensions of lexical variation, lexical density, grammatical…

This dissertation investigates Voice Onset Time (VOT), which serves as an essential property for differentiating plosive consonants in L1 and L2 Mandarin Chinese. It surveys VOT variations and demonstrates that they are affected by several phonetic and phonological properties, e.g., lexical tone, place of articulation (POA), speech rate,…

This article discusses the features, reasons, and values of the mushrooming Chinese English neologisms (CENs). Generally speaking, CENs are a variety of English words, namely Chinese English words, some of which have entered Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Based on data from Web Corp Live, the author finds that: (1) CENs take on the grammatical…

Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However,…

As one of the most widespread linguistic phenomena, code-switching has attracted increasing attention nowadays. Inspired by previous studies in this field, this paper addresses code-switching under the guidance of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), with the primary goal of analysing the interpersonal meanings of code-switching in three TV…

This study investigated second language (L2) learners' acquisition of English /t, d/ deletion patterns in word-final consonant clusters, (a) focusing on how constraints such as grammatical conditioning and phonological environment affect deletion of /t, d/ in L2 acquisition and (b) determining the extent to which these L2 learners had acquired…

Demonstrates the specific ways in which the influence of Chinese manifests itself in the structure of the noun phrases containing relative-clause modifiers in colloquial Singapore English. Argues that while previous researchers have been correct in pointing out the substratal influence of Chinese, they have not gone far enough in articulating the…

Papers from the conference on the occurrence of verbal constituents in series in certain languages, particularly pidgins and creoles, include the following: "What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Serial Verbs?" (Arnold M. Zwicky); "Serial Verb Constructions" (Pieter Seuren); "On the Definition and Distribution 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…