This study examined the effect of native language background on listeners' perception of native and non-native vowels spoken by native (Hong Kong Cantonese) and non-native (Mandarin and Australian English) speakers. They completed discrimination and an identification task with and without visual cues in clear and noisy conditions. Results…

This article presents the findings of a corpus-based study of the use of English vis-à-vis Cantonese and Putonghua in Hong Kong's Legislative Council in the past four decades. The objective of the study was to track the changing fortunes of the three languages in a key government institution during a period of unprecedented political, economic and…

In the present study, we examined the relation of knowledge of semantic radicals to students' language proficiency and word reading for adult Chinese-as-a-foreign language students. Ninety-seven college students rated their proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing in Chinese, and were administered measures of receptive and…

This multidisciplinary approach to cultural mediation brings together insights from anthropology, sociology, linguistics and intercultural communication to offer a detailed depiction of family life in immigrant Chinese communities. Utilising a strongly contextualised and evidence-based narrative approach to exploring the nature of child cultural…

We studied the efficacy and implementation outcomes of a culturally responsive parent training (PT) program. Fifty-four Chinese American parents participated in a wait-list controlled group randomized trial (32 immediate treatment, 22 delayed treatment) of a 14-week intervention designed to address the needs of high-risk immigrant families.…

Heritage language education has come to prominence worldwide. Despite the increasing number of Chinese heritage language learners and Chinese schools in the USA, little attention has been given to teachers. This study investigated three heritage language teachers' professional identity and beliefs about curriculum and instructional practices in a…

This dissertation studies the realization of the rhythm of Taiwan Mandarin and focuses on the quality of its unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables. Taiwan Mandarin (TM) is often described as more syllable-timed than Standard Mandarin (SM). In TM, the unstressed syllables occur less frequently. The quality of the unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables…

Product-and process-oriented, this dissertation focuses on both the explicitness in translated texts and the implementation of explicitation in Chinese-English translation. In doing so, it provides a new cognitive framework for understanding explicitation as a strategic process. A specially designed study of the translation process facilitates the…

This dissertation is about Chinese loanwords. It is mainly divided into two parts. Part I is a general discussion about loanwords in Chinese; Chapter I and II belong to the first part. Part II is a discussion about the analyses of Mandarin loanwords originating from English. Chapter III, IV, and V are all related to the second part. Chapter VI is…

Frames are cognitive structures of knowledge grounded in people's social interaction in recurrent sociocultural activities or individual incidences. Discussion concerning the knowledge in frames largely focuses on its linguistic manifestation with regard to roles and role relations in scenes. Little attention has been paid to the scriptal…

We investigated the influences of phonological similarity on the time course of spoken word processing in Mandarin Chinese. Event related potentials were recorded while adult native speakers of Mandarin ("N" = 19) judged whether auditory words matched or mismatched visually presented pictures. Mismatching words were of the following…

Research has shown that language change is driven on one hand by forces internal to language itself such as grammar-internal systematic pressure, and on the other hand by social motives such as social identity. Language contact presents new features, but why is it that some of them are incorporated as variation and evolving into language change,…

This paper consists of three studies. The first study aimed to identify sub-types of students with learning disabilities in reading. Based on the dual-route model of reading, words may be read using either a lexical (words are recognized as wholes) or a sub-lexical (words are recognized through grapheme-phoneme correspondence) procedure. Castles…

This study investigated the relation between teachers' instructional practices and students' self-regulated learning (SRL) in Hong Kong Chinese language classes using quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 1121 Grade 10 students from six secondary schools in Hong Kong. A Chinese reading comprehension (RC) test was used to assess…

Studying lexical diversity in bilingual children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can contribute important information to our understanding of language development in this diverse population. In this exploratory study, lexical comprehension and production and overall language skills were investigated in 14 English-Chinese bilingual and 14…