Investigates the way native Chinese speakers process Chinese and Western numerals. Finds they process the numerals differently and that they processed Western numerals differently than native English speakers do. Concludes that Chinese and Western numerals are not a homogeneous set of stimuli. (RS)

A controversial best-selling Chinese novel of the mid-1980s is discussed in terms of the main character's antiheroic qualities, the narrator's ambivalent voice, and the interplay between sexual impotence and cultural regression. (18 references) (LB)

Reports on attempts to reconstruct the Proto-Chinese sound system, based on linguistic data from modern Chinese dialects rather than ancient rhyme dictionaries and tables, resulting in a sound system with 29 onsets and 74 rhymes and some new rules for sound changes. (18 references) (Author/CB)

Comments on previous articles (this issue) by Solberg et al., Tata and Leong, and Lin on help-seeking behaviors of Asian Americans. Sees articles as dispelling false images and stereotypes about mental health needs of Asian Americans. Suggests that future research focus on diversity of Asian American population and development of theories and…

Describes three examples illustrating the nature and extent of contact-induced change in the Linxia dialect, relating to extensive lexicosemantic diffusion resulting in areal convergence, coexisting markers representing two different types of borrowing, and a postpositional conditional marker as an example of significant syntactic and phonological…

Critiques Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier-scope interpretations in English, Chinese, and Japanese, showing serious theoretical problems with their results and proposing a quantifier-scope analysis that avoids those problems. The proposed expert system considers several important considerations and arrives at a composite…

Studies variation in reading speed between languages of different orthographies, focusing on modern Chinese with logographic characters and English with an alphabetic writing system. Finds that the Chinese readers are faster than the English readers by about two minutes on the same reading material; the difference is significant even with reading…

Shows that there are at least two types of gapping in natural languages: canonical gapping and LPD. Argues that Chinese has some gapping sentences that result from ATB movement from V to "v." Data from Chinese affirm Johnson's (1994) theory of gapping that gapping occurs in those languages only with verb movement. (Author/VWL)

Examines the effects of the characteristics of narrative text on generation of thematic inference. Indicates that generation of thematic inference depended on the interaction between the goal of the protagonist and the outcome of a text. Investigates the effects of the title, the goal of the protagonist and the final outcome of a narrative text on…

Explores the impact of Chinese culture on the school curriculum in Hong Kong. Argues that the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC) transplanted from western-based concepts is not commensurate with the local Chinese cultural context, and therefore leads to many problems when being implemented in schools. (Author/VWL)

Examines four characteristics (brevity, straightforward diction, contemplative mood, and autobiographical content) of classical Chinese poetry, to show how classical Chinese poetry is appropriate for use in many poetry therapy contexts. Includes an 8-item annotated list of sources. (SR)

Discusses some of the work included in the sixth TREC (Text Retrieval Conference). Highlights include retrieval effectiveness and relevance feedback; linguistic phrase identification; word elimination; weighting; precision and recall; query concepts; ad hoc and Chinese retrieval; and cross lingual information retrieval. (LRW)

Summarizes the main features of discourse representation theory, situation-based approaches, and dynamic semantics, and discusses the role the novelty condition plays in each of them, providing the main theoretical coordinates against which to try an assessment of the role of the Chinese conditional and a proposal put forth by Chang and Huang…

Using a priming procedure, 4 experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of a short preexposure of a prime that was a radical or contained radicals identical to the target. Significant facilitation was found when the target contained the prime as a radical, although only for low-frequency targets which did not arise merely as a result…

This paper presents the results of research on elemental standard reading time estimates for traditional Chinese characters on computer displays and explores the factors that may affect the time estimates. Seventy-two native Chinese readers, aged 19 to 24, were asked to read 16 simple passages and then answer four multiple-choice questions.…