Explored the feasibility of using Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to facilitate Chinese language teaching and learning. Describes procedures for organizing and conducting chat sessions and discusses the benefits and problems of using IRC. (Author/VWL)

Argues that cross-cultural communication between Chinese and Americans is sometimes blocked by culture-governed structures of language. Discusses certain culture- and language-related phenomena that can occur in interaction. Demonstrates that some communicative obstacles are immediate consequences of differences in styles of expression, structures…

Describes the MultiText information retrieval system that finds arbitrary passages of text, as opposed to complete documents, that are likely to be relevant. Discusses relevance ranking, term expansion, interactive user interface, and distributed searching used in experiments for TREC-6 (Text Retrieval Conference) in the ad hoc, high precision,…

Proposes a model, based on a "maximum ranking method," for more simply estimating the frequency of any same-frequency words and identifying the boundary point between high-frequency and low-frequency words in a text. This model was used successfully with English and Chinese texts, demonstrating that the frequency of words and number of…

Compared the proportions of nouns and verbs in early vocabularies of English- and Mandarin-speaking toddlers and their mothers. Found that Mandarin-speaking children had relatively fewer nouns and more verbs than English-speaking children. When reading books, children's vocabularies were dominated by nouns but not when playing with toys. Mothers…

Studied the effects of applying an order-analytical, multidimensional scaling method for determining hierarchies among Chinese and Japanese "kanji" characters to be learned. Results for 60 undergraduates who used a computer-assisted instructional program based on the method indicate its usefulness in designing effective instruction. (SLD)

A series of reading-time studies was conducted to examine the processing of co-reference in Chinese discourse. These studies were conducted to test the generality of studies of English that have shown that reduced referential expressions contribute more to discourse coherence than do unreduced expressions. (Author/VWL)

Reviews recent research on crosslinguistic variation. Suggests that lexical systems are as notable for their differences as they are for their similarities. (Author/VWL)

Reports on the clarity rating of Chinese, English, and "Chinglish" (Chinese words translated into English) mathematical words. The inherent compound word structure of the Chinese language seems well suited to portray mathematical ideas. Examines the relations among the clarity of Chinese mathematical terms, U.S. urban junior high school students'…

The study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of the adjective marker "-de"(ADJ) in Chinese. It explores the interaction between processing constraints as represented in processability theory (Pienemann, 1998) and the learner's categorial analysis of Chinese adjectives and stative verbs which cross-categorize in the acquisition…

The role of phonological coding for character identification was examined with the benefit of processing parafoveal characters in eye fixations while reading Chinese sentences. In Experiment 1, the orthogonal manipulation of phonological and orthographic similarity can separate two types of phonological benefits for homophonic previews, according…

The primary objective of the present study was to document tone production and intelligibility deficits in Mandarin-speaking persons with cerebral palsy (CP). Spastic, athetoid, and mixed types of CP were studied, along with a control group, to investigate the possibility of tone production and intelligibility deficits that were differentially…

This paper examines the applicability of the learning organization concept and its measurement in a Chinese context. Based on the theoretical framework proposed by Watkins and Marsick (1993, 1996, 1997), this paper identifies the differences in seven of the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) between traditional state-owned…

Most studies on CV co-occurrence patterns in early phonetic development have been based on Indo-European languages. Data from infants learning Mandarin, which has a substantially different phonological system from Indo-European languages, can confirm or refute the findings of previous studies, thus shedding further light on the theoretical bases…

Previous research in alphabetic languages had shown that children learning to write are sensitive to morphological information, and that it serves as a resource that they draw upon as they acquire writing skills. In Chinese as well, sensitivity to morphological and orthographic information had been found to predict children's ability to read…