Cognitive strategies in discourse processing: A comparison of Chinese and English speakers

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 597-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Tao ◽  
Alice F. Healy
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Discourse Processing ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Chinese And English

Strategies of Impression Management and Deception among Chinese and English speakers

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenling Hsieh ◽  
Cheryl Hiscock-Anisman ◽  
Kevin Colwell ◽  
Samantha Florence ◽  
Andrea Sorcinelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Chinese And English

Intercultural pragmatics at work: (Self-)perceptions of intercultural behavior of Chinese and English speakers and interpreters in healthcare interactions

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Hlavac ◽  
Zhichang Xu ◽  
David Xiong Yong
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Intercultural Pragmatics ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Healthcare Situation ◽  
Chinese And English

AbstractInterpreters are expected to have an advanced command of not only the vocabulary and grammar of their working languages, but also the pragmatic norms that speakers of their working languages employ in communicative interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions and practices of interpreters in relation to intercultural pragmatics at work in healthcare interactions. The paper employs two theoretical frameworks: the first is based on interpretations of behavior according to speakers' discourse-pragmatic features as representative of “high” or “low” context cultures (cf. Hall 1976); the second applies Celce-Murcia's (2007) more refined notion of “communicative competence.” The data sample of this paper focuses on cultural-pragmatic features of two linguistic and cultural groups – 25 Chinese speakers and 24 English speakers – and contrasts their selected responses to five features of Chinese-English interpreted healthcare interactions. Responses from 33 Chinese-English interpreters are matched against those from speakers of the two groups to examine the degree of congruence that interpreters have with the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of the two groups of speakers, for whom they interpret. This study shows that the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of both groups is determined by their adoption of a particular approach (doctor- vs. patient-centered approach) and other micro-level features (perceived time constraints, different notions of “small talk”) that limit elaborate pragmatic enactments. Over-arching cultural-pragmatic models based on “high” (or “low”) context communication, or “vertical” (vs. “horizontal”) hierarchical perceptions of role and status appear to have limited application to the data. Instead, local features specific to the healthcare situation co-determine both English and Chinese speakers' responses to questions about their use of pragmatics. Findings indicate that interpreters attend to each group's enactment of pragmatic features and, as expert language users, are able to recognize features and components of interactions and their functions to a greater degree than the Chinese and English speakers.

Insight into the structure of compound words among speakers of Chinese and English

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIE ZHANG ◽  
RICHARD C. ANDERSON ◽  
QIUYING WANG ◽  
JEROME PACKARD ◽  
XINCHUN WU ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Graders ◽  
Compound Word ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Noun Compounds ◽  
Chinese And English ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACTKnowledge of compound word structures in Chinese and English was investigated, comparing 435 Chinese and 258 Americans, including second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college undergraduates. As anticipated, the results revealed that Chinese speakers performed better on a word structure analogy task than their English-speaking counterparts. Also, as anticipated, speakers of both languages performed better on noun + noun and verb + particle compounds, which are more productive in their respective languages than noun + verb and verb + noun compounds, which are less productive. Both Chinese and English speakers performed significantly better on novel compounds than on familiar compounds, most likely because familiar compounds are lexicalized and do not invite decomposition into constituents.

The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Chen ◽  
Jianghua Lei
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Discourse Functions ◽  
Chinese And English

This study evaluates the extent to which the production of referring expressions such as noun phrases and pronouns to fulfill various discourse functions in narratives of Chinese–English bilingual children matches that of their monolingual peers in each of the two languages. Spoken narratives in English and Chinese were elicited from 30 9-year-old participants from each of the three groups: Chinese–English bilinguals and their monolingual peers in each of the two languages using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Narrative analysis focused on the referring expressions that are used to introduce, re-introduce, and maintain reference to story characters in the narratives. Results show that (1) monolingual Chinese and English speakers differed significantly in the preferred referring expressions for the discourse functions; (2) the Chinese–English bilinguals differed from their monolingual peers in the distribution of referring expressions for referent introduction in English and re-introduction in Chinese; and (3) bilinguals resembled their monolingual peers in their differentiated use of referring expressions for referent maintenance in each of the two languages. These results suggest that the patterns of production of referring expressions in discourse by bilingual speakers may be unique, and fall in between those by their monolingual peers in each of the languages.

A Cross-Linguistic PET Study of Tone Perception in Mandarin Chinese and English Speakers

NeuroImage ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Klein ◽  
Robert J. Zatorre ◽  
Brenda Milner ◽  
Viviane Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Tone Perception ◽  
Chinese And English

Grammatical number of English nouns in English Learners' Dictionaries

English Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ling Zou ◽  
Ju-Lan Feng ◽  
Ya-Ping Zheng
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Unit Of Measurement ◽  
Grammatical Number ◽  
Chinese And English

Chinese and English belong to different language families, so they often have different forms of expression. Chinese has no definite grammatical category of number and has almost no number inflection. Plural meaning is usually implied in the syntactic structure or in the context by a bare noun, or is expressed through the plural marker 们 and the numerical adjectives such as many, numerous and each, as well as by quantifiers and reduplications. However, English nouns express number category by inflection as well as by quantifiers at times, so their grammatical number is far more complicated than that of Chinese nouns. From the point of view of grammatical form, English nouns are often considered as countable and uncountable nouns. Uncountable nouns cannot be directly modified by a numeral without unit specification, nor can they be combined with an indefinite article. Thus, cheese is quantified as three slices of cheese. However, uncountable nouns can also be quantified without specifying a unit of measurement, such as much coal. A number of uncountable nouns can be used in the plural form to mean ‘a large amount of’ as in the following example from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (hereinafter, LDCE) ‘The ship drifted into Turkish territorial waters’. In such cases, although water is uncountable, it has the plural form. In some cases, native English speakers can turn the theoretical uncountable nouns into countable ones (Landau, 2001). There seems to be no absolute boundary between countable and uncountable nouns.

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