The Construction of Acquisition Pattern of Sentence-final Particles
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Authors:
Di Zhang* Qianli Xu and Robert W. Elliott / Language and Cognitive Science / 2019,5(1): 1−20 / 2019-08-26
- Keywords: Chinese children; factor analysis; functional modal particles; language acquisition; SPF acquisition
- Abstract: Based on a corpus of four Northern Chinese Mandarin-speaking subjects (children ranging from 1 to 4 years old), this study is intended to explore the subjects’ acquisition pattern of sentence-final particles (SFPs) and the dominant factors in their acquisition by analyzing the data of their time of SFP acquisition, mean length of utterance (MLU), the output frequency of the children’s SFPs, and the input frequency of the parents’ use of SFPs. It is found there are nine SFPs frequently used by the subjects, and the acquisition order is: tone particles > functional modal particles > general modal particles (“>” means earlier than). The dominant component affecting the overall internal language development of the subjects’ SFP is the functional modal particle. There is a correlation found between parent input and subject acquisition of SFPs, but with low significance. The abstract classification structure and the dominant order of sentence-final particles use are part of the children’s inherent and intrinsic linguistic knowledge and do not need to be learned. The role of adult discourse input frequency cannot exceed this principle of acquisition. It can only have a partial or individual corresponding influence on children’s language acquisition.
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The Impact of Bilingualism on Storage and Processing in Working Memory
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- Keywords: dual-task paradigm; verbal working memory; storage and processing, language-dependent effect, cognitive linguistics
- Abstract: Working memory as a cognitive system refers to a mental workspace involved in the temporary storage and processing of information. Although many scholars have looked extensively at the implications of WM for second language acquisition or for translation, the inner relationship of WM is still underdeveloped. The purpose of this study is to investigate 1) whether the interaction between storage and processing-based functions of verbal working memory is positive or negative, 2) and whether the interaction between working memory capacity and language proficiency is language-specific. Thirty-three students were allowed to participate in the experiments. Both the processing and storage functions of verbal WM in language contrasts (L1/L2) were separately assessed via a dual-task paradigm programmed in the E-Prime. The correlation coefficient indicates two relationships within bilingual WM capacity: 1) between L1 WM storage and L1 WM processing; 2) between L2 WM storage and L2 WM processing. These results demonstrate that verbal WM capacity is language-dependent and that there is a positive correlation between WM storage and WM processing.
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Fictive Motion in English: An Elicitation Experiment
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Authors:
Diego Caroca* Huili Wang and Hanning Guo / Language and Cognitive Science / 2018,4(1): 79−99 / 2018-08-26
- Keywords: cross-linguistic investigation; dynamism; embodiment; enactive perception
- Abstract: After Talmy’s (1983) seminal work, fictive motion sentences have received much attention in cognitive- and psychological-oriented linguistic studies. The reason for such interest lies in the rather paradoxical semantic phenomenon that fictive motion sentences exhibit: in them, verbs of motion are used to describe a static scene. Proponents of embodied theories of language comprehension see in this kind of expression a paradigmatic example of how linguistic meaning is determined by embodied cognitive mechanisms. However, these explanations tend to overlook important aspects of the linguistic realization of fictive motion dand reduce the phenomenon to a single cognitive motivation. Here, we replicate Blomberg’s (2014) picture elicitation experiment of fictive motion expressions in French, Thai, and Swedish for English in order to confirm to what extent these languages confirm the results of his investigation, namely, the bias towards dynamism of human cognition as one of the main motivational factors behind the use of fictive motion expressions (Talmy’s enactive perception hypothesis). Despite the fact that we were unable to replicate Blomberg’s main finding, our results still provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis of enactive perception and shows that the experiment design is suitable for further cross-linguistic investigation on fictive motion.
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