Traditional grammar and current theoretical approaches towards modelling grammatical knowledge ignore language in interaction: that is, words such as huh, eh, yup or yessssss. This groundbreaking book addresses this gap by providing the first in-depth overview of approaches towards interactional language across different frameworks and linguistic sub-disciplines. Based on the insights that emerge, a formal framework is developed to discover and compare language in interaction across different languages: the interactional spine hypothesis. Two case-studies are presented: confirmationals (such as eh and huh) and response markers (such as yes and no), both of which show evidence for systematic grammatical knowledge. Assuming that language in interaction is regulated by grammatical knowledge sheds new light on old questions concerning the relation between language and thought and the relation between language and communication. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relation between language, cognition and social interaction.
The present paper adopts a cross-linguistic comparative approach to variations of topics against the very test ground of “root-phenomenon”（RP）, and finds that while topics in IndoEuropean languages are always restricted to RP, most topics in Chinese are free from it. This diametrical contrast is due to the difference between pragmatic and syntactic natures in deciding the identity of the topics of each side. In Chinese, the major division made between topics is topics with particles and those without. Particle-free topics, being syntactic in nature, are immune to RP. With particles, the grammatical-pragmatic topics trigger RP restriction. Besides, there are also lexical-pragmatic topics that are flagged by lexical topic markers. Canonical subjects in Chinese are not necessarily syntactic topics. Rather, they are unmarked pragmatic topics though displaying no topicality in some cases. Various topics can be transformed into pragmatic topics by adding topic particles. The observations made by this paper substantially update the results of Xu and Liu（1998）.
建设高质量基础英语教育体系,是贯彻基础英语教育新发展理念的要求,也是为了解决其中存在的问题.本文提出四条建设路径.1)教育学段贯通:顶层设计加实践创新;2)教育主体协同:虚拟教研室建设与多元主体相向发力;3)教育内容融通:学科内部融合与跨学科融合并行;4)数字技术赋能:问题导向式资源建设结合使用研究.
Variability in second language development is a high-level property that emerges from systemic self-adaptation at the holistic level. Thus, the study of variability involves the discussion of complex operating mechanisms at a systemic level. From a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory perspective, this study investigates the lexical and syntactic variability（patterns and periods） of Chinese English learners’ spoken language development at 512 temporal observation points over 2 years using time series analysis. The results show that: 1) variability is the comprehensive embodiment of the dynamic, complex, and multidimensional development of the spoken system; 2) the dynamic development pattern of spoken vocabulary is homogeneous, while that of syntax is heterogeneous; 3) the critical development period on the improvement path of spoken syntax lags behind that of vocabulary, and the distribution span is longer. The dynamic development patterns and acquisition improvement paths found in the study can provide a basis and reference for precise teaching and dynamic evaluation of L2 spoken language.
This paper, which starts with the evolving relationship between area studies and the disciplinary development of English language and literature in China, explores the role of area studies in the expansion of knowledge system, talent cultivation, research innovation, social service, and thinktank building in undergraduate English majors and postgraduate English language and literature discipline. The establishment of the inter-discipline of area studies will create opportunities for the relevant disciplines and majors in English education in foreign languages universities and colleges to participate in the development of the disciplinary agenda of area studies. By building a mutually complementary and multidimensional platform, English language and literature will deepen its knowledge system innovation and reform talent cultivation approaches to promote the construction of an inter-disciplinary identity of English language and literature in China which is based on and goes beyond language teaching by crossing the disciplinary boundaries among literature, linguistics, cross-cultural studies, translation studies, and area studies.
Coinciding with a time when the world is confronted with major changes unseen in a century, China’s area studies has emerged and been accredited as a first-tier discipline among interdisciplinary studies. As an important component of the discipline of foreign languages, French studies will support the construction of area studies with Chinese characteristics by serving, directly or indirectly, as an explorer of academic resources, a developer of research approaches, and an incubator of core talents. To this end, French studies should, among others, reinvent its curricula and programs, foster the academic community of French and francophone studies and overcome the challenges in its participation in the construction of area studies. Just as French studies enables area studies, area studies, in turn, advances the development of French studies. The synergic progression of both disciplines is arguably a matter of necessity.
Contrastive Analysis（CA） and Translation Studies（TS） began to merge in the late 1990s, and the theory of “symbiotic links” was proposed to explain the relationship between them. The present study shows that the theory of “symbiotic links” reflects nothing but the representation of the relationship between CA and TS. In essence, the two research fields are logically related in that CA entails TS, which can be characterized as “if P, then Q.” This logical expression integrates CA and TS into a compound proposition, making the CA-based translation studies form a unified whole. The falsification of the compound proposition “if P, then Q” requires the falsification of both the antecedent（P） and the consequent（Q）, respectively. The falsification procedure inherently requires both the bilingual corpus and parallel corpus to play a balanced verification function, that is, the falsification of P calls for the bilingual corpus data and that of Q calls for the parallel corpus data. The research paradigm formed by this approach can be called “CA-based empirical translation studies.”
在依存语法的理论框架下,本研究自建了中国大学生依存句法标注语料库,并基于兰卡斯特-奥斯陆-卑尔根语料库建立了英语本族语者依存句法标注语料库,采用平均依存距离(MDD)作为量度指标,对不同位置时间状语从句的加工难度进行量化分析,考察句法加工难度是否会影响中国学生和英语本族语者对英语时间状语从句位置的选择.研究发现:1)与本族语者相比,中国学生由于受到工作记忆容量及英汉句法差异导致的句法加工难度的限制,更多地选择将时间状语从句前置,以减小句法结构的加工难度.2)中国学生在使用不同连词类型的时间状语从句时,后置从句的MDD都大于前置从句,而本族语者只有when从句前置与后置的MDD无差异.When从句的句法加工难度不影响本族语者when从句的位置分布,但是句法加工难度以及时间顺序象似性会共同影响中国学生when从句的位置分布.
Previous studies on teaching critical thinking（CT） focused on innovating the content and pedagogy with insufficient consideration of students’ needs. From students’ perspectives, we proposed a new feasible model with a reading-to-write construct and tested its effectiveness. This model is composed of three elements including knowledge about CT, the framework for CT, and CT practice following the principles of CT teaching, aiming to develop students’ CT ability and English writing proficiency. With the triangulated methods of quasi-experiments, assignments, retrospections, and interviews, it was found that: 1) the participants have made breaking-through progress regarding such visible CT indicators as target, criticism, and response, intermediate progress in the CT indicators like background, controversy, and evidence but insignificant progress in such indicators as thesis and conclusion; 2) the critical thinking quality of their English writing and their English writing proficiency have been significantly improved after being trained with the newly proposed model.
语际影响(crosslinguistic influence)经常被视为语言迁移(language transfer)的同义词,主要指二语学习者母语与二语之间的相互影响,也指多语学习者母语、二语和三语之间的相互影响(Odlin 1989;Jarvis&Pavlenko 2008;蔡金亭2021).就二语学习而言,母语对二语学习的影响显而易见,但二语发展到较高水平,也可能反过来影响母语的使用.围绕语际影响的研究已经进行了七十多年,发表了大量论文和专著.在此背景下,Routledge出版社新近出版了由美国宾州州立大学K.McManus撰写的专著Crosslinguistic Influence and Second Language Learning(《语际影响与二语学习》).该书聚焦于成人二语学习中的语际影响,围绕理论模型、具体表现和教学研究三大模块,通过举例说明的方式,展示了语际影响在二语学习中的重要作用.下面先介绍该书内容,然后讨论其特色以及阅读启发.
及物性是语言学研究中的核心话题,但已有研究主要聚焦物理事件,忽视了心理事件和社会事件中的及物性.本文从认知语言学视角出发,探讨及物性的判断参数,并以此为依据重点分析心理域和社会域的及物性特征,探寻不同认知域及物性之间的关系,揭示及物性的多域性本质、跨域隐喻映射方式以及背后的人类认知.
本研究以471名第二外语为法语的英语专业大学生为研究对象,采用结构方程模型,从情感投入、认知投入和行为投入三个维度探究二外法语在线学习投入的内在作用机制及其与网络自我效能的关系.研究发现:1)情感投入和认知投入对行为投入有直接显著的正向影响;2)情感投入对认知投入有显著正向的预测作用;3)网络自我效能在情感投入与行为投入之间起调节作用.研究结果有助于了解二外法语在线学习投入内在结构的作用机制,为改善相关教学提供参考.
Based on two comparable corpora, LCMC and ZCTC, this paper compared the differences in syntactic complexity between translated Chinese and original Chinese, using 14 absolute and relative complexity indices. This study found that: 1) translated Chinese is significantly higher than original Chinese on eight indices and significantly lower than original Chinese on four indices; 2) there is a significant interaction between text type and genre type on eight indices, and the syntactic complexity of different genres in translated Chinese and original Chinese has different performances on seven indices. The findings prove that translated Chinese has the translation universals of both “simplification” and “complication.” The results of this study are explained by comparative analysis, the “hypothesis of gravitational pull” of cognitive translation, and the “horizontal model of translation” of psycholinguistics.
Through a self-built diachronic corpus, this study conducted a contrastive analysis of the similarities and differences in the tendencies of the construction meaning and pragmatic meaning of Chinese and English “psychological adjective + object（A + O）” constructions in the evolution process. It was found that the similarity of the construction meaning evolution is that Chinese and English constructions have always had the causative meaning. The differences are that Chinese constructions have more semantic types and higher use frequencies, and the number and the semantic orientation of the psychological adjectives between Chinese and English are also different. In modern times, the number of conative constructions in Chinese has increased significantly, automatic constructions have appeared in Chinese, and the number of causative constructions in English has also increased significantly. The similarity of the evolution process of pragmatic meaning is that Chinese and English “psychological A + O” constructions have always had a prominent non-neutral meaning tendency. The difference is that Chinese has always had a negative meaning tendency, but English has evolved from a negative meaning tendency to a positive one. By adopting the subjectification theory, attentional hierarchy model, and pragmatic empathy theory, this paper expounded the similarities and differences in the evolution process of the semantic and pragmatic tendencies of “psychological A + O” constructions between Chinese and English.
词汇语义网络是一个复杂动态系统,其发展因受到多个因素相互作用的影响而呈现出非线性特征.网络科学方法通过考察节点的相互作用模式揭示系统的结构特征和发展路径,为词汇语义网络研究提供了新视角.本研究通过语义流利测试搜集语义关系数据,运用网络分析工具Ucinet建立中国初、高中英语学习者的词汇语义网络.通过比较两个网络的整体结构、社区结构及中心性,研究发现:随着学习时间的增加,1)在宏观层面上,二语词汇语义网络规模扩大,直径增加,小世界特征增强,但网络的密度和中心势下降;2)在中观层面上,网络模块度增强,语义分区更为清晰;3)在微观层面上,中心词相对稳定,但多数单词在网络中的具体位置变动较大.研究结果为词汇语义网络的复杂动态系统特征提供了内在结构解释,并可为词汇教学提供有益指导.
1.引言 句法制图是在生成语法框架下以话语层(CP)和屈折层(IP)等句法层级的普遍性为主要研究对象的新型分支理论,成型于20世纪90年代,以句法学家L.Rizzi、G.Cinque为代表人物.北京语言大学召开的四届句法制图国际研讨会(2015～2021)、2018年在澳门创立的句法制图国际研究协会以及北京语言大学语言学系的成立,均有力地推动了汉语句法制图研究.相关活动的高质量论文集——Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography:A Crosslinguistic Perspective(《句法制图当前论题:跨语言视角》),呈现了句法制图的最新研究成果.该论文集共13章,除引言外分为两个部分:跨语言的句法制图理论与描述(第2～8章)和汉语的句法制图理论与描述(第9～13章).下面先简介各章主要内容,再作简要评析.
The hapax legomena growth pattern is an important field in quantitative linguistics. There have been some initial findings about the hapax legomena growth pattern in written English; however, an examination of literature shows that there are few studies on it in spoken English. Based on the BNC spoken corpus, this study applied the quantitative linguistics method to investigate the hapax legomena growth pattern in spoken English. The result reveals that the hapax/vocabulary ratio forms a downward-sloping “L.” As the size of the text increases, the number of hapax legomena increases slowly, and correspondingly, the hapax/vocabulary ratio decreases gradually; thus, it follows an L-shaped pattern. The reparametrized Tuldava’s model captures the relationship between the hapax/vocabulary ratio and text length, the theoretical pattern of ratios, and the respective 95% lower and upper bound values of the estimates. This power model provides a reasonably good fit for the observed hapax/vocabulary ratio curve. The present study provides a deeper understanding of hapax legomena in spoken English.
《生而解析》一书的作者David W.Lightfoot是美国乔治敦大学(Georgetown University)语言学系教授,他的主要研究领域为历时句法和语言习得理论.该书是Lightfoot教授结合历时句法探讨儿童语言习得的又一力作.作者提出,儿童先天就具有解析(parse)语言的能力,为外部语言(External language)赋予语言结构,在不断发现和选择语言结构的过程中,逐步形成成熟的内部语言(Internal language).除序言外,全书共六章,下面逐章介绍,并作简要评述.
Current controversy in the contrastive study of English and Chinese has obscured the differences between the contrastive analyses of their linguistic structures, meanings, and national patterns of conceptualization. Thus, this article presents three critical issues that demand urgent clarification: 1) Whether their semantic differences should be examined from the perspective of the structural differences between English and Chinese or just end up with their structural differences without looking into their semantic differences? 2) Whether the analysis of their semantic differences should begin with a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese structural differences or the structural differences and semantic differences should be examined in the same breath? 3) Whether their semantic differences should be examined by first making the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese structural differences to provide a deeper insight into the differences between English and Chinese speakers’ national patterns of conceptualization or the examination should focus directly on the semantic differences and the different national patterns of conceptualization without considering their structural differences? This paper proposes that there should be a clear distinction between their highlighted differences and that the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese structural differences should serve as the threshold for studying their semantic differences to bring about a deeper understanding of their underlying differences in the national patterns of conceptualization between English and Chinese speakers. This will further develop the contrastive study of English and Chinese.
语言构式指各级各类语言形式与意义(功能)的匹配体,类别多样、层级复杂,其分类及其内部的理据性关系问题尚未得到很好的回答.本研究将语言构式区分为言语构式和语法构式,言语构式体现人与世界互动的具体经验,包括由词到句至篇不同层级的语言使用单位;语法构式是对言语构式的范畴化(包括类概括和型抽象),体现由感知经验抽象而来的事件类型.言语构式的组合和语法构式的形成是人类对语言及其使用进行认知加工的结果.
