Keynote Speakers

A GIS world map of 723 classifier languages, in a database of 3338 languages, shows a biased pattern of distribution similar to those in a diffusion scheme, where the feature of classifiers radiates outward from a clear center of clustering in Southeast Asia and classifier languages gradually thin out and with less intensive use of classifiers. A hypothesis of a single origin thus seems rather appealing to account for this particular pattern of distribution, especially in Asia, Europe, and the Pacific, thus excluding Africa and the Americas. We propose that numeral classifiers developed indigenously in one language group initially in China or Southeast Asia and all other classifier languages acquired this feature via subsequent language contact. Based on the evidence available, we contend that, between the two competing candidates, Chinese and Tai, the former is more likely the innovator.

To understand why and how a specific approach is applied to uncover and explicitly describe native speakers’ knowledge about their language, one needs to first identify the conception of language underlying the research. In the generative linguistic theory, language is a symbolic, rule-governed biological system. The system is internal to its users the way cognitive faculties such as perception or reasoning are. The language faculty encompasses symbolic representations and rule-governed operations on such representations, all residing in the brain. To decipher such abstract complex representations and operations in the brain, one needs to build on available data and what is known, make hypotheses and test/revise the hypotheses. However, "available data" often come from native speakers’ intuition, notorious for its inconsistency and variation across speakers. This talk will focus on the cognitive aspect of language, demonstrate the research method from the generative perspective, and briefly report on a type of study directly addressing the issue of how to make research on speakers’ intuition replicable.

As with many other languages of the world, Mandarin personal pronouns are also among the most active lexical categories in terms of frequency of use and fluid scope of reference. Thus, the second person singular pronoun ni is often used not to refer to the addressee literally but to refer to the addressee plus others. In this talk, I focus on the hitherto under-explored question of when and why conversationalists deploy second person generic expressions that feature a general and vague referential scope. With a corpus of audio/video recorded natural conversations as data, I show that the conversational contexts in which second person generic expressions appear are usually characterized most prominently by their relatively complex and/or controversial subject matters, participants’ incongruent stances, and/or opposing positions to be contested. These contexts and their associated interactional demands are argued to give rise to the patterning of clustering (multiplicity of instances in adjacent units), limited generality (as good-enough-yet-not-too-broad general statements), and primary (or attempted primary) speakership. In general, second person generic statements can be seen as a special and powerful rhetorical device designed for marked interactional occasions. Finally, I will close the talk with a brief discussion of the implication of these findings for Chinese as a second language pedagogy.

It has long been assumed in the literature of reading that phonological input is necessary for reading, not only in alphabetical languages, but also in logographic languages like Chinese (Tzeng et al. 1979, Mattingly 1984, Perfetti 1999, Pugh et al. 2009, 李俊仁 2010). In this lecture, I will call this long established assumption into question and argue that phonological input is not a necessary condition for recognizing Chinese characters and reading Chinese texts, based on the fact that Taiwanese profound deaf who use Taiwan Sign Language for communication can read and write Chinese with high degree of proficiency. My argument consists of two main points. On the one hand, there is a grammar of Chinese characters which shares fundamental structural and neurological mechanisms with both spoken and sign languages (Myers 2019). Therefore, the Deaf (those who use Taiwan Sign Language) can learn to recognize Chinese characters and thereby manage to learn to read complex Chinese texts, regardless of hurdles in segmenting compounds, phrases, complex sentences, and various kinds of garden paths. On the other hand, given the high degree of irregularity and inconsistency of phonetic radicals in Chinese characters, the Taiwanese Deaf can avoid the interference of the phonological noises and focus on the visual awareness with their visual working memory which has been proven to be stronger than that of the hearing. Unravelling the strands for skillful reading conceptualized in the Simple View of Reading (SVR) (Gough & Tunmer 1986, Scarborough 2001), I argue that phonological awareness is not a necessary condition for the Deaf to recognize Chinese characters and thereby to read Chinese texts. However, the basis of spoken language in childhood does constitute an important sufficient condition for the Deaf to develop skillful Chinese reading. In this connection, the issues that the reading ability of the Deaf children universally lags behind that of the hearing children will be addressed. Finally, the implications of this study for teaching Chinese reading as a second language will also be discussed (戴浩一 2021).

References

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. UK: Penguin books.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and special education, 7(1), 6-10.

Mattingly, I. G. (1984). Reading, linguistic awareness, and language acquisition. In J. Downing & R. Valtin (Eds.), Language awareness and learning to read (pp. 9-25). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Myers, J. (2019). The grammar of Chinese characters: Productive knowledge of formal patterns in an orthographic system. London: Routledge.

Perfetti, C. A. (1999). Comprehending written language: A blueprint of the reader. In C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort (eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 167-208). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pugh, K., & McCardle, P. (2009). How Children Learn to Read: Current Issues and New Directions in the Integration of Cognition, Neurobiology and Genetics of Reading and Dyslexia Research and Practice. New York: Psychology Press.

Sampson, G. (1985). Writing Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Scarborough, H. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Newman & D. D. Dickinson. (eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97-110). New York: Guilford Press.

Tunmer, W. E., & Hoover, W. (1992). Cognitive and linguistic factors in learning to read. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 175-214). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Tzeng, O. J. L., Hung, D. L., Cotton, B., & Wang, W. S.-Y. (1979). Visual lateralization effect in reading Chinese characters. Nature, 282, 499-501.

白樂桑（2020）。華語文教材的本質性標準：一元論抑或二元論。華語文教學的多元視野與跨界思考，9-32。台北：聯經出版公司。

李俊仁（2010）。工作記憶與閱讀。中文閱讀障礙，95-114。台北：心理出版社。

徐通鏘（2008）。漢語字本位語法導論。濟南：山東教育出版社。

裘錫圭（1994）。文字學概要。台北：三民書局。

戴浩一（2021）。建基於漢字與漢語結構的中文二語閱讀理論，《臺大華語文學習與科技 創刊號》，1卷，1期，13-35。

戴浩一、蔡素娟（2021）。手語語言學。語言學：結構、認知與文化的探索，343-384。台北：台大出版中心。

This talk begins with an overview of the phonological aspects of tone such as tonal contrast, feature representation of tone, and the analysis of tone sandhi. The traditional methods of using lexically manifested tone patterns and typological generations on tonal inventories and tone sandhi have provided key insights on these issues in earlier theoretical work, but have also run into intractable problems due to the complexity, variability, and phonetic arbitrariness of the tone patterns. This talk advocates adopting phonetic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods to further advance our theoretical understanding of tonal phonology, from acoustic studies of tonal contrasts, auditory priming studies on tonal representation, to ERP and MMN studies of the production and perception mechanisms of tone sandhi. These methods are illustrated by studies of various Chinese tone systems in Mandarin, Wu, Southern Min, and Hakka. The talk ends with a call for openness and collaboration in the study of Chinese tone and for respect for the linguistic diversity of tone patterns in Chinese dialects.