Ph.D. - East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10125/2034

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What Once Had Meaning: Ritual in Early Chinese Texts
(2024) Fleming, Ryan Davis; McCraw, David; East Asian Language & Literature
Interaction with Food in a Multicultural Cooking Class
(2023) Huang, Shu-Yu; Wang, Haidan; East Asian Language & Literature
Synchronous Computer-mediated L2 Chinese Collaborative Writing: Peer Interaction, Text Quality, and Learner Perceptions
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Zhai, Mengying; Wang, Haidan; East Asian Languages and Literatures
In recent decades, collaborative writing (CW) has gained more popularity in L2 learning settings as a useful pedagogical activity, and a large body of empirical research has confirmed its benefits. Through peer interaction, CW contributes to the construction of linguistic knowledge, which in turn contributes to the learning of L2 (Swain, 1998; Swain & Lapkin, 1998, 2001; Watanabe & Swain, 2007). CW also provides the social context for L2 learners’ language development by sharing ideas, pooling their language resources, providing collective scaffolding (Donato, 1994; Ohta, 2001; Swain, 2000; Swain et al., 2002), as well as internalizing the knowledge they co-create with their peers (Thorne & Hellermann, 2015; Wertsch, 1979). As CW benefits are closely associated with peer interaction, a critical issue involves how peer interaction influences the implementation and outcome of CW in the progressive unfolding of the CW activity. Despite previous research suggesting that group dynamics contribute to the divergences in generating L2 learning opportunities and text qualities, no L2 Chinese CW research has yet to examine (a) how group dynamics, as manifested in peer interaction patterns, are shaped as the task interaction unfolds; (b) how interaction patterns may lead to variations in CW text qualities, and different aspects of learners’ collaborative dialogues; and (c) how learners’ perceptions and attitudes reflect their participation in CW. This study set out to bridge these research gaps by investigating the relationship between peer interaction, text quality, and learner perceptions during a CW task conducted in an L2 Chinese context. Forty-six high-intermediate L2 Chinese learners worked in 23 pairs to complete a CW writing task in which they jointly wrote an argumentative essay using Google Docs as a co-authoring platform and Zoom as a video-conferencing tool to communicate with each other synchronously. Twenty-three pair interaction videos were transcribed and analyzed to identify the dyadic interaction patterns, peers’ collaborative dialogues, and participants’ interactional practices. Twenty-three co-constructed essays were collected and analyzed for text quality using an analytic scoring rubric. Additionally, forty-six participants’ pre- and post-task survey responses were collected and analyzed to examine their perceptions and attitudes towards CW. A number of quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to understand the complex interactions between peer interaction, text quality, and learner perceptions. The principal findings indicated that participants working in more collaborative dyads displayed higher levels of mutuality, produced CW texts of higher quality, and generated more language-learning opportunities. Furthermore, participants in more collaborative dyads reported more positive task experiences than those who worked in less collaborative dyads. The findings of this study shed light on the role that peer interaction plays in CW activities and how peer collaboration types can affect other aspects of CW including text quality, collaborative dialogues, and learners’ perceptions. In terms of methodological contribution, this study provides more fine-grained guidelines and incorporates a micro-analytical approach to identify dyadic interaction patterns. Pedagogically, it provides empirical evidence to support the use of CW in teaching L2 writing and provides suggestions for L2 instructors on how to facilitate their students’ participation in CW.
A Corpus-based Study On Conceptual Metaphors For Heart In Chinese And English
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Wu, Qiong; Jiang, Song; East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) started a new approach to viewing metaphors in languages. Traditionally, metaphor is considered as one of the rhetorical devices. Conceptual metaphor, however, is an approach for us to understand abstract notions in terms of relatively concrete concepts. The HEART metaphor in Chinese plays an essential role in forming and motivating related collocations. Previous studies of conceptual metaphors of HEART in Chinese are based on the data from dictionary entries. There is a lack of corpus-based studies on the HEART metaphors at the collocation level in both L1 and L2 Chinese, presenting the authentic usage of HEART metaphorical collocations in the native speakers’ and language learners’ daily language. To fill this gap, this dissertation examines the HEART metaphorical collocations in Chinese native speakers’ corpus, L2 Chinese corpus, and American English corpus. The main results include: 1). The Chinese HEART is the locus of a wide range of emotions and other types of body feelings, whereas the English HEART metaphors do not show the same feature; 2). Most of the Chinese HEART collocations are not highly lexicalized idioms, while most of the English HEART collocations are lexicalized phrases; 3). The Chinese HEART collocations that are motivated by the metonymy THE HEART AS A PERSON is also associated with a wide range of human behaviors like thinking and complaining, but the study does not find the English HEART collocations relate to human behaviors by the native speakers of American English. 4). L2 Chinese learners show a very different pattern in terms of HEART collocations in Chinese. Collocations motivated by the HEART metaphors are significantly underused compared with L1 Chinese.
Su Shi: Coping With The Final Exile
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Brown, Gregory David; Spring, Madeline K.; Chinese
This dissertation is a systematic examination of prose writings by Su Shi (1037-1101). Chinese history treats Su Shi as one of the Eight Great Prose Masters of Tang and Song. Su’s lifetime total of more than 4,800 prose texts is the largest number written among Northern Song (960-1127) literati. Although documentation on Su Shi is more substantial than for any other Northern Song literatus, this study fills a lacuna in Su’s final fourteen months of prose. This study contributes to the broader body of scholarship by focusing solely on Su Shi’s prose writings after his final exile on Hainan Island (1097-1100). I examined all prose writings by Su Shi after his notification of amnesty. My goal is to seek insights into Su’s final period of prose composition, and how Su Shi expresses his views within these texts on themes that include spiritual transcendence, religious concepts, and a search for ultimate life values. The 2010 verified dating of Su Shi’s literary production accounts for 248 prose writings after his Hainan exile. In this dissertation, twenty-four carefully selected texts from those writings are translated and analyzed as the best representing this period. Close reading of these chronologically ordered texts is supported by detailed explicating of annotations and historical circumstances surrounding each prose specimen. We obtain insights demonstrating evolving nuances in Su’s psychological, philosophical, and religious thoughts following his last exile. This dissertation epitomizes Su Shi’s coping with challenges to his life’s previously-known identity. After his Hainan exile, Su’s prose writings document him confronting three prominent themes: an unanticipated retirement suddenly erasing his political value as a scholar-official, troubling truths for spiritually transcending death, and Su’s final identifications with the Three Teachings Sanjiao 三教 of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism for unity with the Way.
The Acquisition of Japanese Relative Clauses by L1 Chinese Learners
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Chen, Yunchuan; Fukuda, Shinichiro; East Asian Languages and Literatures
This dissertation focuses on L1 Chinese learners’ acquisition of Japanese relative clauses (RCs), as it provides an ideal testing ground for two important questions of L2 acquisition in syntax: (i) when two languages have a superficially similar syntactic structure that arguably involves different syntactic operations, can L2 learners acquire the difference? (ii) if successful acquisition of such a difference does occur, in what ways does that inform us about the nature of L2 acquisition of syntax? Despite such superficial similarities between Chinese and Japanese RCs, previous theoretical work puts forward different analyses for their syntactic structures. Thus, the first two parts of this dissertation provide novel experimental evidence indicating that the head noun phrase (NP) of RCs is only base-generated in Japanese but is either raised or base-generated in Chinese. Nevetheless, the experimental evidence also suggests that the raising strategy is preferred to the base-generation strategy to derive the head NP from the singly embedded object position of Chinese RCs. In the third part, I reported the findings from another experiment I created to explore whether L1 Chinese learners of L2 Japanese are able to acquire the syntactic knowledge that the head NP of Japanese RCs can only be base-generated. Since such knowledge is implicit, I used a diagnostic to test how L1 Chinese learners interpret the anaphor jibun ‘self’ within the head NP of Japanese RCs. The experimental results show that at least some advanced L1 Chinese learners of Japanese have acquired the difference between Chinese and Japanese RCs in terms of the interpretation of the anaphor inside the head NP, despite its underdetermined nature. This in turn argues for the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994, 1996) and argues against ‘partial access to UG’ approaches such as the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).
Investigating Chinese Second Language Pragmatic Competence in Interaction Using Paired Speaking Tests
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Xia, Xue; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)
Second language pragmatic competence, the ability of language learners to understand and perform the pragmatic functions of target languages in social interactions (Taguchi & Roever, 2017), develops over time and is an important research area. Youn (2015) defines L2 pragmatic competence in interaction as the ability of interactive participants to use different pragmatic and interactive resources to achieve pragmatic meaning and conduct actions in organized sequences. In the current study, the peer-topeer paired speaking test, considered as a way of classroom assessment, was employed to investigate Chinese learners’ second language (L2) pragmatic competence in interaction in the personal language use domain. An analytical rubric was developed based on related conversational organizations and interaction relevant studies for raters to award scores. Mixed method design was employed to analyze the data - test takers’ in-test discourse. The results indicate that open role-play and situational topic discussion (extended discourse) tasks were effective in eliciting interactions for assessing the construct. The test content was based on the needs analysis of the most commonly used situations, topics, and language functions in this domain. When using the analytical rubric to assess test takers’ in-test discourse, inter-rater reliability did not meet established thresholds. The detailed results of DA for 12 excerpts of in-test discourse not only identified additional components (language use and situation response), but also distinguished new interactional features within the three major interactional rating categories (turn-taking organization, sequence organization and topic management). DA revealed that all the rating categories were distinguishable across three different competence levels, a finding that was confirmed via quantitative analyses (descriptive statistics and repeated measures ANOVA). Based on the general interactional features summarized from in-test discourse, the developmental trajectory of Chinese learners’ L2 pragmatic competence in interaction was summarized by five elements: frequency, proactivity, complexity, content and coherence. Specifically, as L2 pragmatic competence in interaction develops, learners are more active, and their cognitive abilities are more capable of dealing with faster turn-takings, more complex structures, and the more coherent delivery of deeper content. The findings from the mixed method approach were strengthened and could help to revise the analytical rating rubric and improve future rater training. In summary, the findings offer the potential to contribute to the future assessment of Chinese learners’ L2 pragmatic competence in interaction.
Motivation in U.S. Learners of Mandarin as a Foreign and Heritage Language
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Lin, Chuan; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)
Motivation provides not only the primary impetus to initiate second language (L2) learning, but also the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious learning process (Dörnyei, 2005). Dörnyei (2005, 2009) proposed the L2 motivational self system that is made up of ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, and L2 learning experience. Researchers have started to test the applicability of the model, and have found that the ideal L2 self correlates highly with intended learning effort, and the variables of the L2 Motivational Self System have been tested through many studies conducted with English as a foreign language learners. However, there is a lack of research testing the model with languages other than English. To fill this gap, this dissertation further tests L2 Motivational Self System in the context of learning Mandarin. It also examines possible differences of motivational factors between heritage and nonheritage language learners of Mandarin at the college level in the United States. 229 learners of Mandarin from 10 colleges in the United States participated in this study. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the causal relationships among the motivational factors and between these factors and criterion measures. The results showed ideal L2 self and L2 learning experience of the L2 Motivational Self System motivated learners to put more effort into learning Mandarin. However, the ought-to L2 self could not be seen as a strong predictor of intended effort of learning Mandarin. In addition, significant differences were found between heritage and nonheritage learners of Mandarin on ideal self, ought-to L2 self, L2 learning experience, intended effort and family influence. There was not a significant difference between the two groups on instrumentality (China and Mandarin). Pedagogical suggestions for teachers to motivate students to make more effort in learning Mandarin both in and outside of the language classroom are also discussed.
Dynamic Interfaces in Beginning L2 Mandarin Construction Learning: A Usage-Based Corpus Investigation of Frequency Distribution, Communicative Function and Salience
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Riggs, Reed S.; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)
Constructionist research on L2 learning has focused on the degrees to which skewed frequency (Goldberg, Casenhiser & White, 2007; Casenhiser & Goldberg, 2005; Goldberg, Casenhiser, & Sethuraman 2004) in a person's linguistic environment can facilitate entrenchment, schematization, and contingency learning (Ellis, Römer, & O'Donnell, 2016; Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009a; Ellis, 2002). Usage-based learner corpus studies by Eskildsen (2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017), focusing on just one or two L2 learners in an ESL classroom, found evidence for (1) learning in the forms of entrenchment and schematization as evidence of developmental sequences (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig, 2002) within individual grammatical constructions, and (2) the learners' experiences with talk-in-interaction helped to provides some of the exemplars that drive fixed multi-word expressions (MWEs) toward schematic, end-state constructions. Meanwhile, Ellis & Ferreira-Junior (2009a) provide an account of contingency learning among adult immigrants to the UK by comparing their distributions of words across three grammatical constructions in both the learners' speech and the speech of native speakers. This study found similar distributions between native and non-native speakers. Gaps remain for Constructionist/Usage-based research to account for contingency learning in connection with observable experience in an L2 that is distant from English and during early stages. Addressing these gaps, this dissertation study investigates contingency learning under conditions of heavily skewed input in L2 classrooms, i.e. institutional forms of social interaction (Heritage & Clayman, 2010). A learner corpus was created to follow ten beginning learners from the Mainland United States during an intensive Mandarin Chinese language camp in Hawai'i. The learners had minimal or no experience with Chinese learning prior to the start of camp. Instruction was organized around several types of pedagogy: the comprehension-in-interaction oriented Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS; Ray & Seely, [1997] 2015; Cahnmann-Taylor & Coda, 2018; Lichtman, 2013), peer-talk-in-interaction oriented Task- Based Language Teaching (TBLT; Long, 2015, 1985; Ellis, 2009), Cold Character Reading (CCR; Neubauer, 2018; Waltz, 2015), Extensive Reading (ER; Ro, 2017; Jeon & Day, 2016; Nation, 2015; Hitosugi & Day, 2004), and Chinese "scaffolded writing" (Waltz, 2015). Collostructional Analysis (Stefanowitsch, 2013; Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2003) is used to compare frequency distribution, collexeme strength, and contingency (measured with bidirectional Delta P) in five main corpora (capturing language that was heard, said, read, and written) with corresponding test corpora (freely written and spoken stories) across five recording periods. Concreteness (one form of salience; e.g. Crossley, Kyle, & Salsbury, 2016; Brysbaert, Warriner, & Kuperman, 2014) is considered as a factor that may complicate effects from frequency distribution. Finally, institutional interaction (Heritage & Clayman, 2010) is investigated in regards to how teachers and students use and re-use limited language for talking their institution into being (p. 20). Findings reveal how the participants used a single Chinese pattern as a resource to (a) acquire that Chinese pattern, and (b) co-construct institutional practices around story-building. These analyses illustrate how this institution-specific interaction resulted in highly skewed frequency. The collexeme analyses reveal a close match between frequency distribution in classroom experience and the learners' freely written and freely spoken stories in test corpora. These findings highlight an active role for contingency learning during early construction learning and language development, given the environments these particular learners experienced.
Lability of Verbs and the Change-of-State Construction in Chinese
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-08) Zhang, Liulin; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)
It has often been noted that some Chinese verbs can be used transitively or intransitively, and that the syntactically privileged argument (subject) in these different uses has different semantic roles. Many terms have been introduced to describe this phenomenon, among which verb lability appears to be the most felicitous one, given its transparency and straightforwardness: it does not pertain to notions absent in Chinese, nor does it encode any information about the function of the transitive/intransitive construction pair, which has been highly contentious in previous studies. Set within the framework of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, this dissertation proceeds from the assumption that language is usage-based instead of rule-generated. Accordingly, it employs a diachronic corpus-based approach. Meanwhile, to adapt to the special feature of Chinese, i.e., the rich varieties of Chinese are connected by characters, this dissertation’s diachronic analysis of lexical semantics is based on Chinese characters. Corpus data from the pre-Qin period (Old Chinese), the Tang dynasty (Middle Chinese), and the Ming dynasty (Early Mandarin) show that the ‘theme + labile verb’ construction is extraordinarily ancient and stable in Chinese, and that historically, labile verbs prototypically denote changes of state. An extensive study of verbal semantics in Modern Mandarin reveals two semantic factors determining verb lability: change of state and spontaneity. While change of state is the prototypical function of labile verbs and the construction pairs formed by them, the contingency between labile verbs and their transitive/intransitive use is sensitive to the likelihood of spontaneous occurrence of the event being described. This finding holds in a cross-linguistic context, reflecting general characteristics of human conceptualization. The complex event structure represented by a change-of-state event gives way to two competing strategies for 􀀉 􀀪􀀵􀀉 profiling in human construal – agent orientation and theme orientation – which respectively lead to the transitive use and intransitive use of a verbal. However, as an isolating language in which causative/anticausative is not marked, Chinese exhibits an overwhelmingly large group of labile verbs in comparison with other languages. The intransitive change-of-state construction (CSC) formed by labile verbs has traditionally been referred to as the notional passive construction, and distinguished from the socalled Chinese passive construction marked by 么bei. After investigating the process of grammaticalization of the character 么, it is found that 么 derived an ‘affected’ sense in construal from its lability (denoting ‘cover/receive’), and thus the 么bei construction (BEIC) can be roughly represented as ‘affectee +么+ event’. In contrast to CSC, BEIC predominantly takes animate subjects as affectees, and the events that affect them are not limited to change-ofstate events. In Chinese, the overall frequency of CSC is much higher than that of BEIC, but this prevalence is not commented upon or otherwise reflected in Chinese textbooks. Moreover, previous studies have reported contradictory findings about learners’ acquisition of CSC and BEIC. Taking a usage-based approach to language acquisition, The present research includes two experiments involving picture-description tasks. The results indicate that Chinese learners use more BEICs and fewer CSCs than native speakers do. Additionally, due to the difference in markedness, CSC is much more difficult to notice during incidental exposure than BEIC is, rendering explicit instruction necessary. It needs to be noted that such explicit instruction merely functions to counteract the attentional bias, and is not necessarily about the selectional constrainsts between these two constructions, which are inherent in learners’ cognition.

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