Learning Chinese Duff, Patricia; Anderson, Tim; Ilnyckyj, Roma ...
2013, 2013-03-01, Letnik:
5
eBook
The acquisition of Mandarin Chinese, one of the most important and widely spoken languages in the world today, is the focus of this innovative study. It describes the rise of Chinese as a global ...language and the many challenges and opportunities associated with learning it. The collaborative, multiple-case study and cross-case analysis is presented from three distinct but complementary theoretical and analytic perspectives: linguistic, sociocultural, and narrative. The book reveals fascinating dimensions of Chinese language learning based on vivid first-person accounts (with autobiographical narratives included in the book) of adults negotiating not only their own and others' language and literacy learning, but also their identities, communities, and trajectories as users of Chinese. Patricia Duff, Tim Anderson, Roma Ilnyckyj, Ella VanGaya,Rachel Tianxuan Wang, Elliott Yates.
Rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey meanings of which Chinese speakers themselves may not be aware. Link's Anatomy of Chinese contributes to the debate over whether language ...shapes thought or vice versa, and its comparison of English with Chinese lends support to theories that locate the origins of language in the brain.
The seven essays that comprise this volume address the actual processes by which a discreet number of terms in modern Chinese and Japanese came into being, how they outdistanced all competitors, and ...the persons and texts involved in the process.
The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as ...neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.
In this book Edward McDonald takes a fresh look at issues of language in Chinese studies. He takes the viewpoint of the university student of Chinese with the ultimate goal of becoming 'sinophone': ...that is, developing a fluency and facility at operating in Chinese-language contexts comparable to their own mother tongue. While the entry point for most potential sinophones is the Chinese language classroom, the kinds of "language" and "culture" on offer there are rarely questioned, and the links between the forms of the language and the situations in which they may be used are rarely drawn. The author's explorations of Chinese studies illustrate the crucial link between becoming sinophone and developing a sinophone identity - learning Chinese and turning Chinese.
Including chapters on:
relating text to context in learning Chinese
the social and political contexts of language learning
myths about Chinese characters
language reform and nationalism in modern China
critical discourse analysis of popular culture
ethnicity and identity in language learning.
This book will be invaluable for all Chinese language students and teachers, and those with an interest in Chinese linguistics, linguistic anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and language education.
Edward McDonald is currently Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Auckland, and has taught Chinese language, music, linguistics and semiotics at universities in Australia, China, and Singapore.
The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as ...neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.
This monograph addresses fundamental syntactic issues of classifier constructions, based on a thorough study of a typical classifier language, Mandarin Chinese. It shows that the contrast between ...count and mass is not binary. Instead, there are two independently attested features: Numerability, the ability of a noun to combine with a numeral directly, and Delimitability, the ability of a noun to be modified by a delimitive modifier, such as size, shape, or boundary modifier. Although all nouns in Chinese are non-count nouns, there is still a mass/non-mass contrast, with mass nouns selected by individuating classifiers and non-mass nouns selected by individual classifiers. Some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individuating classifiers only, some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individual classifiers only, and some other languages have no counterpart of either individual or individuating classifiers of Chinese. The book also reports that unit plurality can be expressed by reduplicative classifiers in the language. Moreover, for the constituency of a numeral expression, an individual, individuating, or kind classifier combines with the noun first and then the numeral is integrated; but a partitive or collective classifier, like a measure word, combines with the numeral first, before the noun is integrated into the whole nominal structure. Furthermore, the book identifies the syntactic positions of various uses of classifiers in the language. A classifier is at a functional head position that has a dependency with a numeral, or a position that has a dependency with a generic or existential quantifier, or a position that represents the singular-plural contrast, or a position that licenses a delimitive modifier when the classifier occurs in a compound.
In A Conceptual History of Chinese -Isms, Ivo Spira explores the emergence of Chinese -isms and the key concept zhǔyì ("ism") in the years 1895-1925, covering linguistic, conceptual, and rhetorical ...aspects of their use in ideological reasoning.
This book seeks to interpret the notorious word-class flexibility in Classical Chinese in a new way, based on a multi-disciplinary perspective and the theoretical background of cognitive linguistics. ...It focuses on the case of verbal and adverbial functions of nouns.
