[PDF] Cognitive Effects Of Learning Mandarin Chinese Numeral Classifiers eBook

Author : Yee Pin Tio
Publisher :
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 16,21 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Chinese language
ISBN :

GET BOOK

This study examines the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on Chinese numeral classifiers (CNCs). NCs are ideally suited to exploring the link between language and semantic categorization, as classifier selection depends on the physical attributes of the associated noun (e.g., Mandarin zhi is used for long and rigid objects and tiao for long and flexible objects). Previous studies on numeral classifiers have addressed the language-cognition link by comparing the cognitive performance of monolingual as well as bilingual speakers of different languages (Lucy, 1992; Saalbach & Imai, 2005; Gao & Malt, 2009). In contrast, the present study sought to address the cognitive effects of numeral classifiers via a training study that investigated whether exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers' object categorization preferences, inhibitory control and memory retrieval. The participants of this study were 99 Native-English speaking College students. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group, which received training on four commonly used CNCs during the initial phase of the experiment, or a control group, which did not receive similar treatment during the initial phase. After the initial phase, the experimental group and the control group were assessed on a Forced Choice Task, a Go/No-Go Task and a Memory Task. A Mixed-design ANOVA indicated that the experimental group displayed a preference for objects sharing the same classifier in the Forced Choice Task and the Go/ No-Go Task (i.e. Go trials) when compared to the controls. The effect of exposure to numeral classifiers on inhibitory control was supported with a significantly lower false alarm rate (in the No-Go trials) for the experimental group. However, no group differences were observed in the results of the analysis of the participants' median reaction times in the Go/No-Go tasks. Similarly, the differences between the two groups' scores on the Memory Task was not found to be significant. The results of the study indicated that exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers' categorization. The results also revealed partial support for the influence of exposure to CNCs on inhibitory processing, but not in the case of object clustering.

Author : Yee Pin Tio
Publisher :
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 49,44 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Chinese language
ISBN :

GET BOOK

In recent years, within research on the relationship between language and cognition, there has been growing interest in examining how language-specific features, such as Mandarin Chinese numeral classifiers (NCs), influence cognitive processing (Kuo & Sera, 2009; Srinivasan, 2010). This dissertation project aims to understand the impact of language learning on cognitive processing of categorization, inhibition, and count-mass distinction. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which potential moderator variables mediate the impact of language on the cognitive outcome measures. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of implicit and explicit instruction by assessing classifier knowledge transferability with delayed testing. In contrast, Experiment 2 examined cognitive processing (i.e., categorization and individuation) as a function of classifier language experience and the context of language exposure via a web-based research design. Experiment 1 (n = 128) indicated that participants that received classifier training display transferability of classifier knowledge in an object categorization task but did not demonstrate a relative advantage of one instructional method over another (i.e., explicit vs. implicit). Findings from Experiment 2 (n = 191) showed that speakers of one and two classifier languages (i.e., Chinese and Chinese-Malay speakers) have a significantly higher classifier-based object categorization preference and significantly lower proficiency in discriminating between count and mass nouns than the control group (English speakers). The Chinese speakers relied more strongly on size to differentiate count and mass nouns. Lastly, the findings combining the groups from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 suggested that language exposure (intensive lab-based vs. naturalistic long-term immersion) affects learner's performance on object categorization tasks. In summary, the instructional method and time of testing and language exposure played a significant role in language learning, retention, and transferability of classifier knowledge: This study has established a research program that systematically examines the effect of the learning of Chinese numeral classifiers on learners' cognitive performance. Understanding the interaction between the experience-based factors and the transferability of classifier knowledge advances our understanding of the dynamic experience of language learning.

Author : XuPing Li
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 40,66 MB
Release : 2013-08-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 3110289334

GET BOOK

This book studies the syntax and semantics of numeral classifiers in Mandarin and other Chinese languages. It explores how Chinese classifiers are semantically interpreted in syntactic contexts and how semantic functions of classifiers are realized at the syntactic level. The book is a contribution to formal Chinese linguistics, and to the understanding of grammatical properties of nominal phrases in Chinese and East Asian languages.

Author : Chungmin Lee
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 39,54 MB
Release : 2021-02-17
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1351679600

GET BOOK

Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.

Author : Jing Jin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 50,91 MB
Release : 2018-06-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1317294963

GET BOOK

Partition and Quantity: Numeral Classifiers, Measurement, and Partitive Constructions in Mandarin Chinese presents an in-depth investigation into the semantic and syntactic properties of Chinese classifiers and conducts a comprehensive examination on the use of different quantity constructions in Chinese. This book echoes a rapid development in the past decades in Chinese linguistics research within the generative framework on Chinese classifier phrases, an area that has emerged as one of the most cutting-edge themes in the field of Chinese linguistics. The book on the one hand offers a closer scrutiny on empirical data and revisits some long-lasting research problems, such as the semantic factor bearing on the formation of Chinese numeral classifier constructions, the (non-)licensing of the linker de (的) in between the numeral classifier and the noun, and the conditions regulating the use of pre-classifier adjectives. On the other hand, particular attention is paid to the issues that have been less studied or gone unnoticed in previous studies, including a (more) fine-grained subcategorization of Chinese measurement constructions, the multiple grammatical roles played by the marker de (的) in different numeral classifier constructions, the formation and derivation of Chinese partitive constructions, etc.

Author : Song Jiang
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 43,33 MB
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 1351967312

GET BOOK

The Semantics of Chinese Classifiers and Linguistic Relativity focuses on the semantic structure of Chinese classifiers under the cognitive linguistics framework, and the implications thereof on linguistic relativity and language acquisition. It examines the semantic correlation between a given classifier and its associated nouns. Nouns in Chinese, which are assigned specific classifiers according to their selected characteristics, reflect the process of human categorization. The concrete categories formed by the relationship between nouns and classifiers may serve to explain the conceptual structure of the Chinese language and certain underlying aspects of culture and human cognition. Song Jiang is Assistant Professor of Chinese for the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at university of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Author : Yongming Gao
Publisher :
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 29,9 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Categorization (Linguistics)
ISBN :

GET BOOK

Mandarin Chinese is a numeral classifier language. In Chinese, a numeral classifier is a free morpheme that obligatorily precedes a noun in a phrase of counting, such as "one stick" and "two tables." The Chinese equivalent of such phrases would be "one long-thing stick" and "two flat-thing tables," where "long-thing" and "flat-thing" represent classifier morphemes. Many believe that numeral classifiers define conceptual categories. Five experiments were conducted to test two hypotheses about their mental representation. Experiments 1, 2, 3 and 4 tested the main hypothesis that there are three different types of Chinese numeral classifier categories associated with three different types of mental representation. Twenty-four classifiers representing the three types were selected for the study. Native Chinese speakers were used as subjects. Experiment 1 generated grammaticality, typicality, and frequency ratings for nouns classified by the three types of classifiers. In Experiment 2, subjects listed central features for each classifier category studied. Experiment 3 reversed the experimental task in Experiment 2, asking subjects to identify the appropriate classifier categories based on the most frequently rated features generated in Experiment 2. Experiment 4 engaged subjects in judging how much each noun embodies the central idea of the classifier category. Data from these four experiments indicate that the three types of classifier categories have very different underlying organizing principles in their mental representation. Type 1 categories are characterized by a set of defining features, Type 2 categories are prototype-based, and Type 3 categories are Mentally represented by arbitrary associations. Experiment 5 was designed to test the second hypothesis that classifier categories may facilitate people's memory storage and recall. Both native Chinese speakers and English speakers served as subjects, with the English speakers being the control group. The data provided limited support for the idea that classifier categories act as an organization device in memory.

Author : Niina Ning Zhang
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 18,34 MB
Release : 2013-05-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 3110304996

GET BOOK

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.

Author : Ann Dowker
Publisher : Frontiers Media SA
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 25,21 MB
Release : 2017-06-16
Category : Cognition
ISBN : 288945200X

GET BOOK

For many years, an abstract, amodal semantic magnitude representation, largely independent of verbal linguistic representations, has been viewed as the core numerical or mathematical representation This assumption has been substantially challenged in recent years. Linguistic properties affect not only verbal representations of numbers,but also numerical magnitude representation, spatial magnitude representations, calculation, parity representation, place-value representation and even early number acquisition. Thus, we postulate that numerical and arithmetic processing are not fully independent of linguistic processing. This is not to say, that in patients, magnitude processing cannot function independently of linguistic processing we just suppose, these functions are connected in the functioning brain. So far, much research about linguistic influences on numerical cognition has simply demonstrated that language influences number without investigating the level at which a particular language influence operates. After an overview, we present new findings on language influences on seven language levels: - Conceptual: Conceptual properties of language - Syntactic: The grammatical structure of languages beyond the word level influences - Semantic: The semantic meaning or existence of words - Lexical: The lexical composition of words, in particular number words - Visuo-spatial-orthographic: Orthographic properties, such as the writing/reading direction of a language. - Phonological: Phonological/phonetic properties of languages - Other language-related skills: Verbal working memory and other cognitive skills related to language representations We hope that this book provides a new and structured overview on the exciting influences of linguistic processing on numerical cognition at almost all levels of language processing.

Author : Gregory Murphy
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 574 pages
File Size : 39,17 MB
Release : 2004-01-30
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780262250061

GET BOOK

Concepts embody our knowledge of the kinds of things there are in the world. Tying our past experiences to our present interactions with the environment, they enable us to recognize and understand new objects and events. Concepts are also relevant to understanding domains such as social situations, personality types, and even artistic styles. Yet like other phenomenologically simple cognitive processes such as walking or understanding speech, concept formation and use are maddeningly complex. Research since the 1970s and the decline of the "classical view" of concepts have greatly illuminated the psychology of concepts. But persistent theoretical disputes have sometimes obscured this progress. The Big Book of Concepts goes beyond those disputes to reveal the advances that have been made, focusing on the major empirical discoveries. By reviewing and evaluating research on diverse topics such as category learning, word meaning, conceptual development in infants and children, and the basic level of categorization, the book develops a much broader range of criteria than is usual for evaluating theories of concepts.