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We contribute to the literature on intentions to report wrongdoing by examining whether Chinese internal auditors make consistent judgments when an ethical dilemma is presented in English and when the same dilemma is presented in Chinese. We invoke cultural frame switching theory, and our findings, which are based on a randomized experiment using between-subjects and within-subject mixed design, support the hypothesis that Chinese internal auditors are more likely to report wrongdoing when the ethical dilemma is presented in English than when it is presented in Chinese. Our results, which demonstrate that internal auditors make inconsistent ethical judgments in English and Chinese, point to language-triggered cognitive bias resulting from cultural mindsets. We suggest practical interventions and language strategies to improve audit quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Language Testing is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Speakers of weak future time reference (FTR) languages (e.g., Chinese) do not need to grammatically mark future events, whereas speakers of strong FTR languages (e.g., English) do. We conjectured that weak FTR languages lead speakers to hold less precise beliefs about timing and, hence, are associated with higher stock price crash risk. Accordingly, using a comprehensive sample of firms in 36 countries (regions) with 221,414 observations from 1988 to 2017, we found that stock price crash risk was significantly higher in regions dominated by speakers of weak FTR languages. Furthermore, the effect of FTR on stock price crash risk was weakened in countries with stronger formal and informal institutions (e.g., high disclosure quality, greater transparency, and less corruption). Our results gave a new explanation for the heterogeneity in stock price crash risk, provided insights into whether language is an economic institution, and added to the research on the effects of languages on economic and financial outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a crucial component of Natural Language Processing (NLP). When dealing with the high diversity and complexity of the Chinese language, existing Chinese NER models face challenges in addressing word sense ambiguity, capturing long-range dependencies, and maintaining robustness, which hinders the accuracy of entity recognition. To this end, a Chinese NER model based on multi-level representation learning is proposed. The model leverages a pre-trained word-based embedding to capture contextual information. A linear layer adjusts dimensions to fit an Extended Long Short-Term Memory (XLSTM) network, enabling the capture of long-range dependencies and contextual information, and providing deeper representations. An adaptive multi-head attention mechanism is proposed to enhance the ability to capture global dependencies and comprehend deep semantic context. Additionally, GlobalPointer with rotational position encoding integrates global information for entity category prediction. Projected Gradient Descent (PGD) is incorporated, introducing perturbations in the embedding layer of the pre-trained model to enhance stability in noisy environments. The proposed model achieves F1-scores of 96.89%, 74.89%, 72.19%, and 80.96% on the Resume, Weibo, CMeEE, and CLUENER2020 datasets, respectively, demonstrating improvements over baseline and comparison models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural language understanding is a foundational task in medical dialogue systems. However, there are still two key problems to be solved: (1) Multiple meanings of a word lead to ambiguity of intent; (2) character errors make slot entity extraction difficult. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a character-word information interaction framework (CWIIF) for natural language understanding in the Chinese medical dialogue domain. The CWIIF framework contains an intent information adapter to solve the problem of intent ambiguity caused by multiple meanings of words in the intent detection task and a slot label extractor to solve the problem of difficulty in yellowslot entity extraction due to character errors in the slot filling task. The proposed framework is validated on two publicly available datasets, the Intelligent Medical Consultation System (IMCS-21) and Chinese Artificial Intelligence Speakers (CAIS). Experimental results from both datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms other baseline methods in handling Chinese medical dialogues. Notably, on the IMCS-21 dataset, precision improved by 2.42%, recall by 3.01%, and the F1 score by 2.4%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This target paper builds on previous literature in Budai Rukai to develop a nuanced framework for examining the syllable structure and the impact of Chinese language education on speakers' judgments. It demonstrates new dimensions of overarching corroboration of intonational phonology and is a worthwhile endeavor. In this commentary, I address the issues of elicitation tasks and language contact by illustrating that the syllable structure of Budai Rukai is still undergoing age-related changes and remains to be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Application Research of Computers / Jisuanji Yingyong Yanjiu is the property of Application Research of Computers Edition and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Modern Educational Technology is the property of Editorial Board of Modern Educational Technology, Tsinghua University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Modern Educational Technology is the property of Editorial Board of Modern Educational Technology, Tsinghua University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper employs the framework of "dynamic categorization" from cognitive linguistics to examine a more radical phase of word meaning derivation. Specifically, it investigates the interaction between word meaning categories and de-categorization in order to elucidate the principles governing word meaning derivation. Through a comprehensive analysis of extensive Chinese and English corpora, our findings indicate that the interaction between word meaning categories primarily is manifested in two forms: (1) expansion between adjacent categories; (2) expansion between analogous categories. The expansion between adjacent categories encompasses linguistic, conceptual, and factual expansions, whereas expansion between analogous categories involves both objective and psychological similarities. Such interaction between word meaning categories may result in partial grammaticalization, antonymization, and polysemy. De-categorization, on the other hand, is primarily achieved through word conversion, grammaticalization, and subjectivization. These processes contribute to the evolution of word meaning beyond conventional clustering models, transitioning from concrete to abstract and from literal to figurative interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional Chinese architecture boasts a unique style and profound cultural connotations. Accordingly, the related literary works attain value for international dissemination. The four-character structures in these works serve as concise expressions for describing architectural details and design concepts. However, due to their linguistic implicitness, grammatical structure diversity, and rich cultural images, their translation into English requires multidimensional shift, redundancy elimination, and the avoidance of cultural defaults. This research has developed an effective translation workflow that leverages the synergistic strengths of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the human translator. By strategically employing tailored methods and techniques, it addresses the challenges in the translation process. Analysis suggests: It is recommended that the technique of shift be employed to address the implicit content and complex grammatical structures in translating four-character structures in Chinese literary works on traditional architecture into English. Besides, the selective application of combination and omission can help deal with information redundancy. Furthermore, it is advisable to apply foreignization and a combined method of literal translation and paraphrasing in conveying cultural images. These approaches will, to a certain extent, convert the untranslatability of four-character structures into translatability, enhancing the dissemination of the essence of traditional Chinese architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hmong, a Chinese ethnic minority, possess a rich cultural heritage. Due to their unique history of exile and migration, the Hmong have scant documentation of their vanishing cultural heritage. The Hmong oral epic constitutes a vital component of documenting Hmong culture. Thus, this paper delves into the translation of the Hmong Oral Epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth', focusing on folklore terms as fundamental units for analyzing Hmong culture. Eco-Translatology has the great importance in protecting the languages of Chinese ethnic minorities and enhancing the dissemination of their literature (Li, 2017). Hence, this paper examines the translation of Hmong folklore terms in the Hmong Oral Epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth' from the perspective of Eco-Translatology. The study reveals 53 translations of Hmong folklore terms, encompassing material, social, and spiritual aspects, within the Hmong oral epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth'. For Hmong material folklore terms, translators predominantly employ the 'target contextualization' strategy, along with 'extending substitution' and 'vitalization' methods. For Hmong social folklore terms, translators favor the 'source contextualization' strategy, supplemented by 'adaptive addition' and 'vitalization' methods. For Hmong spiritual folklore terms, translators predominantly utilize the 'source contextualization' strategy, in addition to 'extending substitution' and 'naturalization' methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interpersonal aspect of political discourse has long been a central issue in translation studies. This paper adds to this line of research by drawing on the latest modelling of translation by systemic functional linguistics with some related notions of coupling, commitment and grammatical metaphor (GM). The language in focus was the coupling of "manner + cognitive process" as in "kexue renshi (scientifically understand)". This study analysed two processes, renshi 认识 (know) and bawo 把握 (hold), extracted from the Chinese–English paralleled corpus of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China I. The major findings are as follows: (i) Cognitive processes were frequently coupled with evaluative manners in Chinese political discourse; (ii) Translation strategies were highly sensitive to the occurrence of manner; and (iii) Phrasal verbs were likelier to be used to reinstantiate "manner + cognitive process"; and (iv) Semantic prosody, GM and lexicalised intensification were the three mechanisms that helped achieve evaluative adequacy while accommodating acceptability to a target reader. Thus, in a political context, it seems that a translator is highly alert to the peculiarity of the Chinese language and often chooses to retain evaluative forces in translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a corpus-based discourse analysis approach, this paper presents a diachronic-cum-contrastive study of institutional translators' mediation of Chinese political discourse through personal pronouns and their collocations with modal verbs, with a view to identifying how interpersonal relations and power distance are diachronically mediated between the author and the readers when recontextualized. The corpus comprises six Work Reports of the Communist Party of China and their corresponding English translations from the 1990s to the 2010s. Textual analysis reveals that there has been a diachronically shifting trend across the six TTs towards constructing a closer and more symmetrical relationship with the target readers vis-à-vis the STs by manipulating personal pronouns. Moreover, the prevalent collocational patterns of 'we' with modal verbs tend to shift from encoding obligation in the earlier TTs to emphasizing inclination in more recent TTs. Further critical analysis of the metadiscourse of China's institutional translation of political discourse suggests that such shifts over time have been motivated by a major ideological evolution in the Chinese political context and the changing target readership. Our findings suggest that a corpus-based diachronic perspective on translation may unveil subtle, patterned variations in minor linguistic signs that provide important clues to broader contextual transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper endeavours to explain why Weigand's dialogic theory – the Mixed Game of human competence-in-performance – should be considered in improving Chinese College English language teaching. This paper will review several of Weigand's key publications and research and analyse current Chinese College English language textbooks and teachers' attitudes toward teaching English speaking. The results suggest that teachers refuse to be involved in teaching English speaking because they lack adequate training and need a theory to guide them. Therefore, based on Weigand's theory of human competence-in-performance, the paper proposes several suggestions for improving oral English teaching. This article hopes to contribute to the further study of dialogic pragmatics in Chinese English language-speaking teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecolinguistics explores the interplay between language and the environment, offering insights into how linguistic elements adapt and evolve. This study examines five cement-related English loanwords in Chinese to uncover the evolutionary mechanisms governing the adaptation of these loanwords by analyzing their ecological dynamics. The research quantitatively evaluates the ecology of these loanwords using two indicators: lexical niche breadth and overlap. The results are as follows: (1) The emergence of English loanwords in Chinese is intricately linked to specific social environments. As new concepts and items are introduced from abroad, the masses initially coin new loanwords, which are later standardized by authoritative bodies. (2) The vitality of the loanwords correlates with their niche breadth. The competition among lexical variants is influenced by niche overlap. The loanwords for cement are ranked by vitality values in descending order—ShuiNi (水泥/water mud): 3.221, YangHui (洋灰/foreign ash): 2.350, ShuiMenTing (水门汀/water-gate concrete): 1.385, HongMaoNi (红毛泥/red-hair clay): 1.202, and ShiMinTu (士敏土/sticky soil): 0.879. (3) The endangerment of the loanwords results from the synergistic interaction between external (nature, society, culture, psychology) and internal (sound, form, meaning, grammar) environments. Intense competition arises due to multiple synonyms for the same entity, and adaptation challenges occur when the loanwords do not precisely fit the entity. Among the five loanwords for cement, the first two exhibit higher vitality and continue to develop sustainably, while the last three show lower vitality and are gradually becoming endangered. As these loanwords undergo continuous evolution, a lexical ecocontinuum emerges: (i) extinct in the wild—ShiMinTu; (ii) critically endangered—HongMaoNi; (iii) endangered—ShuiMenTing; (iv) vulnerable—YangHui; (v) least concerned—ShuiNi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to improve the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by examining technological anxiety and other influential factors on international students' adoption of mobile learning (m-learning) during COVID-19 emergency remote teaching (ERT). Design/methodology/approach: This study utilized the modified UTAUT framework to test hypotheses through a cross-sectional survey method. Participants were university students studying Chinese as a foreign language who were selected using a convenience sampling approach. An online questionnaire was then administered. The data collected from the surveys were analyzed using the partial least squares method with SmartPLS 4 software. Findings: The study examined 16 hypotheses and found support for six of them. The results confirmed that performance expectancy (PE) is a significant predictor of behavioral intention (BI), and anxiety influences both PE and effort expectancy. The negative effect of social influence on anxiety was found to be significant, while facilitating conditions had a negative impact on learners' self-efficacy. The model fit indices indicated a good overall fit for the model. Research limitations/implications: This study presents a valuable contribution to the literature on m-learning in emergency education by incorporating technological anxiety into the enhanced UTAUT model. Examining the relationships between the key factors of the model provides a better understanding of learners' intentions and can inspire researchers to establish new theoretical foundations to evaluate the roles of these factors in diverse educational settings. Practical implications: The study found that performance expectations are linked to learners' intentions, and anxiety indirectly affects BIs to use mobile learning platforms. Thus, these platforms should be designed to meet learners' expectations with minimum effort and eliminate anxiety triggers to facilitate ease of use. Language curriculum developers and policymakers should incorporate mobile learning applications to support diverse language skills, address students' needs and encourage their use through professional development opportunities for instructors. Social implications: Social factors have been found to significantly influence anxiety levels among learners. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers and family members to play an essential role in mitigating anxiety's adverse effects. Discussing related issues can enhance the quality of mobile learning and stimulate social initiative by providers, ultimately improving the learning experience for all learners, regardless of their location or circumstances. This can also contribute to the growth and development of society. Originality/value: This study contributes to the originality of m-learning development by proposing an enhanced UTAUT model that considers anxiety and emphasizes the critical role of foreign learners' BIs. It provides fundamental guidelines for designing and evaluating m-learning in ERT contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have accumulated to suggest that children, akin to adults, exhibit a processing advantage for formulaic language (e.g. save energy) over novel language (e.g. sell energy), as well as sensitivity to phrase frequencies. The majority of these studies are based on formulaic sequences in their canonical form. In natural language use, however, many formulaic sequences, collocations in particular, can be modified with words intervening in between the individual constituents (e.g. save energy → save all forms of energy). For some collocations, their nonadjacent forms are equally, and even more frequently used than their adjacent form. Despite this, it remains almost unknown whether the processing advantage and sensitivity to phrase frequencies persist in nonadjacent collocations in children. Based on reading times in a self-paced reading experiment, the current study found that two age groups – third and sixth graders – exhibited a processing advantage for Chinese collocations and sensitivity to phrase frequencies, with two and even four Chinese characters inserted in the middle. The persistence of processing advantage and sensitivity was affected by insertion length as well as age. These results are in line with a usage-based theoretical approach to language learning, processing and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigation of affective and semantic dimensions of words is essential for studying word processing. In this study, we expanded Tse et al.'s (Behav Res Methods 49:1503–1519, 2017; Behav Res Methods 55:4382–4402, 2023) Chinese Lexicon Project by norming five word dimensions (valence, arousal, familiarity, concreteness, and imageability) for over 25,000 two-character Chinese words presented in traditional script. Through regression models that controlled for other variables, we examined the relationships among these dimensions. We included ambiguity, quantified by the standard deviation of the ratings of a given lexical variable across different raters, as separate variables (e.g., valence ambiguity) to explore their connections with other variables. The intensity–ambiguity relationships (i.e., between normed variables and their ambiguities, like valence with valence ambiguity) were also examined. In these analyses with a large pool of words and controlling for other lexical variables, we replicated the asymmetric U-shaped valence–arousal relationship, which was moderated by valence and arousal ambiguities. We also observed a curvilinear relationship between valence and familiarity and between valence and concreteness. Replicating Brainerd et al.'s (J Exp Psychol Gen 150:1476–1499, 2021; J Mem Lang 121:104286, 2021) quadratic intensity–ambiguity relationships, we found that the ambiguity of valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability decreases as the value of these variables is extremely low or extremely high, although this was not generalized to familiarity. While concreteness and imageability were strongly correlated, they displayed different relationships with arousal, valence, familiarity, and valence ambiguity, suggesting their distinct conceptual nature. These findings further our understanding of the affective and semantic dimensions of two-character Chinese words. The normed values of all these variables can be accessed via https://osf.io/hwkv7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Chinese as a Second Language Research is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Chinese as a Second Language Research is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Chinese as a Second Language Research is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Chinese as a Second Language Research is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article uses the vocabulary measurement indicators of lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, lexical density, and lexical accuracy for second-language writing levels to systematically measure the lexical richness of essays written by Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners. It employs the methodology of building a corpus based on the collected compositions for data analysis. It shows that the Uber index of lexical diversity and the lexical density of CSL learners does not always show a positive correlation with increased test scores. Lexical sophistication usually positively correlates with test scores, but the growth trend tends to be flat from the 81–90 score range. Lexical accuracy below 80 points is positively correlated with writing scores; however, the data above 91 points is slightly lower than that of 81–90 points. This article further hypothesizes that the above measurement indicators fail to accurately measure CSL students' Chinese lexical ability because those indicators do not include the sememe factors of Chinese words and thus rely too much on word form. This article further puts forward the specific manifestations (polysemes, homographs, and multi-category words) of sememe richness and proposes specific solutions to add sememe richness to the four original formulas through the use of the four above-mentioned measurement indicators in CSL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parts of speech system and lexical flexibility in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth Chinese) has long been subjects of debate due to the pervasive zero coding of action reference constructions. In this article, we analyze properties of the Chinese Action Reference Construction from the perspective of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001, 2022), focusing on its structural coding, behavioral potential, productivity, and semantic shifts. We also discuss typological features that potentially reinforce lexical flexibility in Chinese, and the implications that the language-specific properties of Chinese present for cross-linguistic discussions of parts of speech. Specifically, reference, instead of predication, is the most flexible information-packaging function in Chinese, challenging the privileged status of predication established in previous studies on parts of speech and lexical flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: With the growing interest in the psychological basis of language learning, this study aims to validate the Chinese version of the Language Mindset Inventory (LMI) among Chinese university students. Methods: A sample of 476 students from various universities in mainland China was used. The translation process followed the forward-backward method. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were conducted to evaluate the factor structure. The internal consistency of the LMI was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, and convergent validity was examined through correlations with established mindset measures. Results: Compared with the one-factor model, the two-factor model which distinguishes between fixed and growth mindsets, showed an acceptable and better fit index. The overall Cronbach's alpha for the full scale was 0.954, with 0.929 for the fixed mindset dimension and 0.903 for the growth mindset dimension. AVE values for the fixed and growth dimensions were 0.597 and 0.510, respectively. Correlations showed that the growthmindset dimension was significantly positively associated with the 8-Item Growth Mindset Scale (r = 0.186, p < 0.01) and the Mindset Scale for Learning English (r = 0.149, p < 0.01), while the fixed mindset dimension was negatively associated with both scales (r = -0.228 and r = -0.169, p < 0.01). Discussion: This study confirms the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the LMI, making it a relevant tool for assessing language learning mindsets among Chinese university students. The findings support the integration of LMI into educational strategies to promote resilience and adaptability, enhancing language education outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mycosystema is the property of Mycosystema Editorial Board and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examined the accuracy of place name translation during remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) when interpreters were required to use a different variant of their native language. Participants, professional English/ Mandarin from mainland China, were divided into two groups: the Taiwan group, using the Taiwanese Mandarin variant, and the control group, using the mainland variant. The source speech consisted of three lists of place names, some of which had the same Chinese translation in both the mainland China Mandarin variant and the Taiwanese Mandarin variant, while others did not. The two groups of participants performed RSI from English into Chinese. The analysis focused on the third item in each list, chosen due to the differences in Chinese translations between the two Mandarin variants. Results showed no significant difference in the number of incorrect translations for the first test item between the two groups. However, significant variations were observed for the second and third test items, potentially linked to progressive mental fatigue and increased cognitive demand faced by the Taiwan group participants. This suggests that using a non-habitual language variant can impact the accuracy of RSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study explores the dynamics of Linguistic Landscapes (LL) in the commercial tourist district near Labrang Monastery by analyzing the use of Tibetan, Mandarin, and English on café menus. Traditionally, LL research has focused on language visibility as an indicator of vitality, overlooking contextual complexities. We challenge this approach by considering geocultural contexts, instigators' language proficiency, and intended audience. Method: This study employed a triangulation approach, combining multiple methods of data collection and analysis. First, we conducted a preliminary observation of shop names in the region. Second, with the consent of shop owners, we comprehensively documented visual and textual artifacts both inside and outside the cafés, including signboards, menus, wall billboards, and displayed books. Third, we conducted extensive semi-structured interviews with shop owners and customers. These interviews, transcribed for analysis, provided insights into language usage preferences and decision-making processes. Results: By advocating for a holistic LL research approach, integrating qualitative insights with quantitative data, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of LL dynamics. Our findings show that geocultural contexts, instigators' language proficiency, and intended audience all play a role in shaping language representation and vitality. Discussion: The absence of a language on signage does not necessarily signify diminished vitality but can reflect strategic decisions influenced by religious, individual and commercial factors. Beyond mere visibility, languages on café menus serve as symbolic markers of ethnic identity and reflect the functions they assume within the speech community, offering insights into language vitality across different usage contexts. This research enriches scholarly discourse on LL, particularly within the Chinese context, by emphasizing the multifaceted nature of language presence and its vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexive interpretation is a pivotal aspect of discourse comprehension, which usually reveals consistent challenges for Chinese EFL learners. These learners often breach the locality constraint of reflexive pronouns, exhibiting a persistent tendency towards optional reflexive comprehension. Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of the priming technique in altering biases among L2 learners in anaphora resolution. However, no existing studies have investigated comprehension priming in the context of reflexive interpretation among Chinese EFL learners. This study addresses this gap by conducting a sentence comprehension experiment with 36 high school students to explore the potential of comprehension priming in modifying L2 learners' reflexive interpretation biases and examining the persistence of the priming effect. The findings reveal immediate and cumulative priming effects, with no discernible effect observed after 1 week. The results suggest that comprehension priming can occur universally, even without lexical overlap, previously assumed to be a prerequisite. While the priming effect lacks statistical significance after 1 week, there is a numerical increase in participants consistently interpreting the target structure correctly. Thus, comprehension priming emerges as an effective method for L2 learners to internalize more abstract linguistic rules. Further research on comprehension priming across diverse L2 populations and language structures is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual word recognition is crucial for improving reading skills in second language learners (L2Ls). It is unclear whether L2Ls who are native speakers of languages that use alphabetic scripts can recognize Chinese characters at an early stage of visual processing and if their visual specialization can reach a level of word recognition comparable to that of native Chinese speakers. This study aims to uncover the visual specialization mechanism of Chinese L2Ls. A delayedcolor matching task was carried out with participants who were Chinese first language speakers (L1Ss) and advanced Chinese L2Ls with Indonesian as their first language. The results of the event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated that L2Ls exhibited significant visual specialization with a predominant distribution of the left-lateralized N170, along with some activation in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that the early processing stage of Chinese characters by advanced L2Ls is similar to that of adult native speakers, although it is still influenced by their first language and its writing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the correlation between textual ideology and the English translations of political discourse. It focuses on how the translation shifts of modality relate to the socio-political and socio-cultural context of Chinese political discourse using the modality system of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the theoretical framework. Three main types of translation shifts between should and will, and their corresponding items are identified. First, the addition of modal items should and will in the TTs; second, downgrading the modality value of Chinese modality items to the lower-valued should and will in the TTs; third, upgrading the modality value of Chinese modality items to a higher-valued will in the TTs. The study attributes these findings to van Dijk's ideological square model and the variable of tenor (the social distance between the speaker and the addresses and the social distance between the official translators of Chinese political discourse and the international audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Previous studies have shown that relative clause (RC) attachment preferences vary across languages, often influenced by factors like morphosyntactic agreement (e.g., number and gender). Mandarin Chinese, with its limited inflectional morphemes compared to Indo-European languages, provides a distinct context for examining this. This study explores relative clause attachment ambiguity in Mandarin by manipulating classifier-noun agreement. Method: This study conducted two self-paced reading experiments to investigate the influence of an initial classifier on comprehenders' anticipation of its associated noun and the impact of this prediction on RC attachment preferences in Mandarin Chinese. Results: Experiment 1 revealed a significant effect of classifier-noun agreement in offliine comprehension: there was an increase in selecting the high-attachment noun (NPhigh) as the RC attachment site when the classifier agreed with NPhigh, whereas there was a decrease in selecting NPhigh when the classifier agreed with the low-attachment noun (NPlow). Online processing results supported this effect, showing that classifiers guide comprehenders' expectations by pre-activating semantic features of the upcoming noun, thus modulating RC attachment preferences. Experiment 2 introduced semantic compatibility between the RC and potential attachment nouns as an additional disambiguating cue, revealing a reliable prediction effect for the upcoming noun. Although the classifier's prediction effect was diminished, it remained influential in this condition. Discussion: This study highlights the complexity of relative clause attachment in Mandarin, demonstrating the significant predictive roles of classifier-noun agreement and semantic compatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hacettepe University Journal of Economics & Administrative Sciences / Hacettepe Üniversitesi Iktisadi ve Idari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of Hacettepe University, Faculty of Economic & Administrative Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

English intonation is an integral component of English pronunciation teaching. However, as students' proficiency levels in English pronunciation improve, it remains unclear whether their intonation levels also develop. The present study, based on the second language intonation learning theory, aims to investigate the influence of English proficiency on Chinese EFL learners' production of English pitch accents, edge tones, and intonation patterns from the perspective of phonological representation. Two language groups of participants took part in a reading task: native English speakers (12) and Chinese EFL learners (36). The learners were classified into three groups based on their scores in the Chivox National Spoken English Test, ranked from high to low: the advanced, intermediate, and elementary groups. The reading task comprised 90 dialogue pairs. The participants were required to read part B of each dialogue pair aloud, but afterwards, only the Chinese EFL learners attended the semi-structured interview. The results showed that the native English speakers only demonstrated significant differences from each learner group in four of the ten intonation types involving the three aspects of English intonation, which may indicate regional variations in American English and difficulties distinguishing (H*) and (L+H*). In addition, there were no significant differences between the three learner groups in producing the ten intonation types, which maybe attributed to their similar learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented Reality (AR) is believed a suitable teaching method for beginning-level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners in learning Chinese characters, as the effects of AR on visualization may enhance recognition of pictographic characters and the integration of multimedia may facilitate comprehension of this logographic language. Yet the multimodal presentation may trigger different reactions in learners with distinct learning preference, including visual, aural, reading/writing, and kinesthetic (VARK) sensory modalities. This exploratory study aimed to investigate the effects and impacts of learning Chinese characters using AR application on beginning-level CFL learners, and took the impact of learning styles into consideration. Twenty-eight beginning-level Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learner participated in the study, learning 24 Chinese characters with an AR application that demonstrated animated evolutionary processes. A Chinese character recognition test was implemented to evaluate the learning effects in terms of meaning identification and pinyin transliteration before and after the AR intervention. A VARK questionnaire was used to assess their preferred learning styles, and to cross-examine with the learning effects. The results showed significant improvements in the posttest, in particular the identification of character meanings. However, no significant difference was found in the test scores of the four modes of the VARK learning styles, though the learners with multimodal preferences that included the visual learning style had better scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancing power and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) have expanded the roles of AI in education and have created the possibility for teachers to collaborate with AI in classroom instruction. However, the potential types of teacher-AI collaboration (TAC) in classroom instruction and the benefits and challenges of implementing TAC are still elusive. This study, therefore, aimed to explore different types of TAC and the potential benefits and obstacles of TAC through Focus Group Interviews with 30 Chinese teachers. The study found that teachers anticipated six types of TAC, which are thematized as One Teach, One Observe; One Teach, One Assist; Co-teaching in Stations; Parallel Teaching in Online and Offline Classes; Differentiated Teaching; and Team Teaching. While teachers highlighted that TAC could support them in instructional design, teaching delivery, teacher professional development, and lowering grading load, they perceived a lack of explicit and consistent curriculum guidance, the dominance of commercial AI in schools, the absence of clear ethical guidelines, and teachers' negative attitude toward AI as obstacles to TAC. These findings enhance our understanding of how TAC could be structured at school levels and direct the implications for future development and practice to support TAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online language learning with virtual classrooms (OLLVC) is becoming a reality to a large number of students across contexts. Yet students' motivation and engagement in OLLVC remains underexplored. The current study evaluated 6364 university students' motivation and engagement in OLLVC and its interrelationships with environmental support, learner attitude and readiness in the Chinese higher education context. This study employed the adapted motivation and engagement scale and adopted purposive sampling to recruit a sample of undergraduate students, who were engaged in online English learning using VC. The data were examined using structural equation modeling via Mplus 7.4. Results showed that students were generally motivated and engaged in OLLVC and there were significant individual differences across age, English proficiency, gender, academic ranking, and major. Moreover, student evaluation of their readiness for OLLVC mediated the relationships between support and attitude for online learning and student motivation and engagement in OLLVC. These findings call for attention to the importance of taking student readiness as a mediating mechanism in students' motivation and engagement in OLLVC. Implications for supporting virtual-classroom-mediated online language learning are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 4.4 million articles downloaded by Chinese researchers were identified based on downloads of 28 million articles from September 1, 2015, to February 29, 2016 posted on the Internet by J. Bohannon and A. Elbakyan. They were distributed by publishers of scientific periodicals and cities in comparison with article downloads by Russian researchers. Strongly skewed distributions of these downloads were obtained towards the leading cities and publishers. It is shown that the largest downloads of articles are observed in cities concentrated in the Central, Eastern and Southern provinces of China, as well as in the capital, central and eastern regions of Russia. At the same time, downloading of articles by scientists from the first three cities of China was 1.9 times higher than such downloading for the first three cities of Russia. It is shown that for both countries, the largest number of downloads of articles by their scientists falls on journals published by Elsevier, Springer, American Chemical Society and Wiley Blackwell. At the same time, the downloading of articles by Chinese scientists from the journals of the first three publishing houses was 2.8 times higher than the downloading of articles by Russian scientists from the journals of the same publishers. In conclusion, clustering of publications based on discussions around Sci-Hub has been done Sci-Hub, obtained as a result of a search through Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar. Six clusters of publications were identified, of which the largest were clusters of publications on the legitimacy, ethics, accessibility and countermeasures of Sci-Hub activity. Methods for implementing publishing and library measures to neutralize the activities of scientific piracy are proposed. The first measure was related to the dumping price for the sale of electronic copies of articles by publishers, and the second was related to the creation of an online platform for interlibrary loan of research articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine why closing a telephone call in Chinese can trigger intercultural irritations for foreigners. We investigate such irritations by comparing ways in which learners and native speakers of Chinese end phone calls. We follow a tripartite research design anchored in speech acts and interaction. First, we administered Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) to a group of advanced European learners of Chinese and a group of native speakers of Chinese, investigating how members of these groups close telephone calls. Second, we studied two corpora of telephone closing conversations, including a Chinese and an English as lingua franca corpus. Third, we considered whether the pragmatic differences observed through our DCTs reflect broader Chinese and Western conventions of telephone closing observed through our interactional corpora, and whether the behaviour of foreign speakers of Chinese may have been influenced by pragmatic transfer. Through the research outcomes we interpret the above-mentioned intercultural irritations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the major types and main interpersonal functions of meishi (没事 , literally 'I'm fine') by Chinese females in romantic conversation through analyzing collected posts from Sina Microblog. Results show that meishi by Chinese females in the context of romantic relationships primarily manifests the attributes of "expressive" and "assertive" ("insincere assertive" in particular), with specific functions to express comfort (expressive), to implicitly express negative feelings (expressive), and to avoid self-disclosure of negative emotion (insincere assertive). We hold that Chinese women's use of meishi is not only a realization of gendered discourse but also has a practical function as it detects the sincerity and attentiveness of their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the contextual disparities in the meanings of the Korean Hanja word "행복 [hɛŋbok]" and the Chinese Hanzi word " 幸 福 [ɕiŋ51 fu35]," both conceptualized similarly to "happiness" in English. Utilizing computational linguistics methodologies, we analyzed 192,249 instances of "행복" from the Modu Corpus and 324,585 instances of " 幸 福 " from the CCL Corpus, employing collocation, bi-gram, and tri-gram techniques. Our analysis reveals that these words embody distinct cultural, social, and political dimensions in their respective contexts. Korean usage of "행복" shows a strong association with community well-being, social infrastructure, and educational development. Frequently co-occurring terms include "가족" (family), "교육" (education), and "사회" (society), reflecting deep-rooted Confucian values. Conversely, Chinese usage of " 幸 福 " emphasizes national prosperity, collective harmony, and individual life quality. Common collocates include " 国 家 " (country), " 人 民 " (people), and " 生 活 " (life), influenced by traditional philosophies and modern political ideologies. The research highlights significant differences in how happiness is conceptualized in relation to government policies. Korean contexts focus on specific quality-of-life improvements, evident in phrases like "행복 주택" (happiness housing) and "행복 도시" (happiness city). Chinese contexts stress the link between national development and individual well-being, as seen in expressions like " 人 民 幸 福 " (people's happiness) and " 幸 福 生 活 " (happy life). These findings underscore the complex interplay between personal fulfillment and social responsibility in East Asian cultures. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of computational linguistics in analyzing complex cultural concepts, while also revealing limitations in capturing individual subjective experiences. It contributes to contrastive lexicography between Korean and Chinese, offering insights for cross-cultural communication and policymaking in social well-being initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the study of linguistics, body terms are words that denote parts of the human body and, grammatically, they are used as nouns. However, upon examining numerous linguistic materials, it has been observed that body terms do not merely signify body parts but function as classifiers, distinguishing the 'type' of the nouns that follow. Although Chinese and Korean belong to different language families, the use of body terms as classifiers can be found in both languages. Notably, in Korean, body part classifiers can be represented by Chinese characters. This can be inferred as a universal phenomenon within the 'Chinese character cultural sphere'. However, the usage of body term classifiers is not identical in both countries, reflecting language-specific phenomena based on the unique characteristics of each language. This study has conducted a comparative analysis of the usage of body term classifiers in Chinese and Korean and interpreted the mechanisms by which body terms have expanded to function as classifiers from a cognitive perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike Korean or Vietnamese adoptees who came to the U.S. during the postwar era, Chinese adoptees are mostly abandoned female infants under China's one-child policy from 1980 through 2015. Little work has documented Chinese adoptees' identity (trans)formation across time and space. This study examines how three Chinese adoptees from the U.S. who chose to go to Taiwan to teach English make sense of their Chinese heritages and their lives in and out of Asia. Drawing on the frameworks of positioning and chronotopic identities, this cross-sectional, multiple case study documents the participants' identity (trans)formations through their narratives on their moves across the U.S., China, and Taiwan during different points of their lives. Our adoptee participants' home and work experiences over time represent diverse pathways for their negotiations of various aspects of their identities – linguistic, cultural, Chinese, American, Asian American, and adoptee – in their life trajectories transnationally. Their diverse experiences complicate current understandings of adoptee identities within and across the adoptive home, the "homeland" of their birth places, and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this case study, seventy Tibetan residents selected from two Tibetan villages in Danba county, Southwest China, were invited to participate in an investigation of their everyday use of Tibetan, standard Chinese, and English, as well as their expectations of future multilingual practices. It was found that there are intergenerational differences in the participants' use of these languages. This paper, in the context of neoliberal ideology and rural development, suggests that attention should be given to support local Tibetan residents' language learning and improve their multilingual competence, thus enabling the conversion of their linguistic/human capital to economic capital. The study contributes to understandings of how local multilingual resources can be exploited for the betterment of living standards and opportunities, and it calls for governments to address the issues regarding poverty reduction, rural development, and language preservation by improving the quality of multilingual education in ethnic minority areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) has reported inconsistent findings. One significant reason is that these studies mainly adopted a data-driven approach and lacked a strong theoretical basis. This study thus examined the factors underlying FLCA with worry-emotionality theorization of anxiety (Liebert, Robert M. & Larry W. Morris. 1967. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: A distinction and some initial data. Psychological Reports 20. 975–978). A preliminary survey was conducted to validate the original FLCAS with 603 English majors from two Chinese universities, and 20 of them were invited for individual interviews to better understand the factors contributing to their FLCA. Based on these, a questionnaire was constructed through adapting the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and used in a main survey among 557 Chinese university English majors. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to analyse the survey data, while thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. In addition to three factors reported in the FLCA factor validation literature, communication apprehension, self-confidence in speaking English and fear of negative evaluation, this study identified peer pressure as a new factor. The findings reveal the multidimensional nature of FLCA and support the worry-emotionality theorization of anxiety. Implications for the conceptualization of FLCA are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study tested whether the switch costs of production-based language switching tasks by trilinguals are due to competition from outside language schemas or from within language systems. We recruited 90 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals in 10th grade in a Tibetan middle school in China to name digits and number words using different stimuli valence. The study was divided into three experiments, one for each combination of two languages possible amongst Tibetan, Chinese and English. We observed the switch cost symmetrical patterns in the three experiments. The results suggest that the sources of switch cost are partially from outside competition between language schemas and partially from within language system. These results may contribute to our understanding of the language control mechanism between production-based and comprehension-based language switching tasks and language control mechanism of trilinguals with three orthographically different languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We compare right-to-left and left-to-right orthographies to test the theory, derived from studying the latter, that small temporal asynchronies between the two eyes at the beginning and end of every fixation favor ocular prevalence for the left eye in the left hemifield and the right eye in the right hemifield. Ocular prevalence is the prioritizing of one eye's input in the conscious, fused binocular percept. Method: We analyze binocular eye-tracking data from the reading of multiline Arabic and Hebrew text by 28 Arabic (M = 28.7, SD = 7.2 years, 71% female) and 16 Hebrew (M = 30.1, SD = 7.9 years, 50% female) native speakers, respectively. Results: Critically, the complex pattern of asynchronies in Arabic and Hebrew resembles that reported for the left-to-right orthographies, English and Chinese, but with some particular differences that we attribute to left hemisphere specialization in word recognition. Conclusion: We conclude, first, that the oculomotor musculature plays an embodied role in the perception and cognition associated with reading. We further discuss how the evident hemispheric asymmetries in parafoveal lookahead may be reflected in the nature of the conventions of right-to-left scripts. We articulate the claim that the orthographic conventions of a language tend to reflect reading direction and hemispheric differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to adversarial examples (AEs), which are well-designed input samples with imperceptible perturbations. Existing methods generate AEs to evaluate the robustness of DNN-based natural language processing models. However, the AE attack performance significantly degrades in some verticals, such as law, due to overlooking essential domain knowledge. To generate explainable Chinese legal adversarial texts, we introduce legal knowledge and propose a novel black-box approach, knowledge-aware law tricker (KALT), in the framework of adversarial text generation based on word importance. Firstly, we invent a legal knowledge extraction method based on KeyBERT. The knowledge contains unique features from each category and shared features among different categories. Additionally, we design two perturbation strategies, Strengthen Similar Label and Weaken Original Label, to selectively perturb the two types of features, which can significantly reduce the classification accuracy of the target model. These two perturbation strategies can be regarded as components, which can be conveniently integrated into any perturbation method to enhance attack performance. Furthermore, we propose a strong hybrid perturbation method to introduce perturbation into the original texts. The perturbation method combines seven representative perturbation methods for Chinese. Finally, we design a formula to calculate interpretability scores, quantifying the interpretability of adversarial text generation methods. Experimental results demonstrate that KALT can effectively generate explainable Chinese legal adversarial texts that can be misclassified with high confidence and achieve excellent attack performance against the powerful Chinese BERT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]