発表会　 ２８平成１月２８日

SOCIAL VALUES EXPRESSED IN JAVANESE AND JAPANESE PROVERBS ジャワ語と日本語の諺に表わされた社会的価値

Language Sciences B5KM2004 Windy Harsiwi

Background Proverbs exist in all countries in the world. Not only a country, but also a small tribe has its own proverbs. Just like folklores, proverbs are a way to communicate with the ancestors. It is one of the ways to form one’s own identity and to convey a social value. Although there are many similar proverbs in different countries that bring the same value, the expressions are different. Additionally, there are many proverbs that sound the same, but are expressed differently in different countries. I will choose proverbs from Javanese and Japanese languages because, structurally, they be-long to the same group, which is a high context language that is more complicated in using deep structure rather than that from low context language. One of the main aspects in dealing with the high context language is the word choice that uses metaphor a lot. Moreover, as they belong to the same group, Javanese and Japanese languages should have some similarities, but not to mention, differ-ences toward each other. Those similarities and differences analysed here are based on social values conveyed through proverbs. Proverbs are very important in one’s culture as they help parents give advice and encourage-ment to their children. When children are unconfident with what they do with themselves, the parents can say 千里の道も一歩から in Japanese, or Alon-alon waton kelakon in Javanese. Both proverbs

bring the same meaning that encourages someone to start anew and somehow, we will be able to do it. The point is that we have to try something before saying we cannot do it. On the other hand, they also have differences, especially in the semantic usage, as Japanese uses the distance analogy, Javanese uses only a general words. I find this intriguing since both of the cultures express the same meaning using semantically two different proverbs. Derived from the above explanations, there are three ques-tions proposed: 1. How do people express proverbs in Javanese and Japanese? 2. What are similarities and differences between them? 3. What are social values expressed in them?

Previous Studies Ahmed (2005) states that proverbs are cultural signposts in given societies; people express their beliefs, values and attitudes towards their surroundings through them. Moreover, he proposes that many of the proverbs in Sudanese and British cultures are didactic and their advice is often harsh, painful, and even cruel. Yet, they are accepted by people as social interventions to control of be-haviour and promotion of various personal values such as resignation to fate, truthfulness, con-formism, or opportunism in business. In addition, Valiultyte (2010) states that proverbs are the items of traditional knowledge based on life experiences and observations of past generations. She also suggests that proverbs perform many functions. They can be used as warnings, encouragements, judgements, mora ! ! ! ls, advice. 211They might also be used by people to support one’s truth, attitude, or belief. This is the same as what Widyastuti (2010) proposes and gives additional functions of the proverb as from generation to gener-

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ation, proverbs have the function to give advice, warning, and insinuation. She also explains that kin-ship, patience, hard work, exemplary, sincerity, modesty and peace are the moral values exist in the proverbs. So, it can be concluded that proverbs do have many functions and moral values. On the other hand, Widyastuti (2012) explains that there is a view of life in Javanese proverbs that are related to the harmony of life. In addition, she proposes that there are similarities between Javanese and Chinese proverbs that show the same view of life. It is known that Japan and China have some similarities such as architecture, foods and folklores. So, stating Javanese and Chinese’s view has some similarities means that it has a high probability for Japanese having similarities to Javanese about view of life. The similarities between Japanese and Javanese is not about those mentioned above. For example, a folklore is functioned as a role-model for children, it teaches children how to behave and how to deal with some problems. In addition, most folklores, as one of the spoken tradi-tions, have proverbs in it that make the value transferred is the same. This is just as Moreno (2005) states that proverbs highly economic resources to transmit ideas, and thus, they are pragmatically effi-cient. Moreover, she proposes that proverbs are informative for anyone who wants to have access to the traditions and to the popular believes of a community of speakers. Research Methods This is a qualitative research. The subject in this research are Javanese and Japanese proverbs. The objects of this research are two books Buku Pinter Basa Jawa Pepak (Javanese) and Japanese Proverbs Wit and Wisdom (Japanese). The method used is a descriptive method. The validity used is semantic validity, and the reliability used is read and comprehend. Example: 千里の道も一歩から。(Even a thousand-mile journey begins with the first step.)

Alon-alon waton kelakon. (Slowly but sure.) Both proverbs encourage us to make a first move. This Japanese proverb uses a specific term of 千里

(1000 ri) and 一歩 (one step), on the contrary, the Javanese one is more general by using nothing in

particular.

References Ahmed, Salwa. (2005). Educational and Social Values Expressed by Proverbs in Two Cultures: Knowledge and Use of Proverbs in Sudan and England. Ph.D. Dissertation. Berlin: Berlin University. Galef, David. (2012). Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom. Singapore: Tuttle Moreno, Ana Ibanez. (2005). An Analysis of the Cognitive Dimension of Proverbs in English and Spanish: the Conceptual Power of Language Reflecting Popular Believes. pp.42-54 Prayitna, Hendra. (2014). Buku Pinter Basa Jawa Pepak. Surabaya: Karya Utama Valiulyte, Simona. (2010). Proverbs as a Reflection of Life and Thinking of English People. Bachelor Thesis. Vilniaus: Siauliai University. Widyastuti, Sri Harti. (2012). Kandungan Nilai Moral dalam Ungkapan Tradisional Jawa dan Pepatah Cina. In LITERA Volume 11 number 1, pp.147-157. Widyastuti, Susana. (2010). Peribahasa: Cerminan Kepribadian Budaya Lokal dan Penerapannya di Masa Kini.. Retrieved from www.eprints.uny.ac.id

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Presentation of Research Title 2016. 01. 28

Synonymy and Contextual Word Choice

International Graduate Program of Language Sciences B5K2005 Eric Shewack

I. Introduction

Synonymy is an occurrence which presents itself in each and every natural language. However, what

defines synonymy itself is unclear and controversial thus presenting many obstacles to linguistics and

semanticists since the time of Aristotle to the present day. It would not be uncommon for an Elementary

school teacher to teach his or her students that synonyms are two words with the same meaning. Such a

definition would suffice for the sake of a surface level definition of this phenomenon. However, defining

synonymy in this manner is an extreme oversimplification and does not account for a pair of lexemes which

cannot be substituted in different contextual-dependent combinations, stylistic differences, intended emphasis,

formality, collocational patterns, et cetera. A case in point example can be seen in She is my big sister. If we

are to substitute big with large we would no longer be inferring she is older than me but rather heavier in

stature. At the same time, big and large appear side by side in thesauruses as synonyms but the two clearly are

not exactly the same in nature as they share different senses. This is a textbook example of just one of the

many problems which arise in synonymy.

The problems synonymy presents to linguists are wide, varied and unlimited just like synonymy itself.

Therefore, this study will primarily focus on three questions which are common, yet still unresolved

occurrences in synonymy.

II. Questions and Hypotheses

1) Are there any sets of words in language which function identical in meaning and behavior in any

given contextual circumstance?

“If we believe there are instances where two expressions cannot be differentiated in respect of meaning,

we must be deceiving ourselves.” (Harris 1973: 12-13)

It is widely agreed upon, that this phenomenon which is often called Absolute or Total Synonymy does not

exist and I am also of this opinion. While this case has more evidence working against it than for it, it is my

belief that a thorough analysis is needed at the onset of this study as it: Brings problems with synonymy to the

forefront as well as serving as an anchor point if we are to conclude synonymy is a gradable concept.

2) In cases such as pretty: handsome which can loosely be defined as terms for “good-looking”. We risk

walking the line between near-synonymy and non-synonymy if we look at contrastive terms such as

masculine vs. feminine connotations. How can we account for this paradigm?

“The borderline between near-synonymy and non-synonymy, however, is much less straightforward and it is

not obvious what principle underlies the distinction.” (Cruse 2000:156) By this, Cruse is referring to the risk of

two lexemes which seem to be very close to each other semantically, actually being complete opposites when a

certain aspect is foregrounded, hence the term non-synonymous. This, in essence, risks defeating the whole

purpose of synonymy which is supposed to be a sense of semantic sameness. My position is that in cases such

as the aforementioned, the generally conceived notion of the words in question should determine their

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sameness and discrepancies should be treated with utmost scrutiny. This is in part due to the vastness and ever

evolving nature of language. It would not be uncommon to hear an utterance such as “He was a beautiful

human being.” when recalling the positive attributes of a deceased male individual. These intuitions are able to

confirmed and verified by the use of corpora. The following sentence was extracted from the Corpus of

Contemporary American English: “This description echoes an earlier reference to the Roman god of the

seasons Vertumnus represented as a beautiful young male figure.” (Hawthorne and the Gender of Jewishness,

Jun 2012, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p135-152, 18p) This is just one of many examples where beautiful is used in a

gender-neutral sense, numerous corpus samples also exist for handsome as gender-neutral term for “good-

looking.”

3) What effect does context have on isolated lexemes and do words themselves have inherent meaning or

are they completely context dependent?

The seemingly opposite lexemes empty: full are undoubtedly contrastive terms in isolation. However, imagine

a glass filled with fifty percent of water on a table. The optimistic says the glass is half full but the pessimist

says the glass is half empty. The speaker’s disposition ultimately determines the word choice; however, both

full and empty accurately describe the scene. How can two nouns that are traditionally complete opposites

account for this phenomenon? I will use situations such as this to make a case that context does indeed play a

role in word meaning.

III. Research Methods and Conclusion

“If we really want to discover implicit semantic nuances, we need to look at real language usage, for instance

in corpora of naturally occurring utterances.” (Dam-Jensen and Zethsen 2008: 207). This view is commonly

held among prominent linguistics and preliminary research suggests to me as well that corpora data is the

strongest tool in discerning semantic nuances. As illustrated above, native speakers of a particular language

hold a certain intuition regarding the appropriateness of lexeme usage. This usage data is archived in numerous

corpora and can serve as an invaluable tool in drawing conclusions to the questions presented in this research.

Furthermore, corpora data is compiled over lengthy periods of time thus enabling the observation of potential

semantic changes which may have occurred among the lexemes in question. Cruse (2000:157) concludes with

the sentence “Much research remains to be done in the field of synonymy.” This paints an image of a semantic

area which has been long studied but wielded little answers in return. The intent of this research is to shed

much-needed fresh light on contentious issues in the field.

References

Cruse, D. A. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford:

Oxford UP, 2000. 154-57. Print.

Dam-Jensen, Helle, and Karen Korning Zethsen. "Translator Awareness of Semantic Prosodies." Target

International Journal of Translation Studies Target 20.2 (2008): 203-21. Web.

Greven, David. "Hawthorne and the Gender of Jewishness: Anti-Semitism, Aesthetics, and Sexual Politics in

The Marble Faun." The Journal of American Culture J Am Cult 35.2 (2012): 135-52. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Harris, Roy. Synonymy and Linguistic Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto, 1973. 12-13. Print.

Palmer, F. R. Semantics: Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976. 88-91. Print.

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Interlanguage pragmatic transfer between L1, L2 and L3: A study of pragmatic transfer among Chinese learners of English and Japanese

International Graduate Program in Language Science B5KM2007 Cui Haining

I. Introduction: 1. Pragmatic transfer and cross-cultural communication ‘Language transfer’ refers to the system of existing language knowledge on the acquisition of new one. Since people with different cultural backgrounds and norms may practice different communication strategies, pragmatic transfer is defined as “the transfer of knowledge in situations of intercultural communication” (Zegrac, Pennigton 2000).

It is also well known that using a foreign language grammatically seems much easier than acquiring the pragmatic abilities which can be influenced by the cultural and language differences (Rueda1996). Even speakers with a high level proficiency of a second language may still have difficulties in being understood due to cross-cultural differences which can be caused by negative pragmatic transfer. Recently, English is not simply being studied as a second language but being used as a lingua franca to meet all the cross-cultural communication situations, which may prompt more dynamic pragmatic transfer phenomena.

Most of the studies on language transfer were conducted on between European languages, whose linguistic distance is not so significant. Furthermore, many of them only deal with phonological, lexical, syntactic and semantic transfer. Finally, many studies have found that transfer can occur between a second and third language, but the range of this has not been made clear. This study looks to add to the body of work on second and third language transfer by looking at pragmatic transfer between non-European languages (Chinese and Japanese), and seeing the extent to which it will extend to an European language (English) as a third or an additional language. 2. Politeness theory and speech act of refusals According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, interlocutors involved in an interactional activity, they must respect each other’s “face”, the public self-image that every member in a society wants to claim for him/herself. A speech act of refusal is considered to be a face-threatening act which may offend an interlocutor’s face. Therefore, protecting the ‘face’ of the interlocutors and using proper communication strategies to avoid negative pragmatic transfer will get the attention.

Some studies have been conducted that show the differences between native speakers and non-native speakers’ pragmatic transfer phenomenon based on the above frameworks. For example, evidence has been presented that pragmatic transfer from Japanese influenced the English of Japanese speakers on at least three levels: the order, frequency and intrinsic content (or tone) (Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz 1990). Other studies also uncovered L2 proficiency of the Japanese speakers, and explicit instructions on pragmatic knowledge are shown to affect pragmatic transfer. Yamagashira (2001) found out the higher proficiency subjects used only American English refusal strategies while lower proficiency subjects used their L1 refusal style. Similar studies compared Chinese native speakers and Chinese learners of English and English Native speakers. Chen (1996) explores the native English speakers’ and advanced Chinese EFL learners’ refusal strategies, findings showed the native English speakers considered truthfulness, directness, and effectiveness as the most important whereas ESL learners were more concerned about the way to be direct, preserving face and avoiding embarrassment. Some other studies spread the pragmatic transfer over a larger scope. Zhou (2007) compares the preferred semantic formulas and their sequences in refusal to suggestions in academic contexts corresponding to power variations by Japanese and Chinese EFL learners, and analyzes some basic sequences within the order of semantic formulas which showed the American native English speakers tend to disagree at the initial part of their speech, the Chinese the second, the Japanese the ending part. II. Purpose of study and research questions Since English is used as the lingua franca and students who are studying in Japan come from different cultures, they may practice English in Japan where English as the target language (TL) is learned or practiced not in the TL spoken country, or in the student’s own (L1) country, but in a third country, in an international environment. Therefore, the current study will focus on the pragmatic competence of Chinese learners who speak Japanese and English as an L2 or L3 are studying in Japan when they practice English as Language for Academic purposes as well as for other communicational purposes. The study is interested in finding out two research questions.

1. Does Chinese learners’ proficiency level of Japanese influence their English pragmatic competence when they practice speech act of refusals in English?

2. What kinds of refusal strategies are used by Chinese learners’ of Japanese and English and is there any differences compared with Chinese learners of Japanese and Chinese learners of English?

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III. Research methods Based on the previous studies, this study will focus on Chinese native speaking participants who are studying or working in Japan. The participants will be divided into two groups each follows three sub-groups based on their Japanese and English proficiency. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) and Chinese College English Test (CET) will be used as the conditions for selecting subjects.

1. Chinese Learners of English who can only speak Chinese and English. 1). Lower English proficiency (LEP) 2). Intermediate English Proficiency (IEP) 3). High English Proficiency (HEP)

2. Chinese learners who hold high Japanese proficiency (HJP) and varies in their English proficiency. 1). Chinese who hold HJP and LEP 2). Chinese who hold HJP and IEP 3). Chinese who hold HJP and HEP

All the subjects will be asked to finish a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which will be designed to consist of four main refusal situations: requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions. Each refusal situation will include three status differentials: higher, lower, and equal. The data will be compared within the current groups and results will also be compared to previous studies. IV. Conclusion I expect the current study might suggest that Chinese learners of Japanese and English when they practice English in Japan where English is not a dominant language, there may have some pragmatic transfer phenomena from Japanese to English instead of their native language-Chinese Mandarin. All the DCT data will be collected from the participants and categorized into certain semantic formulas by quantitative methods. Hope this study will contribute to the field of second language pragmatic learning and cross-cultural communication, or giving some help to teachers and learners who may teach or study under a multi-cultural environment which is concerned in current study. Reference Angelovska, Tanja and Angela Hahn (2012). Written L3 (English): Transfer Phenomena of L2 (German) Lexical and

Syntactic Properties In: D. Gabryś-Barker (ed.) Cross linguistic influence in Multilanguage Acquisition. New York; Springer, 23-40.

Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson (1987). Politeness: some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Beebe, Leslie M., Tomoko Takahashi, and Robin Uliss-Weltz (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. Scarcella, E. Anderson, and S. Krashen (eds.) Developing communicative competence in a second language. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp. 55-73.

Chen, Hongyin Julie. (1996). Cross-cultural comparison of English and Chinese metapragmatics in refusal. PhD thesis, Indiana University.

Ife, Anne (2007). A Role for English as Lingua Franca in the Foreign Language Classroom? In: Eva Alcón Soler & Maria Pilar Safont Jordà (eds.) Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning. Dordrecht; Springer, 79-100.

Rueda, Yined Tello (2006). Developing Pragmatic Competence in a Foreign Language. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal 8, 169-182.

Yamagashira, Hisako (2006). Pragmatic Transfer in Japanese ESL Refusals.『鹿児島純心女子短期大学研究紀要』第31号, 259-275.

Zegarac, Vladimir and Martha C. Pennington (2000). Pragmatic transfer. In: Spencer-Oatey ed. Culturally speaking: cultural communication and politeness Theory. New York; Continuum, 142-143.

Zhou, Geyang (2007). A Pilot Study on Refusal to Suggestions in English by Japanese and Chinese EFL Learners.『広島大学大学院教育学研究科紀要 第二部，文化教育開発関連領域』56号，155-163.

Presentation of Gerard Martin C. Suarez January 28, 2016 Metaphors Made Live:

An analysis of visual metaphors used in recent American cartoons and how they convey complex meaning to their viewers

International Graduate Program in Language Sciences

B5KM2008 Suarez, Gerard Martin C.

Abstract This research will analyze the multimodal metaphors employed in Steven Universe, a recent American cartoon, in the frame of cognitive linguistics. It will aim, first, to explore the peculiarities entailed in delivering a metaphor through a creative and visual medium such as cartoons. Next, it aims to show that despite their peculiar features, these metaphors function in the same way as linguistic metaphors; according to Lakoff and Johnsen, as a means of understanding one thing by conceiving it in terms of another (2003, p.36). Finally, once that point has been established, this research will explore the implications of the analysis, with importance given to what these metaphors impart on the show’s viewers. To be specific, it will explore the show’s phenomenon of “fusion” and show that this phenomenon serves as a metaphor for cooperative relationships. Due to the nature of children’s animation, i.e. the show being a visualized mental space, the acquisition of the meaning of the metaphor is made much easier. This is because what is meant can be both shown and supported by language. On the other hand, due to the restraints of the medium, i.e. time-constraints and government regulations, not every facet of an idea can be fully explored and, in this sense, they become similar to linguistic metaphors. In other words, the key similarity is that they are still only able to provide a partial understanding to idea being explored. Finally, it is this partial understanding and what it imparts, which will be the topic of exploration in the last part of this research. Introduction Children spend a large amount of their time (around 25 hours weekly) watching television and most of what they watch are programming catered to children such as cartoons (Nielsen, 2009). This amount of time is enough, I argue, to say that cartoons serve as a significant source for a child’s notions about the world. In other words, children learn a lot of things from cartoons. But the topics they are exposed to aren’t limited to things like the alphabet or shapes, contrary to the common conception of educational television. Complex subjects such as death, multi-ethnicity, environmental issues, and politics have been and are still being tackled in cartoons. This raises the question, given the presumed underdeveloped cognition of children, are they able to understand these complex ideas? Stated differently, how are they able to comprehend such ideas? The answer Lakoff and Johnsen propose is through the use of metaphors. People’s concepts and their conceptual systems, according to them, structure what people perceive and how they interact with the world. Further, these conceptual systems are largely metaphorical in nature, but, these systems and this structuring is not something most people are aware of (2003, p. 4). This structuring allows for someone to have a partial understanding of one thing in terms of another (2003, p. 14).

That is what makes cartoons unique; they are a live manifestation of someone’s conceptions about the world. This is because, in order for cartoons to exist, they must necessarily be designed and structured. Further the visual nature of the cartoon makes it easy to grasp a metaphorical concept. This is because in regards to what can be structured, the content creator is mostly free to show what they want. For example, if they want to show travel to other worlds or a character defying the laws of physics, it can easily be done without having to rely on the viewer to have a deep background understanding of such phenomena. To add to the image, content creators can also incorporate other elements such as music and language to help convey what they want to get across. But, due to constraints such as time and space for example, a content creator can only ever partially show what they want to show. These factors are why one can say that a cartoon can be a metaphor. But as hinted by the last statement, though a cartoon is mostly structured metaphorically, not everything portrayed in it is an instance of metaphor. For example, when a character introduces a character in a pilot episode for example, the name will most likely be simply a name. It is how the language was used surrounding the scenes in question which allows us to determine whether an instance is a metaphor or not. That is why a linguistically framed discourse analysis of these visual metaphors, seems to me, the most natural approach in studying this phenomenon and its effects.

Given this, my scope and limitations is as follows. The cartoon I’ve decided to focus this research on will be Steven Universe. This is because; first, it is a single show that can be demonstrably shown to use of a lot of metaphors. Therefore, there are is a large sample from which I could draw study. Next, it has a recurring metaphor in the show, specifically the phenomenon of fusion, with which I can further limit the focus of this study to one set of the same metaphor all exploring one concept, the notion of a cooperative relationship. Finally the show has a viewership in the millions within the U.S. (Kandology, 2014), giving some weight to the idea, that this cartoon at least, is currently making some impact on a considerable number of people’s lives and it’s worth studying what that impact exactly is.

Framework To begin, this research treats cartoons as a physically manifested mental space. Mental spaces are constructs distinct from linguistic structures but are built up in any discourse according to the guidelines provided by the linguistic expressions (Fauconnier, 1994, p.16). The guidelines that build and develop this space is the cartoon’s story or discourse, as written by its content creator. Necessarily then, included in this discourse is the animation or the visual representation since those elements are integral to the story and are what define an animated cartoon. Further, mental spaces can refer to other mental spaces through the use of connectors. Connectors are pragmatic functions which links objects of a different nature (in the most general sense of the term) to one another, so that one object can be used to refer to another. For example, in the sentence “Plato is on the top shelf”, this can be another way of saying “The books written by Plato are on the top shelf” This interpretation depends on the pragmatic function, in this case author links to their book. But, for example, if we use a different function to interpret the sentence, e.g. persons to representations, the sentence could mean “The bust of Plato is on the top shelf” (1994, p.3-4). Applying this to animated cartoons, the argument is that some of the things portrayed in a cartoon connects in some way to an idea in the real world. This can be overt, as in when someone does an actual representation of something in reality like portraying Japanese classrooms and their uniforms in the slice of life genre of anime. But also, these can be indirect. For example, the turning of a character into a pig as they consume more and more food to represent greed. These latter type of connection, specifically the metaphorical cases, are what this research will be studying.

Metaphors are seen to reside in what is termed as blended spaces. A blended space consists of a set of connections between a source space and a target space. The target space is the one being structured metaphorically (Langacker, 2008, p.51). Going back, this research will view some instances in the show as blended spaces, the target space being the show and the source space being notions in reality. The notions in reality can be understood because there is a pragmatic function connecting the two. Finally, to consider the implications of metaphor being delivered this way, this research will turn to cognitive grammar and its notion that meanings are construed or people impose a construal. The term construal refers to one’s manifest ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways (Langacker, 2008, p.43-44). What this means for this research is that despite the best efforts of a content creator to deliver a specific message or despite how the show is structured deriving from a certain cultural background, it is still up to the viewer of the show to have his/her own interpretation of the content of the show. It is with this in mind that the implications of the show will be explored.

Methodology

This research will begin by demonstrating that the show does makes heavy use of metaphors. This will be done by compiling some instances of it being used not only in the dialogue, but more importantly in a visual sense. To demonstrate this, a discourse analysis of the compiled data will be done. Next, once that has been established and it has been established that fusion is a metaphor for a cooperative relationship, every available instance referring to and portraying this phenomenon will be compiled, both within the show and outside, limited to only what has been officially released by the studio making the show. This will serve as this research’s main corpus. This research will then do a discourse analysis, in line with the frameworks listed above, to first show that they are structured in a particular way. This particular structure, analyzed in conjunction with the medium’s constraints, will be explored to reveal that the metaphor provides only a partial understanding of a cooperative relationship. Finally, the effects of this partial understanding will be fully explored in the final part off this research using a critical analysis.

References Fauconnier, G. (1994). Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. Kondolojy, A. (2014, September 26). Thursday Cable Ratings: ‘Thursday Night Football’ on NFL Network

Tops Night + ‘Black Jesus’, ‘College Football’, ‘Project Runway’ & More. TV By the Numbers. Retrieved from: http://web.archive.org/web/20140928074159/http://tvbythenumbers. zap2it.com/2014/09/26/thursday-cable-ratings-thursday-night-football-on-nfl-network-tops-night-black-jesus-college-football-project-runway-more/307211/

Lakoff G., & Johnsen M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. London: The University of Chicago Press.

Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar; A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Nielsen Company. (2009). TV Viewing Among Kids At An Eight-Year High. [Tables and charts of children’s viewing habits]. Retrieved from: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/ 2009/tv-viewing-among-kids-at-an-eight-year-high.html

Presentation of the the Research Title 2016.1.28

A study on Development of Compliments in young Taiwan Chinese International Graduate Program in Language Sciences

B5KM2009 陶亮樸I. Introduction

There has been much research on the speech acts of compliments. According to Holmes (1988) “a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some ‘good’(possession, characteristic, skill, etc) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer”. In general, the intension of a compliment is to make others feel good, although in some cases it could be intended to threaten through sarcasm or manipulation. In other words, compliment receivers might sometimes experience compliments as negative or face-threatening.In Chinese culture,compliments might imply for the hearer a factor of envy or desire of the complimented object or be interpreted as an indirect request that violates the hearer’s face (Ye,1995; Wang and Tsai, 2003; Yu, 2005). Moreover,based on Lin, Woodfield, and Ren’s (2012) study, it was observed that Taiwanese higher education students tended to pay compliments explicitly in the same way as Mainland Chinese students, but with more frequent use of implicit strategies. The three types of implicit compliments examined were Assumption, Request, and Want statement, which were used more frequently than Mainland Chinese students. The objective of this study is to examine if the usage of compliment strategies are the same with the previous study (Lin, Woodfield, Ren, 2012) when the participants of the study are students in Taiwan between the age of 12 to 18.Furthermore, there are no studies on compliments that only focus on females in Taiwan who speak Taiwanese Mandarin. Therefore, my study will examine the usage of explicit and implicit strategies, compliment topics, and compliment relationships between speakers and interlocutors in Taiwan’s younger female generation (age 12 ~18).

II. Research Question 1. Does the compliment strategy utilized by the participants in the age of 12~15 differ from those of the age of 16~18?

2. What are the variational factors, such as ages, educational levels or relationships in the participants and their interlocutors…etc, that affect the usage of compliment strategies among the students between the age of 12 to 18 ?

III. Method With regard to the methodology of my study, I propose the following stages:1. The first-stage is preliminary data collection: An interview will be conducted as the method of

eliciting information and will be employed as a complimentary method in order to explore initial constraints and factors to be found in the female participants (students) and the expected compliment situations.

2. The second-stage is data collection: Role play is a task that includes an interactional activity(between an examiner and an examinee). According to Kasper’s (2000) definition, role play is an activity that elicits a response (the production of an utterance) from an examinee. In other words, a role play is interaction-oriented and can be included in ‘elicited conversation’.

The current study of the situation in which compliments occur during the recorded role play will contain the following information: the gender of the interlocutor,the relationship with the interlocutor, the length of acquaintanceship, and the setting. Furthermore, the compliment situation is going to be based on two major topics, appearance/possession and performance/ability, which are the same as the previous studies (Yuan,2002; Wang and Tsai,2003; Lin, Woodfield, and Ren’s 2012). Appearance/ possession-related compliments are associated with the approval of the interlocutor’s appearance and possessions.On the other hand, performance/ability-related compliments are those which symbol the approbation of someone’s ability or skills, for example, in academics or in performances at school.

Presentation of the the Research Title 2016.1.28IV. Expectation With regard to the expectation of this study, I propose the following hypotheses: The first hypothesis of this study is based on Wang and Tsai’s study (2003). Their results show female students in college are more likely to compliment men on their performance/ability instead of their appearance. I hypothesize that the results are going to be the same with the previous study that female students between age 16 to 18 are more likely to compliment men on their performance/ability instead appearance, because these students are in the stage of transition from teenagers to adults. The second hypothesis is based on Erikson’s(1950) stages of psychosocial development that has eight stages for social development of humans, and individuals should pass through each of these stages from infancy to late adulthood. In the Adolescence stage, which is the stage of self-identity, the significant roles are peers or role models. In other words, the students in this stage are easily affected by their peers or role models. Furthermore, students between the age of 16 to 18 have higher educated levels and social ability compared with those between the age of 12~ 15. Therefore, my second hypothesis is that the usage of compliment strategies in students between age 16 to 18 are affected by their relation to the interlocutor. Joke strategy, which may be used as a strategy for complimenting, expresses the speaker’s positive intensions in a joke. For example, “You look so pretty, I think there must be a lot of men who have a crush on you.” Based on my personal experience, Joke strategy is usually used by speakers who are good friends with the hearers, and they make sure that the hearer won’t be upset. Moreover, the speaker is able to control the level of the joke, and be careful so that it is not too much. Therefore, my third hypothesis is that the students between age 16 to 18 are more likely to use Joke strategy compared to students between age 12 to 14. This is because the age between 16 to 18 are able to be mature in social relations and because they also have a higher level of education.

V. Conclusion This study examines whether there are variational factors, such as education levels or relationships in the participants and their interlocutors. It is expected that such factors affect the usage of compliment strategies among female students between age 12 to 18. The current study contributes to the field of variational pragmatics by investigating a speech act (compliment) in female students (age 12~18) who speak Taiwanese Mandarin. This study will provide insight on gender differences observed in speech acts.

VI. Reference

Holmes, Janet (1988). Paying compliments: a sex-preferential politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4),445-465Kasper,Gabriele (2000). “Data Collection in Pragmatic Research”. In Spencer-Oatey Helen. (Ed) : Culturally speaking : Meaning Rapport through Talk across Cultures. (pp. 316-341). London & New York: Continuum.Ye,Lei, 1995. Complimenting in Mandarin Chinese. In : Kasper, G.(Ed,), Pragmatics of Chinese as Native and Target Language, Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, pp.207~302Wang, Yu-Fang, Tsai, Pi-Hua,2003. An empirical study on compliments and compliment response in Taiwan Mandarin conversation. Concentric: Study in English Literature and Linguistic 29 (3),118-156Yu,Ming-Chun, 2005.Sociolinguistic competence act of native Chinese and American English speakers: a mirror of culture value, Language and speech 48(1),91-119Yuan, Yi 2002. Compliments and compliments responses in Kunming Chinese, Pragmatics 12 (2),183-226.Chih Ying Lin, Helen Woodfield, Wei,Ren 2012. Compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese: The influence of region and compliment topic Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1486-1502

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Presentation of the Research Title 01.28.16

Standard Japanese Speaking Tokyoite’s Attitudes and Perceptions of the Kyoto Dialect

言語総合科学講座 B5KM2010 Paul Moore

Introduction Modern Japan has established a widely used form of standardized Japanese (known as hyoujungo) through

compulsory education, mass media, leveling, and urbanization (Loveday 1986). Regional dialects in Japan have faced a decline in post World War II Japan due to the emphasis placed upon Standard Japanese. The influx of Standard Japanese starting from the Meiji era has caused shifting attitudes toward the different dialects in Japan among native citizens. For example, Carroll(2001) states that “Attitudes towards these non-standard dialects have changed over the years, ranging from a policy of eradication earlier this century to recent more favourable evaluations of their qualities”. The campaign at the turn of the century to discourage dialects in Japan attached much shame and disgust to speaking in non-standard Japanese. Since then, non-standard Japanese dialects have declined in frequency of use, but attitudes toward them seem to have improved, as shown in a sociolinguistic survey distributed by Daniel Long (1999). The survey asked Japanese informants from different areas to identify areas in Japan, what speech pattern that area speaks, how pleasant it is, and what defining characteristics it has. Most informants rated the dialect of their own area to be most pleasant. However, the informants in Tokyo, which is the geographical area most known for speaking standard Japanese, associated the most pleasantness with the Tokyo area and the Kyoto dialect while associating the least pleasantness with the Osaka dialect (Long 1999). The goal of my research is to quantitatively verify that the perceptions towards the Kyoto dialect among standard Japanese speaking Tokyoites are equally, if not more, positive in the realm of personal sympathy (sociability, likeability, pleasantness) when compared to standard Japanese.

Background The typical attitude of many Tokyoites towards non-standard, non-Kanto Japanese is generally perceived

as negative. Dialects that differ from standard Japanese are often referred to as “inaka” or “country” (Shibata 1999), implying that those who speak with a dialect are less sophisticated and thus carry less prestige. This has given some Japanese natives who speak with a dialect a “dialect complex” which brings feelings of shame of inferiority to the speaker (Shibata 1999). One's own ability to speak in standard Japanese proficiently correlates to higher levels of perceived intelligence and education. This was also found to be true in American English when standard English speakers with no obvious variants were compared against English speakers with a “Southern” dialect in a sociolinguistic study (Soukup 2009). While informants did not rate the Southern dialect speakers high in the categories of education and intelligence, the female Southern dialect speaker was rated the highest in the traits of personal sympathy when compared to the standard English speakers. Johnstone (1999) similarly discussed the ability of Texan women to style-shift into a Southern accent in order to appear more likeable and persuasive. While not being perceived as more educated, intelligent, or prestigious as standard American English speakers, female Southern dialect speakers are regularly perceived as more likeable and charming.

Research in other countries has shown that the sounds and words of a dialect are less relevant to perceptions than the characteristics of the area the dialect is associated with (Carroll 2001). However, when someone refers to one's accent in America as “country”, it can often be indicating a Southern accent. The negative stigma that comes with the word “country” or “inaka” that implies a lack of intelligence is contrary to a non-standard dialect speaker's ability to be perceived as more pleasant than standard speakers. It is possible to maintain a positive perception even when speaking in a non-standard dialect. While Shibata (1999) argues that anywhere outside of Tokyo, even urban centers like Kyoto, can be perceived as “inaka” by Tokyoites, Carroll (2001) states that the Kyoto dialect has “continued to enjoy high status partly because of the city's centuries-long status as capital; it is widely seen as being more beautiful, gentle, and refined than Tokyo or standard speech.” This attitude could explain why informants from Tokyo rated Kyoto the highest in pleasantness behind the Kanto region in Long's(1999) study. Kyoto seems to still carry a perception of prestige that has lingered from past eras of Japanese history when it was still the capital. This may lessen its perception of being an “inaka” non-standard dialect among

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Tokyoites. Thus, it would follow that the Kyoto dialect has the most potential to be found more likeable and prestigious when compared to other non-standard dialects by Tokyoites. The research questions to be answered are as follows:

1. Are dialects in Japan often perceived as “inaka”? 2. Does the Kyoto dialect score high in the categories of personal sympathy compared to other Japanese

dialects? 3. What linguistic factors lead to a dialect being more likeable when compared to another in the same

language?

Methods

The data taken will be quantitative. In order to identify the language attitudes of standard Japanese speaking Tokyoites, I want to use a matched guise system based on that of Lambert (1972) . The matched guise method is the easiest way to control variables when asking informants to judge different styles of speech. I am aiming to survey 100 participants at Universities in Tokyo aged between 18-26. The speech that I will ask them to judge will be 60 seconds of recorded speaking by both a male and a female speaker speaking in Standard and Kyoto dialects. I will also need a male and female to speak in other two other dialects in order to create filler. The Tohoku and Osaka dialects will be used if possible. Filler dialects are used to keep informants from realizing that a specific dialect is being researched. Each filler dialogue will follow the same rules as the Kyoto and Standard dialects. The dialogue will be controlled and scripted as much as possible.

Data Gathering

- Each informant will be given a sheet with 8 sets of adjectives (4 in personal sympathy and 4 in competence) that are diametrically opposed: uneducated – educated, unlikeable – likeable, dirty – clean, etc. and will have to be written in their Japanese equivalents.

- The informants will rate each example of speaking in all categories on a scale of 1 to 5 will be asked to listen to a sample of speech from each dialect.

- They will not be told where the dialects are from, but will asked to identify which Japanese prefecture they think the dialects belong to. The data from the filler dialects may be disregarded, and the data from the Standard and Kyoto dialects will be collected.

- The data will then be analyzed to see which style of speaking scored the highest and lowest in each individual set of adjectives, and overall.

References

Barbara Johnstone. "Uses of Southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women" Journal of Sociolinguistics

3/4 (1999): 505-522.

Available at: http://works.bepress.com/barbara_johnstone/24

Carroll, Tessa. "Dialect versus the Standard Language in Japan." Language Change in East Asia. By T. E. McAuley.

Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001.

Lambert, Wallace E., and G. Richard. Tucker. Bilingual Education of Children; the St. Lambert Experiment. Rowley,

MA: Newbury House, 1972.

Loveday, Leo. Explorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1986. 8-24.

Preston, Dennis Richard., and Daniel Long. "Geographical Perceptions of Dialect Regions." Handbook of Perceptual

Dialectology. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1999.

Shibata, Takeshi, Tetsuya Kunihiro, Fumio Inoue, and Daniel Long. "10. The Rise and Fall of Dialects."

Sociolinguistics in Japanese Contexts. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 1999. 183-206.

Soukup, Barbara. Dialect Use as Interaction Strategy: A Sociolinguistic Study of Contextualization, Speech

Perception, and Language Attitudes in Austria. Wien: Braumuller, 2009.

Presentation of the Research Title 2015.1.28

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On VP-Ellipsis with Auxiliary Verbs in Mandarin Chinese

International Graduate Program in Language Sciences

B5KM2011 WANG, Yitong

Introduction

In Chinese, there is a type of ellipsis phenomenon in which predicates following auxiliary

verbs can be elided. (Henceforth, I will call it the Aux Construction for convenience.) Take

sentence (1) for example:

(1) Zhangsan hui feichang xihuan zhe-bu dianying, Lisi ye hui Δ.

Zhangsan will very much like this-CL film , Lisi also will Δ.

“Zhangsan will like this film very much, and Lisi will Δ too.”

The missing part, marked by “Δ”, can be interpreted according to the antecedent as feichang

xihuan zhe-bu dianying ‘like this film very much’. And this construction is generally considered to

correspond to English VP-ellipsis, in which a non-finite VP following a lexical item of T is elided.

Take the translation of sentence (1) below for instance:

(2) Zhangsan will like this film very much, and Lisi will Δ too.

This is a typical example of VP-ellipsis in English. The missing part can be interpreted as a

non-finite VP like this film very much. And the traditional analysis is that the modal verb will

licenses the ellipsis and the whole vP, the complement of will, is deleted.

Research Topic and Background

Generally, in the English VP-ellipsis construction, a verb with all of its internal arguments

and any adjunct of the VP is supposed to be contained in the missing part1. To illustrate, sentence

(3) below is semantically unacceptable, because there is an adjunct very much being included in

the ellipsis site already, which makes the additional adjunct in the continuation sound

contradictory.

(3) #John likes chocolate very much, and Mary does Δ too, but she doesn’t like it so much.

The Aux Construction in Chinese, however, is different from its English counterpart in that

adjuncts in some cases do not have to be included.

(4) Wo yao qu dongjing liangtian, ta ye yao Δ, buguo ta yao qu santian.

I will go Tokyo two days, he also will Δ, but he will go three days.

“I will go to Tokyo for two days, he will (go to Tokyo) too, but for three days.”

(5) Wo neng zhunque-di fanyi zhe-ju hua, ta ye neng Δ.

I can precisely translate this-CL sentence he also can Δ.

(#danshi ta fanyi de bu zhunque)

(# but he translate DE not precisely)

“I can translate this sentence precisely, he can (translate this sentence precisely) too.

(#but he translates it not precisely)”

In Sentence (4) , the post-verbal adjunct liang tian should not be interpreted in the ellipsis site; in

sentence (5), the pre-verbal adjunct zhunque-di is included in the missing part. Thus, further

studies on how to account the different patterns of adjunct interpretation shown above are needed

1 For a comprehensive review of what is the content of the ellipsis site in the English VP-ellipsis construction, see

Van Craenenbroeck (to appear).

Presentation of the Research Title 2015.1.28

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Another interesting property is found in contexts of extraction. To illustrate, I will discuss the

example adapted from Fiengo & May (1994) and its Chinese translations here.

(6) I know which book Max can read, and which book Oscar can’t Δ.

(Adapted from Fiengo & May (1994: 229)

(7) Wo zhidao na-ben shu Max neng du, na-ben shu Oscar buneng (du)

I know which book Max can read, which book Oscar cannot (read)

(8) Wo zhidao Max neng du na-ben shu, Oscar buneng *(du)

I know Max can read which book Oscar cannot *(read)

na-ben shu

which book

The two ellipsis sites in sentence (6) and (7) contain a variable bound by which book/na-ben shu.

And what I have observed is that constructions such as sentence (7) with WH-topicalization could

optionally elide the VP; while in constructions with the neutral word order such as sentence (8) in

which the WH-phrase is in situ, no VP-ellipsis is allowed. It is not surprising to find that du ‘read’

cannot be elided, because Chinese is considered to be a language which lacks pseudogapping (see

Osborne & Liang (2015)). Nevertheless, sentence (8) is exactly the same as sentence (7) before

the process of WH-topicalization. If deletion of du is not allowed in sentence (8), how could

sentence (7) be grammatical after movement? Thus, how to analyze sentence (7) is a significant

issue needed to be carefully studied.

Research Questions / Hypotheses

Central Question: What is the syntactic nature of the Aux Construction in Chinese?

Central Hypothesis: The Aux Construction in Chinese involves vP-deletion.

Methodology

My research will be based on a generative approach within the recent framework of

Principles and Parameters Theory, i.e., the Minimalist Program. Although I mainly focus on

empirical data from Chinese, relevant cross-linguistic comparison will be conducted in order to

look further into the mechanism of syntax of ellipsis. In addition, because licensing of ellipsis

involves rather intricate semantic and pragmatic considerations, interfaces with semantics and

pragmatics will be also examined when necessary.

Selected References

Van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen. To appear. VP-ellipsis. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2nd

Edition, Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.

Fiengo, Robert., and Robert May. 1994. Indices and Identity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT

Press.

Johnson, Kyle. 2001. What VP ellipsis can do, and what it can't, but not why. In The Handbook of

Contemporary Syntactic Theory, Mark Baltin and Chris Collins (eds.), 439-479. Oxford:

Blackwell

Li, Yen-hui Audrey. 2008. Generating empty categories. Ms., University of Southern California,

Los Angeles

Osborne, Timothy., & Junying Liang. 2015. A survey of ellipsis in Chinese. In Proceedings of the

Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015), 271-280.

Uppsala, Sweden.

Presentation of Doctoral Thesis Plan 2016.01.28

Phonological Interferences in SLA: Segmental and suprasegmental transfers from Japanese into Spanish

International Graduate Program in Language SciencesB5KD2002 Oscar Miguel Campos Tejero

I. Introduction

Second Language Acquisition processes acknowledge the fact that Second Language Learners will substitute or transfer sounds in order to simplify speech; and use similar sounds from L1 when some sounds from L2 are not present in their phonological system (Cristal, 1987). However, Trubetskoy (1969) studied the perceptive operational process in SLA, giving in his well-known “phonological filter” proposal that stands for the speaker inability of perceiving non-native segments rather than just not being able to utter them. SLL will face these phenomena in all their range: the distribution and number of phonemes in the contrastive systems, syllable structure, allophonic variations, prosodic shortening and lengthening, diachronic usage, among others.

At segmental level, Japanese and Spanish share some phonological similarity (Ueda, 1977), but certainly they have non-shared ones which will be the subject of this study. Dealing with the suprasegmental level, in the case of Japanese syllable structure, it certainly interferes with the pronunciation of SLL (Carruthers, 2005). Spanish has more syllable types than Japanese, which makes its pronunciation quite challenging for Japanese learners.

Due to the scarcity of research pairing Japanese and Spanish, the aim of this research is dual: 1) to show a contrastive analysis of Japanese and Spanish phonological systems in order to clearly stand their single segments differences and to identify potential substitutions/transferences according to their features; and 2) to end up giving some input to start building up an Asian Spanish Speech Corpus.

II. Design and Methodology

Through L2 phonological acquisition theories of perception (Fledge, 1995) and contrastive analysis between phonetic inventories of Spanish and Japanese, it is intended to analyze Spanish learners’ speech in order to attain an empirical registry of potential articulatory interferences in their SLA. For it, the perceptual assimilation model (PAM) developed by Best et al. (Lambacher et al., 2001) will be referred to rank the phenomena in 3 degrees of perceptual differentiation; however, it might be necessary to adapt the model for these two paired languages.

In order to accomplish the aforementioned, 40-50 Japanese students of Spanish, after their first year of language learning, will be given a set of familiar words to read in a close recording studio. Each audio will be transcribed and analyzed through a speech processing software (PRAAT) to discriminate single segments. Then, data will be schematised and rates of use frequency will determine if certain segment uses are due to phonological interferences of L2 into L1 or simple pronunciation difficulties in single individuals.

Due to some phonological correspondence in both languages, only a limited set of segments within the phonetic inventories of both languages are going to be considered for this study. Despite there will not be cluster analysis due to the syllabic nature of Japanese language, some considerations based on epenthesis phenomena (mainly anaptyxis) in echo vowel will be revised, as well as gairaigo and gaikokugo lexicon (Labrune, 2012; Daulton, 2008); so that, if transfers or interferences are present, they could be described separately.

Some variables will be sorted out to define whether the age of acquisition, amount of exposure to L2, formal or informal instruction, etc. are key to determine and standardize the interferences found in the sample.

Furthermore, some implications of L3 language acquisition theories will be analyzed to discriminate if the presence of a previous L2 in the sample subjects might contribute to phonological improvement of L3 (Wrembel, 2014).

III. Conclusion

Several research papers widely present phonological interferences between Japanese and other languages, but Spanish has been addressed in only some specific concerns. In my experience, having a better understanding of how the phonological system of a certain language works can improve significantly the pronunciation performance of SLL.

The Asian English Speech Corpus Project, crated in 2008 by six universities in Asia, made available a wide number of sources for further research in this area. Thus, part of my work and expectations deal with the chance of creating a similar corpus pairing Spanish with many other Asian languages, so that many researchers in Latin America may have access to useful and accurate data for further research.

IV. References

Carruthers S. (2005). TESL Working Paper Series: Pronunciation Difficulties of Japanese Speakers of English: Predictions Based on a Contrastive Analysis. Hawai‘i Pacific University. pp. 21

Crystal, D. (1987). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Daulton, F.E. (2001). Book reviews: A dictionary of loanword usage; Tuttle new dictionary of loanwords in Japanese. JALT Journal. 274-276.

Flege, J. E. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research. Timonium, MD: York Press. pp. 229-273

Labrune L (2012). The Phonology of Japanese. OUP Oxford, pp. 14-24.

Lambacher, S. et al. (2005). Identification of English voiceless fricatives by Japanese listeners: The influence of vowel con- text on sensitivity and response bias. Acoustical Science and Technology, pp335.

Trubetzkoy NS. (2005). Principles of Phonology. Baltaxe CAM, editor. Univ. California; Berkeley, CA.

Ueda H. (1977) Estudio Contrastivo de los Sonidos Españoles y Japoneses. Osaka University of Foreign Studies.

Wrembel M. (2014). VOT Patterns in the Acquisition of Third Language Phonology. Adam Mickiewicz University.

Presentation of the Research Title 2016/01/28

1

Effects of Teacher Assessment and Student Self-Assessment on the Students’ Motivation and Autonomy

－ A Case of the EFL Summary Writing Practice of Japanese High School students －

International Graduate Program in Language Sciences B5KD2003 Makiko KATO

Introduction In recent years, the integrated skills of EFL have been required for Japanese students since the Ministry of

Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT) proposed that the entrance examination be reformed to measure their English integrated skills such as presentation or speech and summary writing or critical writing in 2014. MEXT held the Command of English Investigation for Improvement of English Education focused on the 3rd graders of Japanese high schools in 2014. Then, it was cleared that their production skills were poor and they didn’t take enough instructions of writing and speaking including giving a presentation or speech and making a summary in their English classes. Furthermore, Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) was developed in order to measure the authentic English integrated skills of university entrance examinees. After such changes, upbringing English integrated skills of high school students and their evaluation is very important issues in the English education of high schools. Also, teachers have a responsibility of giving their students’ motivation and autonomy of English learning even after their graduation.

In this study, I will focus on the Japanese EFL learners’ summary writing because it is an effective tool for measuring L2 proficiency (Hijikata, Ono, & Yamanishi, 2015). The usual instructions of English composition such as the translation from Japanese into English and the fixation of grammar items are not the final aim of the original writing instruction. Students have to obtain the writing skills to express their opinion and to keep the consistency of contents with using proper vocabulary and grammar. Summary writing is a good example of reproduction connecting the skills of reading and writing.

When learners can understand the learning contents, they will have more motivation of learning, obtain their learning outcomes, have much confidence of their English skills, and they will like English, as a result (Ayabe, 2014). In this way, it can be said that autonomy is related to a motivation cognitively. The approach to autonomous learning includes two aspects: Cognitive Psychological Approach and Sociocultural Approach. The former refers to Meta Cognitive Strategy including self-evaluation; the latter to Zone of Proximal Development by Vygotsky, which proposed that learners can develop their autonomy with others’ help such as scaffolding (Kohonen, 2009). Ryan and Deci (2002) proposed the Organismic Integration Theory that is the lower theory of the Self-Determination Theory, and it describes that extrinsic motivation can bring autonomy. According to Hiromori (2003a), students’ motivation can be increased if their teacher encourages the classroom atmosphere autonomous. On the other hands, Dörnyei (2009) proposed the L2 Motivational Self System and described two visions: the L2 Ideal Self and L2 Ought-to-Self. According to this system, the learners will have motivation in order to achieve their own goals by making both visions clear (Dörnyei, 2009; Dörnyei, & Ushioda, 2009). There are several previous studies insisting that learners can improve their writing skills by their self-evaluations (Darling & Gallagher, 2003; Hilgers, Hussey, & Stitt-Bergh, 2000). However, teacher assessment is also effective because it gives some feedbacks to the learners (Tajino et al., 2001). Research questions In this study, I will observe the students’ motivation and autonomy through the teacher assessment and the student self-assessment of summary writing. The following matters shall be specified as the significance of this study: n How can the instruction of English integrated skills, a current issue of English education, influence the

learners’ motivation and autonomy through the activity of writing a summary with using some information from reading and listening?

n What and how do the learners’ motivation and autonomy by criterion of assessment, methods, and styles influence?

Through this study, it can be cleared either of assessment brings autonomy as one of the aims of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

Method The 2nd or 3rd graders of Japanese high school students, juniors or sophomores, are examined in order to

observe their autonomy and motivation through teacher assessment and student self-assessment. Through the observations of both, I examine which one of the two assessments can make them more motivated and autonomous.

Presentation of the Research Title 2016/01/28

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In this research, two individual studies will be conducted with the same context to obtain the effectiveness of teacher assessment and student self-assessment on the students’ motivation and autonomy. In both studies, there are two experimental groups, and they receive the same instruction on summary writing from the teacher. After they finish writing a summary about the same content, Class A receives the assessment from the teacher, and they revise at least 5 times. At the same time, Class B takes their student self-assessment with using the same rubrics as the teacher uses. During the experiment, classroom observations will be conducted and reflective journal diaries will be kept. The research will last for at least one semester. After the end of the semester, I will give questionnaire and have interviews to the students of class A and B.

Participants Ø Class A: Two intact classes of Japanese high school students at the same grade for observing their autonomy. Ø Class B: Two intact classes of Japanese high school students at the same grade for observing their motivation Materials Ø Long sentences suchlike statement or story from previous exams of Eiken or National Center Test for

University Admissions. Ø TEAP, Test of English for Academic Purposes (Part. 3) Instruments Ø For teacher assessment and student self-assessment

Rubric - The contents of investigations are follows. n Contents of Summary (including English reading comprehension) n Architecture (quantity of paraphrase) n Architecture (quality of paraphrase) n English lexical proficiency n Language use

Ø For observing their autonomy and motivation: n Questionnaires n Interviews n Classroom observations n Journal diaries

Data Analysis This study will be conducted in a qualitative research method. The data will be collected through

questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations, and journal diaries, and the whole data will be analyzed qualitatively through the content analysis of these interview transcripts and description of the questionnaire findings. Using the qualitative research method, I expect it will be cleared which assessment - teacher assessment or student self-assessment - is effective for autonomy, in turn, for motivation.

References Ayabe, Y. (2014). The viewpoint how the research of CEFR connects to the educational practice. In Public

Interest Incorporated Foundation, Institute for central education, The research of English education for learners’ autonomy, 6: As an education of language connecting to K-12, 6-18.

[「CEFR 研究を教育実践に活かすための視座」『自律した学習者を育てる英語教育の探求 (6) −小中高大を接続することばの教育として− 』. 公益財団法人 中央教育研究所. 6-18.]

Darling, S.M., & Gallagher, P.A. (2003). Using self-assessment in early intervention training. Journal of Early Intervention, 25, 219–227. Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E. (Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self, Bristol Multilingual Matters. 9-42. Hijikata,S.Y., Ono, M., & Yamanishi, H. (2015). Evaluation by Native and Non-Native English Teacher-Raters of Japanese Students’ Summaries. English Writing Teaching, 8, 1-12. Hiromori, Y. (2003a). What Enhances Language Learners’ Motivation?: High school English learners’

motivation from the perspective of Self-Determination Theory. JALT (Japan Association for Language Teaching) Journal, 25(2), 173-186. [「学習者の動機づけは何によって高まるのか:自己決定理論による高校生英語学習者の動機づけの検討」].

Kohonen, V. (2009). Autonomy, authenticity and agency in language education: The European language portfolio as a pedagogical resource. In R. Kantelinen, & P. Pollari, (Eds.), Language education and lifelong learning (pp. 9-44). Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland. Tajino, A. et al. (2001). Feedback in the academic writing classroom: Implications from classroom practice with the use of Criterion. Departmental Bulletin Paper, 17, Kyoto University. 97-108. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overview of self-determination theory. In E. L. Deci, & R. M. Ryan, (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3-33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Presentation of the Research Title 2016.01.28

Imitation and self-imitation in prosody training -A study on Japanese learners of Italian-

Graduate Scool of International Cultural StudiesB5KD2004 Debora Vigliano

1. IntroductionWhen learners train their pronunciation in an L2 they usually listen and imitate to native speakers’ voices.However, they should disregard all the features related to the individuality of the native speaker, trying to focuson those linked to the target language (L2). According to Probst, Ke & Eskenazi (2002) the best way toovercome this problem would be imitating a speaker whose individual features (such as speed of articulation andF0) are close to those of the learner. Felps, Bortfeld & Gutierrez-Osuna (2009) suggested that there is no speakerwho matches these requirements better than the learner himself. In order to practice L2 prosody learners shouldlisten and imitate their own native-accented voices. This training method, called self-imitation, in the authors’view, would be the most effective to achieve a native-like prosodic competence. Voice conversion represents apreliminary step of the technique: the learners’ voices undergo a previous modification to match the prosody of areference native speaker. The result is a synthetic speech with the student’s voice characteristics but correctprosody pronunciation. A comparison between the synthetic speech and the learner’s speech would enable thestudents to find the mistakes in their pronunciation, and at the same time have a better understanding of the targetlanguage (Nagano & Ozawa, 1990).During the last two decades, a number of studies have proven this technique to be pedagogically effective.Nagano and Ozawa (1990) tested the use of prosodic modification to teach English to Japanese speakers; Bissiriet al. (2006) evaluated a prosodic-conversion method for the purpose of teaching German to Italian learners;Peabody and Seneff (2006) investigated a similar technique when used by English learners of Mandarin. As forItalian L2, it has been the subject of two recent experiments based on prosodic transplantation technique andconducted on Chinese learners (De Meo et alii, 2013 ; De Meo, Vitale & Pellegrino, in press).2. ObjectivesThis study aims at making a comparison between the results achieved by Japanese learners of L2 Italian withself-imitation strategy and those obtained by imitating a native speaker. Eventually, it will be verified if self-imitation as a learning method has a greater validity than imitation.Further aim of the study will be to assess what phonetic features contributing to prosodic variation are moresusceptible of change after the two trainings.The results of these analyses will enable to investigate the broader issue of whether learners are influenced intheir learning by the voice of the speaker they imitate.3. SubjectsA number of Japanese learners of L2 Italian (around 40) with an intermediate level of language proficiency willbe selected for the purpose of this research. They will be divided in two separate groups. One group will betrained by the proposed method using synthetic speech. The other group will be trained by the conventionalmethod using original speech uttered by native Italian speakers.Two Italian native speakers (one male and one female) will be chosen to provide a model that will constitute thelanguage target for the L2 students who will be asked to imitate them. Moreover the natives' utterances will berecorded and used as “donor” for the rythmic-prosodic transplantation on the “receiver”s voice.4. ProcedureThe study will be carried out into three steps:- Pre-training session, where all the students will be asked to read sentences according to different

communicative intentions relying only on their prosodic skills in Italian (cf. 4.1)- Imitation training session, where a first group of students (Group A, henceforth)will train their pronunciation

skills imitating the voice of a native speaker (cf. 4.2)- Self-imitation training session, where a second group of students (Group B) will train their pronunciation

skills, imitating their voice previously shaped on the basis of the native prosodic model (cf. 4.3)4.1 Pre-training sessionNNSs and NSs will be involved in a read speech activity. The stimuli will be two Italian sentences (1. Accendi laradio/ eng. You turn on the radio; 2. Chiudi la finestra/ eng. You close the window). The meaning of these two sentences can vary by using different pitch contours, even if the syntactic structure iskept unchanged. Due to the lack of morphological and syntactical means for distinguishing sentence modality, inItalian intonation plays a crucial role in shaping the pragmatic function of an utterance (D’Imperio, 2002). In this study the learners will be asked to read the sentences aloud from a computer screen performing threedifferent communicative intentions: request (R), order (O) and granting (G).Sentence 1: Accendi la radio Sentence 2: Chiudi la finestra(Request) Accendi la radio? / eng. Can you turn on the radio? (Request) Chiudi la finestra? / eng. Can you close the window?

(Order) Accendi la radio! /eng. Turn on the radio! (Order) Chiudi la finestra! / eng. Close the window!(Granting) Accendi la radio / eng. Ok, you can turn on the radio. (Granting) Chiudi la finestra / eng. Ok, you can close the window.

This kind of task is supposed to be challenging for Japanese learners. In order to express these three pragmaticmeanings, indeed, the Japanese language has to resort to a series of syntactical and lexical devices in addition toprosodic ones (Abe, 1998). With the help of a translator, it will be ensured that the non-native subjects will understand the true meaningassociated with each speech act before the recording phase.In this pre-training phase the students will have to read the sentences according to the three pragmatic meanings,neither listening to a native model, nor receiving any clue about how to differentiate the three tunes. Recordingswill be performed after individual periods of separated training. The recordings will be taken in single sessions,in a silent room. The same recording protocol will be used with the two native Italian speakers.4.2 Imitation prosodic trainingGroup A students will listen to the utterances produced by the two native speakers and chose the one moresuitable for them. They will be asked to imitate the speaker of their choice and their performances will berecorded.4.3 Self-imitation prosodic trainingThe self imitation prosodic training requires the execution of the prosodic transplantation procedure as apreliminary step. In order to transfer the acoustic parameters from the utterances produced by the native Italianspeakers (the “donors”) to the corresponding ones performed by the Japanese learners (the “receivers”), a seriesof operations will be realized: manual segmentation of the utterances produced by NSs and NNSs in consonantaland vocalic portions, by means of the software Praat; treatment of anomalies; transplantation of duration; pitchcontour superimposition. The last two operations will be automatized through a Praat script and then applied to the voices selected for thisstudy. For the transplantation procedure the criterion of donor-to-receiver gender match will be followed. After the manipulation procedure, a new corpus of synthesized utterances will be built. The synthesizedutterances will undergo self-imitation treatment. During this session, each learner in group B will train to mimictheir utterances with native accent as many times as they need to approximate the model. When feelingconfident, they will record the new performance.5. Data analysisThe collected pre and post-training performances will be used to arrange a final perceptual test to compare theimprovement induced by the two treatments. The utterances will be assembled in random order and administeredto a group of native Italian listeners who will be asked for each sentence:- to identify the conveyed pragmatic functions choosing among five given options, three expected (‘request’,‘order’, ‘granting’) and two distractors (‘statement’ and ‘other’); - to rate the degree of foreign accentedness on a five-point scale (0 = native accent; 4 = strong foreign accent). Contrastive spectro-acoustic analysis of the pre- and post-training productions will be carried out in order tohighlight the acoustic features most susceptible of variations after imitation and self- imitation. Given the difference in rhythm between Italian and Japanese languages, among the various phonetic featurescontributing to prosodic variation, in this study the attention will be focused on segment duration. Changes inpitch patterns will also be analyzed.6. Future workFuture steps of this study will involve the investigation of the acoustic correlates that explain the differences inperceived acoustic similarity.7. ReferencesAbe, I. 1998. “Intonation in Japanese,” Intonation Systems- A survey of twenty languages, Hirst D., Di Cristo, A. (ed.), Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 363-378.Bissiri, M.P., Pfitzinger, H.R., Tillmann, H.G. 2006. “Lexical Stress Training of German Compounds for Italian Speakers by means of

Resynthesis and Emphasis,” Proceedings of the 11th Australian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology, NewZealand: University of Auckland, 24–29.

D’Imperio, M. 2002. “Italian Intonation: an overview and some questions”. Probus 14, Issue 1, 37-69.De Meo, A., Vitale, M., Pettorino, M., Cutugno, F., Origlia, A. 2013. “Imitation/self-imitation in computer-assisted prosody training for

Chinese learners of L2 Italian,” Proceedings of the 4th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Levis J.,LeVelle K. (eds.) Ago. 2012, Ames, IA: Iowa State University, 90-100.

De Meo, A., Vitale, M., Pellegrino, E. (in press), “Tecnologia della voce e miglioramento della pronuncia in una L2: imitazione eautoimitazione a confronto. Uno studio su cinesi apprendenti di italiano L2,” Atti del XV Convegno Nazionale dell’AssociazioneItaliana di Linguistica Applicata (AItLA), «Linguaggio e apprendimento linguistico:metodi e strumenti tecnologici», Università delSalento, Lecce.

Felps, D., Bortfeld, H., Gutierrez-Osuna R. 2009. “Foreign accent conversion in computer assisted pronunciation training”, SpeechCommunication 51, 920-932.

Nagano, K., Ozawa, K. 1990. “English speech training using voice conversion”, 1st Internat. Conf. on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP90), Kobe, Japan, 295-308.

Peabody, M., Seneff, S. 2006. “Towards automatic tone correction in nonnative mandarin”, Chinese Spoken Language Processing: 5thInternational Symposium, ISCSLP 2006, 602–613.

Probst, K., Ke, Y., Eskenazi, M. 2002. “Enhancing foreign language tutors - In search of the golden speaker”, Speech Communication 37.

B5KD2005 Pieter Austin Gardiner 読解力テストに情報量を織り込むこと

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研究題目発表会・Presentation of Subject Abstract 平成２８年１月１８日

題目 Title ： 読解力テストに情報量を織り込むこと

Factoring Entropy into Reading Tests

講座名：言語総合科学コース 国際文化研究科

学籍番号 B5KD2005 氏名 Pieter Austin Gardiner

※設備：PC,プロジェクター、PowerPoint、MSWord をお願いします。

TENTATIVE ABSTRACT

Initially, reading tests were tests of individual comprehension. Early in the twentieth century, research into

testing methodology in the USA was guided by psychological and taxonomological investigations into the

reading process. Thorndike (1918), influenced by e.g. Huey (1908) who built the first eye movement detector

to investigate human eye movement during reading, postulated that reading involves reasoning, and was

interested in pinpointing exactly what happens in the mind to produce the answers a subject gives in a

reading test.

In the 1970s, multiple choice tests, specific skill assessment, and informal classroom assessments

became popular as they were thought to affect the elicited answer to a lesser extent and make it easier for the

subject to answer comprehension questions. At the same time, there was an increasing tendency to design

norm-referenced tests. This reflected the behaviorist psychology trend in education at the time. Many of the

tenets dating from the 1970s have been absorbed and still form much of the staple of English language testing

in Japan.A revolution followed in the 1980s. Constructivist approaches, influenced by the work of pioneers in

sociolinguistics, e.g. Vygotsky (1986), began arguing for strategic reading over manufactured-skill reading,

with readers now seen as interacting with text from the viewpoint of their individual prior knowledge.

Although reading assessment theory developed away from criterion-referenced skill tests and

norm-referenced scoring near the end of the 20th

century and back again to focusing on the individual, current

English as Second Language (ESL) testing methodology has stagnated. Outdated standardized international

tests, such as 英語検定 (Eiken); the International English Language Testing System (IELTS); the Test of

English for International Communication (TOEIC); and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)

still use criterion-referenced, skill reading tests, because they are cheaper to make and to assess, easier to

manipulate statistically, and more profitable to distribute in a global marketplace than individualized strategic

reading tests.

The sociocultural factors that affect TOEIC scores for Japanese English as Foreign Language

（JEFL） learners are well documented. The cognitive factors, however, are not. According to the short

circuit hypothesis, as postulated by Clarke (1980), there is an English proficiency threshold for JEFL learners

to reach before their cognitive knowledge is available for use in both Japanese and English. The cognitive

factors that hypothetically cause entropy in tests add to the inability of JEFL learners to comprehend what

they read even after this threshold is reached. Ultimately, this thesis aims to reinvestigate the cognitive

factors that cause entropy after the proficiency threshold is reached, at the university entrance level, and

attempt to measure the extent to which each factor induces entropy. As of yet, the factors are elusive;

however, the researcher has identified one: ‘familiarity of grapheme in context’, a tentative term. This factor

falls into what Carrell (1989) referred to as the problem of not being able to repair, i.e. the reader is unable to

get any help from other parts of the text to assist in understanding a certain grapheme in its context in the text.

There is no help available due to the fact that the background schema knowledge necessary to understand the

parts that are supposed to help are outside of the area of knowledge of the test taker. Thus, the comprehension

process grinds to a halt. It is hypothesized by this thesis that the background schema knowledge which is

B5KD2005 Pieter Austin Gardiner 読解力テストに情報量を織り込むこと

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necessary do well in the TOEIC reading section is not necessarily familiar to all JEFL readers, and this

mismatch ultimately adds to entropy.

There is a need to clarify whether entropy exists outside of sociocultural domains when test takers

from various backgrounds are forced to arrive at the same manufactured inferences in standardized tests such

as those mentioned above. This thesis will focus on the reading sections of the TOEIC, one of the

abovementioned tests, made in New Jersey, USA and distributed by a profitable hotel chain called Chauncey,

an affiliate of Educational Testing Services Inc. (ETS). This test was selected for research due to the fact that

the test has been government mandated for university level JEFL learners.

The research conducted over the next 34 months will aim to do the following:

① Document the history of English reading comprehension assessment in Japan;

② Document and discuss current international reading tests taken in Japan;

③ Analyse the TOEIC reading sections in depth from a cognitive, and not sociocultural

perspective;

④ Investigate, qualify, and possibly quantify entropy present when JEFL university

students take the TOEIC reading sections;

⑤ Based on the findings in ④, design a scale of scoring which takes this entropy into

account.

Aims ①,②,and ③ will involve researching and analysing literature published to date. Aim ④ will deliver

empirical results, answering the following research questions: i) Does entropy exist in reading tests in the

context of JEFL learners? ii) If it exists, which cognitive factors in text comprehension accounts for this

entropy? These two questions will be answered through designing two batteries of tests. The batteries will

involve a set of discreet point as well as integrated reading questions, first unedited, exactly as they are

distributed in the TOEIC, and then edited by the researcher, with all the factors which hypothetically cause

cognitive entropy either changed or deleted. The difference in scores in the two batteries of tests will be

statistically analysed, using among other tools Cronbach’s Alphaαto investigate covariance, relationship

between item pairs, and variance of total score. In addition, each question will have a rating section where

test takers will be asked to rate the question on difficulty of vocabulary, of sentence structure, of paragraph

structure, of schema, and to give their personal opinion on the applicability of the question on English outside

of the testing environment. Tentatively, aim ⑤ will provide subsequent researchers with a framework of

reference to assist in the design of reading tests in the context of JEFL learners. January, 2016

REFERENCES

Carrell, P.L. (1989). Metacognitive Awareness and Second Language Reading. In: The Modern Language

Journal, Vol. 2 No. 73, pp.121-134.

Clarke, M.A. (1980). The Short Circuit Hypothesis of ESL Reading: Or when Language Competence

Interferes with Reading Performance.

In: The Modern Language Journal, Vol.64 No.2, pp.203-209.

Huey, E.B. (1908). The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. New York: Macmillan.

Pearson, P.D. et al. (Eds.). (1984). Handbook of Reading Research. New York: Longman.

Sarroub, L.K. et al. (1998). Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back: The Stormy History of Reading

Comprehension Assessment. University of Nebraska: Faculty Publications.

Thorndike, E.L. (1918). Reading as Reasoning: A study of Mistakes in Paragraph Reading.

In: Journal of Educational Psychology Vol.8, pp.323-32.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.