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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://linguistics.hku.hk
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Department of Linguistics, HKU
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TZID:Asia/Shanghai
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DTSTART:20180101T000000
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190527T110000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190527T130000
DTSTAMP:20190524T013140Z
CREATED:20190523T154830Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190524T013140Z
UID:4041-1558954800-1558962000@linguistics.hku.hk
SUMMARY:The Syntactic and Morphological Processing of Late Second Language Learners - Yoonsang SONG\, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
DESCRIPTION:With few exceptions\, second language (L2) acquisition typically ends short of native-like competence\, unlike first language (L1) acquisition\, where native competence is the norm. In the L2 research community\, it has always been a major but unresolved issue to locate the main sources of this clear contrast between L1 and L2 acquisition. In this talk\, I address this issue presenting behavioral and neurophysiological (electroencephalogram) data from my recent studies on L1 and L2 comprehension of sentences and morphologically complex words (e.g.\, unkindness). Using these data\, I test the possibility that L2 development usually fossilizes and fails to reach native-like competence\, mainly because L1s and L2s employ fundamentally different processing mechanisms: L1 processing involves thorough structural parsing\, whereas L2 processing does not\, relying heavily on non-structural information such as semantics or surface forms (e.g.\, orthography). The data converges to argue against this possibility. Although the data show some quantitative differences between L1 and L2 processing of sentences and morphologically complex words\, they do not reveal any marked qualitative differences. Specifically\, the results show that L2 processing is less efficient than L1 processing in general (e.g.\, relatively slower) and prone to be disrupted by non-grammatical information such as semantic and surface-from information\, but crucially\, L2 processing is sensitive to structural hierarchy\, as L1 processing is. These findings suggest that both L1 and L2 parser construct structurally detailed representations for sentences and words during real-time language comprehension.
URL:https://linguistics.hku.hk/event/the-syntactic-and-morphological-processing-of-late-second-language-learners-yoonsang-song-the-chinese-university-of-hong-kong/
LOCATION:Room 7.58\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU\, Hong Kong
CATEGORIES:Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://linguistics.hku.hk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Seminar-Poster-20190527_2.jpg
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190529T103000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190529T123000
DTSTAMP:20190523T071304Z
CREATED:20190522T034323Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190523T071304Z
UID:4032-1559125800-1559133000@linguistics.hku.hk
SUMMARY:A Rhythm account of statistical learning - Felix Wang\, University of Nevada
DESCRIPTION:Even from a brief exposure to an artificial spoken language\, infants and adults can identify candidate word forms and other adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies present in the acoustic input.\nAmong the influential theories resulting from this research is the proposal that humans compute conditional probabilities of adjacent and non-adjacent elements to discover underlying structure. However\, there exist findings in the literature\, including the results presented here\, that are not consistent with such accounts. We propose that the perception of rhythm played an important role in prior studies\, and in general that rhythm perception plays a critical role in determining which dependencies listeners can identify. We created a novel experimental paradigm to introduce a rhythm in the language stream that allowed us to manipulate the rhythm systematically. We showed that even learning adjacent dependencies with conditional probabilities of 1.0 depends on rhythm perception. We also developed a computational model to explain word segmentation in terms of rhythm perception\, and we present simulations showing that the model captures patterns of human data from multiple experiments. We argue that the perception of rhythm holds explanatory power not only to our experiments and other dependency learning studies\, but it is likely to be a fundamental mechanism that is ubiquitous in language and other auditory domains.
URL:https://linguistics.hku.hk/event/a-rhythm-account-of-statistical-learning-felix-wang-university-of-nevada/
LOCATION:Room 4.04\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU\, Hong Kong
CATEGORIES:Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://linguistics.hku.hk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/139cea6b8638941150f0a5f0f4f25c8b.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190530T153000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20190530T170000
DTSTAMP:20190523T071216Z
CREATED:20190520T023753Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190523T071216Z
UID:4028-1559230200-1559235600@linguistics.hku.hk
SUMMARY:Literacy in Contact: Reading and Writing in Multiliterate Speakers along the Silk Road - Brendan Weekes\, HKU
DESCRIPTION:Abstract:\n\nThe UN General Assembly has declared 2019 as the Year of Endangered Languages. According to UNESCO\, at least 2500+ spoken languages are currently vulnerable or extinct. A mere ten (Chinese\, English\, Spanish\, Arabic\, Hindi\, Portuguese\, Bengali\, Russian\, Japanese and French) are “linguistic hegemons” – each having at least 100 million speakers and accounting for over 51 percent of the global population. Half of these are written with an alphabet (including Cyrillic) and half are not. For the non-alphabetic group\, native speakers read and write in the logographic (e.g. Chinese) or the syllabic writing systems (e.g. Devanagari) or both (e.g. Japanese). In the other nearly 6000 languages that are spoken by less than one million people\, Latin\, Arabic and Chinese writing systems dominate. Literacy increases educational opportunities as well as economic development – increasingly by extending options for ‘texting’ in electronic media. Multi-literacy is a feature of education in Asia\, particularly in Hong Kong\, India\, Indonesia\, Malaysia\, Singapore and Taiwan. In the 21st century\, access to social media and policies on better literacy will deliver more multi-literate speakers. This is a global phenomenon due to widening access to technologies including smart phones\, social media and apps. Growth in multi-literacy brings new (and not so new) questions to the foreground. Multi-literacy is ancient (e.g. the Rosetta Stone) due to multilingual spoken language contact. Ideology and trade meets new technology via symbols and thus multi-literacy develops via the printing press. In the coming century\, ‘digital citizenship’ will be the grand challenge since access to global networks becomes necessary for new opportunities and potentially producing barriers for many others. Although the documentation of multi-literate speakers has a history in education\, linguistics\, philology and psychology it is not prominent in global education policy as yet\, with programmes to increase literacy reserved for the hegescripts e.g. English. Neglecting diversity in writing in developing countries could lead to further inequalities globally when speakers of a minority language are forced to become literate in a non-native language e.g. indigenous peoples taught literacy in English.​​
URL:https://linguistics.hku.hk/event/literacy-in-contact-reading-and-writing-in-multiliterate-speakers-along-the-silk-road-brendan-weekes-hku/
LOCATION:Room 7.58\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU\, Hong Kong
CATEGORIES:Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://linguistics.hku.hk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Seminar-Poster-20190530_1.jpg
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