Hongyin Tao

The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin

Abstract This paper investigates ‘Reactive Tokens’ in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and English. Our definition of ‘Reactive Token’ ( = ‘RT’ ) is ‘a short utterance produced by an interlocutor who is playing a listeners role during the other interlocutors speakership’. That is, Reactive Tokens will normally not disrupt the primary speakers speakership, and do not in themselves claim the floor. Using corpora of conversational interactions from each of the three languages of our study, we distinguish among several types of RTs, and show that the three languages differ in terms of the types of RTs favored, the frequency with which RTs are used in conversation, and the way in which speakers distribute their RTs across conversational units.

Age Vitality Across Eleven Nations

This paper is the second in a series of empirical applications of the concept of (ethnolinguistic) vitality into the intergenerational arena. It examines young peoples assessments of the subjective vitalities of young, middle-aged, and elderly targets in four Western (midwest USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and seven south and east Asian sites (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China, The Philippines, and India). The results support earlier findings (in Hong Kong and California) in that, relative to young adult targets, the elderly were rated as having more vitality in the Western than the south and east Asian settings; the middle-aged were seen as having the highest vitality across all nations. Differences in the age vitality profiles between the different nations allowed identification of three distinct patterns. The study also provided intriguing cross-cultural data on how respondents construed the on-sets of young adulthood, middle age, and old age as well as the ends of the former two categories. The findings are related to other cross-cultural studies of intergenerational communication and age stereotyping, and future research directions are highlighted.

Understanding Non-Restrictive "Which"-Clauses in Spoken English, Which Is Not an Easy Thing.

In this paper, we re-examine the notion of non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRCs) in the light of spoken corpus evidence, based on an analysis of 692 occurrences of non-restrictive which-clauses in British and American spoken English data. After reviewing traditional conceptions of NRRCs and some recent work on the broader notion of subordination in spoken grammar, we discuss the problem of identifying such clauses. We then present examples from our corpora and a concordance-based analysis of co-textual and contextual factors. A smaller sample of 214 occurrences is then subjected to a more detailed analysis, using a relational database. We conclude that non-restrictive which-clauses fall into three broad functional types: expansion, evaluation, and affirmation, with the category of evaluation being the most frequent. In all three cases, pragmatic factors, rather than semantic requirements, explicate their use. Our results also show regular collocations with copular verb-forms and with certain types of discourse markers and modal items. Turn-taking is also considered, and three recurring phenomena are discussed: which-clauses as turn extensions, the occurrence of the NRRC following a response token from the listener, and second-speaker construction of the NRRC. We use the results of our analysis to contribute to current debates on the notion of categories such as subordination in spoken grammar, on grammar and situated interaction, and on the status of probabilities in grammatical description.

Turn Initiators in Spoken English: A Corpus-Based Approach to Interaction and Grammar

Recent studies in interaction and grammar have demonstrated the importance of examining conversation turn structure for understanding features of grammar. Turn beginnings and endings are seen as particularly important loci for investigation (Schegloff 1996). This study examines two corpora of spoken English to investigate the grammar of turn beginnings in English. A turn initiator is broadly defined as the very first form with which a speaker starts a new turn in conversation. It is found that turn-initial elements in English are overwhelmingly lexical in nature, a result confirming Schegloff’s (1996) hypothesis. Moreover, the data shows that not only are these turn initiators lexical, they also tend to be syntactically independent. It is thus suggested that one of the designing features of the grammar of turns in English involves a short free form of some sort, and English can be considered a turn-initial language in grammaticalizing turn signals. Conversational interactive functions of turn initiators are considered and subcategories suggested. This study also demonstrates some of the advantages of taking a corpus-based approach to language use and looking at turn structure, as exemplified in characterizing the use of some common discourse particles (‘and’, ‘yeah’ and ‘yes’, and ‘this’ and ‘that’).

Gapped coordinations in English: Form, usage, and implications for linguistic theory

Abstract This paper reports the results of a usage-based study of gapping (as in “I ate fish, Bill [ ] rice, and Harry [ ] roast beef”), one of the most extensively studied syntactic constructions in English. Using the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) as the database, our investigation demonstrates that gapping is an extremely marginal grammatical construction in English. It is virtually non-existent in interactive speech and has only a very limited presence in certain types of monologues and written registers. Syntactically speaking, gapping favors simple structures, linking and low transitivity verbal elements, and can ostensibly be deemed as copula-derived. From a discourse pragmatic point of view, information flow, social interaction, and stylistic functions are found to be contributing factors to the ways that gapping structures are constituted and used. Our study can thus be taken as evidence that an adequate understanding of the form and discourse functions of syntactic structures is best achieved through examinations of actual language use.

Using authentic spoken language across all levels of language teaching: Developing discourse and interactional competence

Abstract This journal issue contains a number of papers/teaching units that are dedicated to the review and analysis of some ways in which authentic language materials can be used for the teaching and learning of Mandarin Chinese from the beginning to advanced levels. We first describe the rationale for the expanded use of authentic language data in classroom instruction, and then we present four exploratory units to showcase some of the effective classroom teaching procedures that are useful to make learners aware of (and eventually use) important features of language interaction in Chinese. The units use two types of authentic materials: natural conversations and entertainment media (TV and movies). Some of the materials, due to the nature of the communicative settings associated with them, raise important theoretical questions about norms and expectations of (intercultural) communication and goals of language learning. This introduction provides a brief review of the theoretical foundations of the sample units and an overview of the units presented here.

Transcribing Mandarin Chinese Conversation: Linguistic and Prosodic Issues

This study addresses some of the issues in the transcription of Chinese spoken discourse, with a particular focus on transcription solutions for various linguistic and vocal features of Mandarin conversation. While there is a great deal of complexity in Chinese spoken discourse, current practices in transcribing spoken Chinese and in building spoken corpora contain essentially no standards. Therefore, this study selects the linguistic and vocal features of spoken Chinese that meet the criteria of 1) highly recurrent in spoken Chinese; and 2) posing the most trouble in transcription. The features that need urgent attention in transcription include discourse particles, non-lexical vocalizations, and repairs. Given the centrality of spoken discourse, and conversation in particular, in discourse research, it is critically important to discuss key issues in transcribing Mandarin Chinese and then propose some ways for corpus building in the field of Chinese linguistics, which we do in this paper.