Units In Mandarin Conversation

Hongyin Tao provides a new way of studying grammar based on the prosodic or intonation unit in spontaneous speech, rather than focusing on the unit of the artificially constructed sentence. Some notions developed from sentence-level data often do not account well for speech data. Contrary to the notion that the basic syntactic structure of a sentence comprises of both an NP and a VP, the author shows that a Mandarin sentence in spoken discourse can consist of a lone NP or a transitive verbal expression without any explicit argument (not anaphora). The author proposes the speech unit as one with which the grammar of Mandarin can better be understood. The book is of interest to scholars of discourse analysis, syntax, prosody, typology as well as of the Mandarin language.

One major feature of conversation is that people take turns to speak. Based on audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring Mandarin conversation, this book explores the role of syntax, prosody, body movements as well as their interplay in turn organization in the temporal unfolding of action and interaction. Adopting the methodology of interactional linguistics, this book offers a fine-grained analysis of the three multimodal resources and the sequential environments in which they appear. It demonstrates that syntax, prosody and body movements not only converge but also diverge in projecting possible turn completion. As one of the few systematic studies of multimodality in Mandarin interaction, this book will be of interest to researchers in Chinese linguistics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and multimodal analysis.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing, ISCSLP 2006, held in Singapore in December 2006, co-located with ICCPOL 2006, the 21st International Conference on Computer Processing of Oriental Languages. Coverage includes speech science, acoustic modeling for automatic speech recognition, speech data mining, and machine translation of speech.

In this volume leading academics in Interactional Linguistics and Conversation Analysis consider the notion of units for the study of language and interaction. Amongst the issues being explored are the role and relevance of traditionally accepted linguistic units for the analysis of naturally occurring talk, and the identification of new units of conduct in interaction. While some chapters make suggestions on how existing linguistic units can be adapted to suit the study of conversation, others present radically new perspectives on how language in interaction should be described, conceptualised and researched. The chapters present empirical investigations into different languages (Danish, English, Japanese, Mandarin, Swedish) in a variety of settings (private and institutional), considering both linguistic and embodied resources for talk. In addressing the fundamental question of units, the volume pushes at the boundaries of current debates and contributes original new insight into the nature of language in interaction.

This book is intended to address students, researchers and teachers of spoken language. It presents an empirical study of task-oriented language data in which coparticipants display levels of recipiency through reactive tokens. An in-depth investigation of displaying recipiency is of interest primarily to conversation analysts and pragmaticians involved in the research on talk-in-interaction in general and Mandarin Chinese conversations in particular. The communicative aspect makes this book relevant to the areas of language use. While previous research has shown that one single reactive token has different discourse functions in different conversational environments, this study shows that participants’ collaborative orientation to each other’s status of displayed recipiency seems decisive for the selection of reactive tokens, rather than one specific reactive token being employed for specific conversational purposes in varying interactional contexts. This book also contributes to fields in linguistics, pragmatics, and sociology which specialize in the investigation of spontaneous human communication.

What is the best way to analyze spontaneous spoken language? In their search for the basic units of spoken language the authors of this volume opt for a corpus-driven approach. They share a strong conviction that prosodic structure is essential for the study of spoken discourse and each bring their own theoretical and practical experience to the table. In the first part of the book they segment spoken material from a range of different languages (Russian, Hebrew, Central Pomo (an indigenous language from California), French, Japanese, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese). In the second part of the book each author analyzes the same two spoken English samples, but looking at them from different perspectives, using different methods of analysis as reflected in their respective analyses in Part I. This approach allows for common tendencies of segmentation to emerge, both prosodic and segmental.

The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages, English, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin, engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units, especially their static understanding as a priori entities, and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.

We broke our new series on learning Chinese [Mandarin] down into different learning stages. Start with the “Lower Beginner” books followed by the “Beginner” and “Upper Beginner” books. Next, progress to the “Intermediate” series, then test and reinforce your knowledge with the “Conversations” series. Our experienced educators and speakers possess the linguistic skills to help you understand and speak Chinese [Mandarin] clearly. We are very proud to have developed a product that truly helps you learn Chinese [Mandarin] quickly and easily, anytime and anywhere. This audiobook is divided into units.While it provides different learning patterns and accommodates various needs, this audiobook focuses on helping you improve your ability to understand, speak, and memorise Chinese [Mandarin]. The sample will give you a taste of what you can look forward to. In Unit 1 you will hear Chinese [Mandarin] decoded with each syllable spoken very slowly and clearly with repetition. Immediately before each sentence is spoken, you will hear the translation, so you will always understand what is being said. Unit 2 focuses solely on increasing your listening ability, which will improve your abilities to engage in dialogue with a native Chinese [Mandarin] speaker. This chapter requires you to listen very carefully to nuances in the language. By Unit 3 you will already notice progress in your abilities to speak and understand Chinese [Mandarin]. The spoken translation is followed by two repetitions in Chinese [Mandarin] at a completely natural speed. While you are learning to process naturally spoken Chinese [Mandarin], Units 3 and 4 will help you memorise new vocabulary and full sentences. In Unit 5 you can test yourself on how much you have learned. If you are having difficulties, we suggest you revisit the listening, speaking, or memorisation section of Units 1, 2 3 or 4, according to what you need more help with. We developed our audiobooks to enable you to learn without an eBook. This gives you the opportunity to advance your Chinese [Mandarin] language skills anywhere whether you’re on the go or waiting around. As the audiobook is neatly arranged into many sub-units, it is also very practical for educators to navigate and use in classrooms or any time sensitive learning environment. Topics covered in this 2 part series: Part 1: - Greetings - Asking personal information - Asking about people or things - Talking about food - Talking about the current time and date Part 2: - Talking about the location of things - Describing things - Likes and dislikes - Talking about abilities - Talking about appearance - Talking about personality - Talking about the weather - Talking about the house (rooms and furniture)