Papers by Zheng-sheng Zhang
Semantic change — how the meanings of words change over time — has preoccupied scholars since wel... more Semantic change — how the meanings of words change over time — has preoccupied scholars since well before modern linguistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, ushering in a new methodological turn in the study of language change. Compared to changes in sound and grammar, semantic change is the least understood. Ever since, the study of semantic change has progressed steadily, accumulating a vast store of knowledge for over a century, encompassing many languages and language families.<br> <br> Historical linguists also early on realized the potential of computers as research tools, with papers at the very first international conferences in computational linguistics in the 1960s. Such computational studies still tended to be small-scale, method-oriented, and qualitative. However, recent years have witnessed a sea-change in this regard. Big-data empirical quantitative investigations are now coming to the forefront, enabled by enormous advances in storage capa...
Multilingual Education, 2016
This chapter offers a critical review of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to ... more This chapter offers a critical review of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to non-heritage students at the college level. Drawing upon recent research in the field, it examines the current state of curriculum and instruction, highlights important issues, and attempts to provide recommendations for future development. The discussion on curriculum emphasizes the central role of national standards in today’s curricular planning and urges CFL programs to match their curricular scope with content standards, and to ensure quality and accountability via benchmarking with proficiency standards. In addition to offering a description of the curricular scope and sequence as reflected in popular CFL textbooks, the chapter also describes major characteristics of the Chinese language and provides a critical examination and rethinking of some prevalent TCFL practices. Finally, some pedagogical innovations and resources are shared, with particular attention to the use of new technological tools.
Multilingual Education, 2016
This chapter offers a critical review of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to ... more This chapter offers a critical review of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to non-heritage students at the college level. Drawing upon recent research in the field, it examines the current state of curriculum and instruction, highlights important issues, and attempts to provide recommendations for future development. The discussion on curriculum emphasizes the central role of national standards in today’s curricular planning and urges CFL programs to match their curricular scope with content standards, and to ensure quality and accountability via benchmarking with proficiency standards. In addition to offering a description of the curricular scope and sequence as reflected in popular CFL textbooks, the chapter also describes major characteristics of the Chinese language and provides a critical examination and rethinking of some prevalent TCFL practices. Finally, some pedagogical innovations and resources are shared, with particular attention to the use of new technological tools.
A discussion of aspectual morphemes in Mandarin Chinese broadens the perspective on aspect to exa... more A discussion of aspectual morphemes in Mandarin Chinese broadens the perspective on aspect to examine its grammar, or the relationship between aspectual and non-aspectual elements, between different aspectual elements, and between the related categories of tense, aspect, and modality. Previous assumptions about Mandarin aspectual markers are noted, evidence of distributional gaps are used to argue for the tense and modality functions of aspectual markers, two kinds of facts about the semantical compatibility between verbs and aspectual markers (situational restrictions and boundedness requirements) are used to illustrate the differentiation of functions of aspectual elements in different contexts, and two kinds of facts about the relationship between aspectual elements (co-occurrence and replacement patterns) are used to illustrate the differences and similarities in functions between these elements and between their variants. In addition, the variation in obligatoriness across contexts is used to argue for the variable extent of grammaticalization for different variants of aspectual elements. Results are summarized and some remaining problems are addressed. Contains 26 references. (MSE) *
Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies, 2009
Lectures on Human Language Technologies publishes monographs on topics relating to natural langua... more Lectures on Human Language Technologies publishes monographs on topics relating to natural language processing, computational linguistics, information retrieval, and spoken language understanding. Emphasis is placed on important new techniques, on new applications, and on topics that combine two or more HLT subfields.
The ideographic myth, though much debunked, still exerts a powerful effect on the instruction of ... more The ideographic myth, though much debunked, still exerts a powerful effect on the instruction of characters. This can be seen in the widespread focus on semantic radicals and the general neglect of phonetic components. At a more general level, the myth may also be responsible for the simplistic approach and peripheral attention to character instruction in many curricula and the lack of progress in instructional methodology as a whole. The present paper first summarizes the evidence for the primacy of phonetic information in characters and for regarding the phonetic component in semantic-phonetic compounds as the graphic and functional center. After enumerating the inadequacies in current character instruction, as exemplified in some elementary textbooks, it proposes a "phonic" approach to character instruction, which maximizes the use of the phonetic component for the recognition, recall and retention of characters. Along with some general principles, such as "persistence, inclusiveness, and emphasis on concrete, incremental and incidental learning, contextualized and synchronized with vocabulary acquisition", it also suggests some concrete exercise formats, such as "analysis and synthesis, comparison and contrast, analogy and back analogy, indicating sounds with characters" and so on. The paper ends with a discussion of some phonic advantages in typing Chinese using phonetic input.
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Papers by Zheng-sheng Zhang