Abstracts of Major Papers in This Issue

“What Is Said” Construed from the Perspective of Récanati’s Truth-conditional Pragmatics, by LIU Longgen, p. 5

Classical Gricean theory of meaning construes“what is said”as standing in a dichotomous contrast with “what is implicated”, thus giving rise to the so-called Grice’s circle. Among the various endeavors post-Gricean theorists have made to tackle the Grice’s circle, Récanati’s construal of“what is said”and its relation with “what is implicated” distinguishes itself by shattering the syntactic correlation constraint, paying due attention to the constitutive role of pragmatic processes in“what is said”and placing sufficient emphasis on the effects of the interlocutors’ communicative intention upon interpreting“what is said”so as to bring our theorizing about “what is said”and its related concepts more in conformity with language users’ linguistic intuitions.

Fifty Years’ Debate over the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition by JIANG Meng, DENG Xiaoyan and OU Pingya, p. 10

The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) in second language acquisition (SLA) is an important yet controversial issue in the study of SLA over the past 50 years. This paper presents a review of the historical development of CPH as well as the up-to-date findings in the field. It concentrates on the four core questions: Is there truly a critical period for SLA? What is the exact time for the critical period in SLA? Is there a unified critical period for the various linguistic subsystems in SLA? What are the accounts for it (if there truly is)?

Level Ordering Hypothesis and the Morphology-Phonology Interface, by XIA Saihui, p. 17

Among the most prominent topics in Generative Grammar are the modularization of grammar and the interrelationship of different modules. Level Ordering Hypothesis, along with Lexical Phonology which feeds on it, sheds some light to the above topics. This article makes a comprehensive review of the hypothesis with respect to its origin, development, empirical evidence and challenges, with an attempt to gain a better understanding of this hypothesis and related theoretical issues.

The Parallel Corpus Design and the Corresponding Unit Identification, by LI Wenzhong, p. 22

It has been assumed that translation is a strongly context dependent process in which the translators interact with the texts, the audience, and other translators via the previous texts. “Good translations” are but those that are repeatedly referred to through negotiation by the community of translators and are therefore established. It follows that the translation text currently focused is not only an end product, but a necessary link of the diachronic homogeneous texts that arrests many of the important features of the past translation practices. The corresponding units are therefore defined as any identifiable chunks of texts or segments of texts that correspond each other in TL and SL, which encapsulate the completeness and the sameness of meaning of their counterparts in a syntagmatic construction. The corresponding units may or may not be reversible as they are dynamic in their construction and specific context. The research questions are: 1) How is equivalence defined theoretically and measured operationally in the parallel corpora? 2) To what extent is corpus-driven approach applicable in the parallel corpora processing? And 3) What insights could be obtained for monolingual text processing, the multiword expressions processing in Chinese in particular, from the perspectives of the bilingual texts? The research objectives are therefore to identify the corresponding units and build a CUbase that contains all the probable units. A further analysis would be on the complex equivalent relationships thus displayed in corresponding units and misrepresentation.

Lexical Bundles in Learners’MA Theses, by LOU Baocui, p. 27

This study investigates the structural and functional features of 4-word lexical bundles in Chinese learners’ MA thesis, compared with those occurring in published research articles of influential international journals. It is found that these learners use a greater variety of bundles, show over-reliance on a limited set of linguistic items, and are not fully aware of the differences between spoken and written genre. Learners use some bundles frequently which are not used by experienced writers, and don’t use some sequences which are frequently used by experienced writers. Learners may use some bundles used by experienced writers, but may use them in an idiosyncratic way, or without knowing usage restrictions. It is suggested that efforts need to be made to transfer related research results to detailed teaching techniques in order to narrow the gap between learners’ and experienced writers’writing.

Research Paper Titles in English across Discipline and Culture: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study, by TAO Jian and HUANG Dawang, p. 34

A comparative study of research paper titles across the disciplines of linguistics and material science is conducted to explicate disciplinary and cultural motivations on the basis of a self-compiled corpus and by integrating the taxonomies of Haggan (2004) and Hartley (2008). Results show that: 1) in the disciplinary dimension, research paper titles of material science undertake a higher load of information and stronger objectivity as compared with those of linguistics, which is reflected through the length of titles and the use of promotional rhetorical strategies; and 2) in the cultural dimension, Chinese academics both in linguistics and material science show high homogeneity, as indicated by a similar length of titles across two disciplines (in the same range of 10～11 words) and a relatively low frequency of compound structures. In addition, a number of redundant expressions like “study” and “analysis” and some hedges like “preliminary” are not uncommon in the paper titles of Chinese language researchers while such promotional rhetorical strategies as metaphors and antithesis popular in Anglo-American language study titles are seldom seen.

Translation Information-based Automatic Alignment of Chinese and English Parallel Corpus, by ZHANG Xuhua, p. 40

Main discussion is placed in this paper on a new aligning method named “anchor and overlap” which can be used in the aligning of the original Chinese text and its English translation at the sentence level. Compared with the other aligning methods, this method makes better use of the bilingual texts’ translation information. It works perfectly in the aligning practices and is free of the mistake overspreading caused by the length-method and the anchor deficiency caused by the lexical-based method.

The New Interpretation of Natsumesouseki’s Viewpoints on Sketch, by ZHANG Xiaoling, p. 44

In the early years of Meiji, a series of “literary” concepts, such as “novel”, “realism”, “naturalism” and even the word “literature”, were used merely in literary terminology, while their connotations were adopted by Japanese on the basis of the already-existing native literary resources. This found expression in the definition of “novel” given by Tubouchisyouyou in hisTheEssenceofNovel. This practice revealed the complex psychological dilemma of the Japanese literary world, which esteemed literary words and thoughts imported from the west on one hand, but attempted to counteract its influence on the other hand by integrating native resources. The Sketch Movement, which lasted from the 10’s of the Meiji Dynasty to the 40’s, vividly reflected this psychological dilemma. Advocated as the innovation of “haiku”, the Sketch Movement lingered on between traditional Japanese literary genres such as “haiku” and modern literary genres such as “novel”. Under such circumstances, Natsumesouseki’s viewpoints on sketch seemed exceptionally significant. This paper, through a combination of reviewing chronologically his viewpoints on sketch and analyzing certain articles, tries to point out that his viewpoints on sketch, which were first expounded in hisElaborationonLiterature, reflect his persistent doubt about the concept of “literature”. In his writing, Natsumesouseki skillfully made use of the quaintness and spiciness of “haiku” and the expressiveness of Chinese words, and this helps him go beyond the restraints of “genre” and get to the essence of “literature”.

Pamuk’s Writing and Sufi Mysticism, by ZHANG Hu, p. 49

Turkey’s novelist Orhan Pamuk’s writing has been influenced heavily by Islamic sufi mysticism, as Pamuk spontaneously accepts and applies the sufi mystic culture, which has its unique trans-continental and trans-cultural characteristics. In his novels such asWhiteCastle,NewLifeandBlackBook, “double truth”, “insān kmāil”, “irfān” and “mahabbah” have been vividly exhibited, which give new inspiration to Pamuk who reflects upon the problem of cultural conflicts and identity antinomy in Turkey, and powerfully promote the shaping of “cultural hybridization”.

The Impact of CBI on EFL Learners’ Use of English Learning Strategies and Their English Proficiency, by YUAN Pinghua, LIU Ting and WANG Lijuan, p. 55

This study explores the impact of CBI on EFL learners’ use of English learning strategies and their English proficiency in the College English context. It is found that the treatment group, which had no significant differences with the control group in English learning strategies and English proficiency prior to the experiment, turned out to be superior to the control group in the overall use of learning strategies and English proficiency at the end of the experiment. It can be concluded that CBI promotes learners’ use of English learning strategies and the development of English proficiency.