The effect of Min dialect and speech genre on the realization of retroflex
fricatives in Taiwan Mandarin
Janice Fon
Graduate Institute of Linguistics
National Taiwan UniversityAbstract:
Taiwan Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan. It has two retroflex
fricatives, /ʂ/ and /ʐ/, but only the former has a dental counterpart /s/. As mostTaiwan Mandarin speakers also have at least some passive knowledge of Min, alocal substrate language which has no retroflex in its inventory, but has either /s/and /z/ (the [Z] dialect), or /s/ and /l/ (the [L] dialect), many speakers areinclined to apply deretroflexion to their Mandarin retroflexes due to negative
Min transfer, including /ʂ/→[s], and /ʐ/→[z, l, n], especially in spontaneous
speech. This study thus intends to investigate how Min dialect and speech genre
affect the realization of Mandarin /ʂ/ and /ʐ/. Twenty gender­balanced,Mandarin­Min bilinguals were recruited to perform two experiments. The
Mandarin experiment had two subparts, read and spontaneous, each including
the same five /ʂ/­ and five /ʐ/­initial words as stimuli, along with five /s/­ andfour /l/­initial words serving as controls. For read speech, subjects read fromprinted Chinese characters as is. For spontaneous speech, the experimenter
asked subjects questions to elicit simultaneous responses of the stimuli. TheMin experiment was a short story with twelve /z/­initial words embedded.
Subjects were required to read the story fluently. Preliminary results showed aprominent Min dialect effect for Mandarin /ʐ/ realization. [ʐ] was more likely tooccur among [Z] Min dialect males, while [l] realization was more likely among[L] Min dialect speakers for both genders. For the genre effect, there were more[ʐ, ɻ] and fewer [z, l] realizations in read than spontaneous speech among males.
For female, there was a dialectal split. With [Z] Min dialect females, there weremore [ɻ] and fewer [ʐ] in read than spontaneous speech, while for [L] dialect
females, there were more [ʐ] and fewer [ɻ, l] instead. As for /ʂ/, females showed
more backing in read than spontaneous speech, while no such trend was foundamong males. The effect of Min dialect on /ʂ/ realization is still underway. Ingeneral, the results of this study seemed to imply that cross­linguistic influencesin bilinguals are rather dynamic, and are speaker­ and genre­dependent.

Acquisition of Attributive Modification by Japanese Learners of English
Makiko Hirakawa, Chuo University
This paper explores what kind of input is necessary for successful acquisition of
attributive modification in English by manipulating types of linguistic input Japanese learners
are exposed to; i.e., explicit instruction, study abroad (natural exposure), and input flood. If
there are two or more adjectives in English, the ordering of adjectives is rather strictly
determined, as shown in the examples in (1); (1a) is acceptable, but (1b) is unacceptable. In
contrast, there are no such restrictions on adjective ordering in Japanese. So the Japaneseequivalents in (2) are both acceptable with no interpretive differences between them.
(1)(2)

a. small square tablea. chiisana shikakui ie
small square houseb.
b.

*square small table(Sproat & Shih, 1991, p. 565)
shikakui chiisana iesquare small house (Sproat & Shih, 1991, p. 582)

Sproat and Shih (1991) suggested two types of modification, direct and indirect. Briefly,
English observes direct modification for prenominal adjectives, which exhibit rigid ordering,whereas Japanese observes indirect modification so that adjective ordering is free. Laenzlinger(2005) has proposed a hierarchical order of multiple adjectives in (3), which applies crosslinguistically to direct-modification languages: absolute (A) adjectives (in NON-SCALARPHYSICAL PROPERTY) are closer to the head noun than non-absolute (NA) adjectives (inQUANTIFICATION to MEASURE).
(3) [QUANTIF ordinal > cardinal] > [SPEAK-ORIENT subjective comment > evidential] > [SCALERPHYSICAL PROPERTY size > length > height > speed > depth > width] > [MEASURE weight >temperature > wetness > age] > [NON-SCALAR PHYSICAL PROPERTY shape > color > nationality/origin > material](Laenzlinger, 2005, p.650 (14))
Two experimental studies were administered to investigate whether learners of English
whose first language (L1) has no strict adjective ordering ever come to acquire L2 adjectiveordering in (3) (Hirakawa et al. 2019). In Study I, an explicit instruction (EI) group (n = 13)
and a natural exposure (NE) group (n = 12) responded to a preference task with five types ofadjective combinations (see Table 1). In Study II, an input flood (IF) group (n = 15) and a NE
group (n = 16) were involved in the same task. The EI group received 90-minute EI across three
weeks while the IF group received positive evidence with multiple adjectives over 15 weeks.
The NE groups participated in three or five-week intensive study-abroad programs in NorthAmerica. Results from the two studies showed that many of the participants failed to makecorrect choices at the pre-test (Test 1) indicating difficulty with adjective ordering restrictions
and that only the EI group improved in their performance at the post-tests (Tests 2 & 3).

Selected References:
Hirakawa, M., Shibuya, M., and Endo, M. (2019). Explicit instruction, input flood, or study
abroad: Which helps Japanese learners of English acquire adjective ordering? Language
Teaching Research, 23 (2), 158–178.
Laenzlinger, C. (2005). French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types.
Lingua, 115, 645–689.
Table 1

Summary of test stimuliTypeExample

Binary Combination(i) A-A(ii) NA-NA(iii) NA-A

a round glass tablea small light PC
short brown hair

555

Ternary Combination(iv) NA-A-A(v) NA-NA-A

a nice round glass table
lovely new pink shoes

55Table 2# of items

Study 1 - Mean accuracy rates (%)
Explicit Instruction (n=13)

Natural Exposure (n=12)

Type

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 1(i) A-A

60

8397727378

85(ii) NA-NA658179587365

79(iii) NA-A7597926373

7797(iv) NA-A-A40859858686082(v) NA-NA-A52879052295883

Mean (All)59869161636885

Table 3NS (n=13)

Study 2 - Mean accuracy rates (%)
Input Flood (n=15)

Natural Exposure (n=16)

NS (n=12)

Test 1

Test 2

Test 1

Test 2

Test 1(i) A-A

75

60

696488(ii) NA-NA

5360595578(iii) NA-A

63

71756593(iv) NA-A-A

60

60

685972(v) NA-NA-A

40

47364968

Mean (All)5860

615880Type

Topic in Nuclear Scope
Takeo Kurafuji (Ritsumeikan University)
The Japanese topic marker -wa is multifaced and its functions have been investigatedfrom several perspectives. One of the well-known restrictions on topic-marked nominals isreferentiality/specificity: only referential/specific nominals can be followed by -wa. It follows
from this restriction that the topic marker cannot be attached to wh-indefinites or QPs. There isa case in which a nominal with -wa is not interpreted as being referential or specific, however,as given in (1).
(1)
Wakategeinin-ga
yakuzaeiga-ni
syutuensuru-to
young.comedian-nom Japanese.mafia.movie-in appear-condtaitei soitu-wa
sugu
koros-are-ru.
mostly that.guy-top immediately kill-pass-pre‘If a young comedian appears in a Japanese mafia movie, mostly he is immediately
killed (in that movie).’
This is a donkey sentence, where soitu ‘that guy/he’ in the consequent clause is interpreted as
being bound by the quantificational adverb (Q-adv) taitei ‘mostly’. So (1) is paraphrased as“most young comedians who appear in a Japanese mafia movie are killed immediately (in thatmovie).” The point is that soitu is topic marked but it is neither referential nor specific.
Closely related is the notion of aboutness, which can be nicely captured by a dynamic
approach such as Portner and Yabushita (1998) or by a speech act theory advocated by Krika(2001), as long as referential/specific nominals are concerned. Putting aside the question ofwhether (1) is a statement about soitu, the truth conditions of (1) seem to be able to berepresented with the assertion operator à la Krifka (2001) as in (2).
(2)
MOST(𝜆x[young-comedian'(x) & ∃y[movie'(y) & appear-in'(x, y)]])(<x, 𝜆z[ASSERT[be-killed-immediately'(z)]]>)
Topic-comment structure is represented as a pair <A, 𝜆z[B]>, where A a topic, B a comment,and 𝜆z[B](A) is a statement about A. ASSERT[p] means something like the speaker believes
that p updates a context. So roughly speaking, the consequent clause in (2) means “as for x, I
assert that x is killed immediately,” which seems correct. However, a representation like (2) isruled out for an independent reason. Krifka (2001) argues that speech act operators can be in
the scope of “conjunctive” operators like every but not in the scope of “disjunctive” operators
like no and most, based on the discussion of wh-questions with quantifiers. In (2) MOST
outscopes ASSERT, which makes the representation uninterpretable.
The correct truth conditions of (1) thus should be something like (3), where the topic isthe antecedent of the conditional, and the comment is the consequent including the Q-adv.
(3)<𝜆x[young-comedian'(x) & ∃y[movie'(y) & appear-in'(x, y)]],𝜆P[ASSERT[MOST(𝜆x[P(x)])(𝜆x[be-killed-immediately'(x)])]]>(3) is read: “As for the set of young comedians who appear in a Japanese mafia movie, Iassert that most members of that set are killed immediately (in that movie).”
Now the question is: What is the contribution of -wa in (2)? I would like to suggest thatXP-wa is located in a designated syntactic position, which is assumed to be above vP and below
ASSERTION, is interpreted as a member of the contextually salient set; i.e. 𝜆x[x ∈ Si &salient'(Si)]. This is plugged in as part of the first argument of MOST since it is the place that
corresponds to the surface syntactic position of the subject.
(4)<𝜆x[young-comedian'(x) & ∃y[movie'(y) & appear-in'(x, y)]],𝜆P[ASSERT[MOST(𝜆x[x ∈ Si & salient'(Si) & P(x)])(𝜆x[be-killed-immediately'(x)])]]>The salient set Si refers to the set interpreted as topic, with which P is eventually replaced. So
the proposed semantics of -wa seems vacuous truth-conditionally, but actually plays a very
crucial role when we consider topic sensitivity of Q-advs as follows.
As is well known, Q-advs are topic-sensitive (cf. Chierchia (1995)).
(5) a. Dolphins are truly remarkable. When a trainer trains a dolphin, she usually makes it
do incredible things.
b.

Trainers from here are absolutely remarkable with all sorts of animals. If a trainerfrom here trains a dolphin, she usually makes it do incredible things.

In the case of Japanese donkey sentences, the asymmetric quantification by Q-advs is affectedby the position/topic-marking of donkey anaphora, as shown in (6).
(6)
Gakuzyutusyo-ga
ote syuppansya-kara de-ru-to,
academic.book-nom big publisher-from come-pres-condtaitee {soko-wa/-gasore-o}/{sore-wa/-o soko-ga}
mostly that.place-top/-nom it-acc it-top/-acc that.place-nom
gakkai-detenzisu-ru.
conference-at exhibit-pres‘If an academic book appears from a big publishers, usually it exhibits it at a conference.’
When soko-wa is used in (6), clearly the Q-adv asymmetrically quantifies over the domain ofpublishers that have published an academic book, not the domain of academic books that appear
from a big publisher. On the contrary, when sore-wa is used, the latter set is targeted by the Qadv. At the point of interpreting the antecedent clause, it is unknown which set is salient. But
when sore/soko-wa is interpreted, the salient set is indicated and it provides the target of Qadvs. This effect is caused by the set saliency given by salient'(Si).
References
Chierchia, Gennaro (1995) Dynamics of meaning, University of Chicago Press.
Krifka, Manfred (2001) Quantifying into question acts. Natural Language Semantics 9: 1-40.
Portner, Paul and Katsuhiko Yabushita (1998) The semantics and pragmatics of topic phrases.
Linguistics and Philosophy 21: 117-157.

Metaphor is a speech act: In comparison with what you may call “simile.”
KJ Nabeshima (Kansai University)

This paper is composed of three sections. In Section 1, I will discuss “what’s hidden” inmetaphor. Metaphor is called “隠喩” in Japanese and there seems to be something hidden.
The same intuition is expressed by Donald Davidson as “the hidden meaning of the metaphor”(Davidson 1978: 39). I will argue that metaphor involves make-believe and what is hidden isthat the metaphor is treating the make-believe real.
In Section 2, I will take what is normally called simile and introduce some of the recent
studies on metaphor makers. Metaphor markers are expressions such as as and like, which
distinguish simile from metaphor. However, recent studies such as Goalty (1997)
demonstrate that there are a number of metaphor markers. Accordingly, I will argue that a“simile” is a half-baked metaphor that makes what’s hidden in metaphor explicit.
In Section 3, I will argue that metaphor has stronger speech act characteristics than “simile.”
In Searle’s classification, “simile” falls under the category of assertives, whereas metaphor has
the characteristics of directives. Metaphorical expressions direct the listener to see that the
make-believe as real. Furthermore, metaphor is also an invitation to joint make-believe suchas playing house. This further adds stronger speech act characteristics to the metaphor.