Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The literature on China English available seems to focus mostly on the attitudes toward English, the use of English, or the EFL industry in this country. Lexical borrowing as part of nativization has rarely been investigated. This paper presents a data-based analysis of 59 borrowed lexical items as found in 84 articles from two English newspapers in China, including both loanwords and loan translations. On the whole these items do not seem to be in widespread use. Additionally, the findings show that the loanwords tend to be culture-specific lexical items, nonce borrowings, and necessary borrowings. The loan translations may be more foreign than they appear, because of the underlying facets of Chinese culture. Also discussed in the paper are two linguistic factors that may decide if a lexical item may be borrowed as a loanword or a loan translation, as well as the existence of pairs and sets of synonymous loanwords and/or loan translations, found among Chinese-English bilingual communities in and outside China.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Depressive and anxious people tend to engage in negative interaction with others due to deficits of social skills and positive emotional expression. It is caused to impairment of intimate relation, such as couple and parent-child (Rutter & Quinton, 1984). Depression and anxiety is important internal variables affecting to mother-infant interaction. Especially, depressive mothers’ infants tend to be low to social stimulus. Depressive mothers are not only interactional partners who significantly affect to low stimulus to their infants, but they also are lower interacted by themselves (Field, Hernandez-Reif, Vera, Gil, & Diego, 2005). In addition, it occurs to problems about mother-infants interaction through depressive mothers tend to show irritation without waiting for infant’s repeated behaviors (Pickens, Hansen, Rieppi, & Quale, 1996). The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between maternal depression and anxiety and their infants' lexical development and behavior problem at 18 months.
A total of three hundred twenty mothers and their 18-months infants participated in this study. Interviewers visited each participant’s home and mothers completed questionnaire. BDI (Beck Depression Inventory, Beck, Ward, Mendalson, Mock, & Ergaugh, 1961) and BAI (Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988) were used for investigating maternal depression and anxiety, while Korean MCDI (Korean McArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Pae, Kwak, Song, & Sung, 2004) and TBC (Toddler Behavior Checklist, Goldsmith, 1996) were used for investigating infant's lexical development and behavior problem.
Mothers were categorized into two groups based on their both BDI and BAI scores: high depressive and high anxious mothers (N=76) and low depressive and low anxious mothers (N=96). Results are as follows: First, infants with high depressive and anxious mothers had less expressive words than infants with low depressive and low anxious mothers (t=2.04, p<.05). Second, high depressive and anxious mothers had more perceived that their infants engage in resistant behavior (t=2.34, p<.05), immaturity (t=2.88, p<.01) and physical aggression (t=2.02, p<.05) than low depressive and anxious mothers. However, there were no significant effects in emotional instability and shyness.
These results of this study revealed that maternal depression and anxiety had affected to their infants' lexical development and behavior problem. Depressive and anxious mothers tend to perceive their infant’s salient problematic behaviors in their interaction. These results support studies that maternal variables such as depression and anxiety decided to the sensitivity of infant’s responsiveness and affect to child development (Campbell, Cohn, & Meyers, 1995; van den Boom, 1995).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This research examined lexical changes during the transition to parenthood. 40 individual interviews were conducted with 20 spouses (10 couples) before and after the birth of their first child. Each interview was analyzed using the DICTION software program. 17 DICTION categories having significant differences were each discussed pertaining to the lexical changes that occur for husbands and wives across the transition to parenthood. Implications of these results are discussed along with possibilities for future research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: One of the main problems in current interpersonal communication research is the lack of an encompassing framework in which to capture different communication styles. Additionally, research to date has often used inadequate measures of interpersonal communication styles. In this research, a multi-phase lexical approach was used to uncover the main communication styles. In the first three phases, adjectives were selected based on their ability to describe a communication style. In the fourth and final phase, 200 respondents provided self-rating on 749 communication adjectives. The adjectives were submitted to a Principal Component Analysis, which provided evidence of seven main communication style dimensions. This paper describes the lexical research process and the content and interrelations of the seven main communication style dimensions.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Infants begin life with a universal capacity to differentiate phonemes across languages, and the perceptual sensitivities for perceiving both native and non-native phonetic contrast are greatly divergent around 12 months of age. However, no available studies have examined the perception of the lexical tones, the suprasegmental units that differentiate meanings of syllables, in Mandarin-learning infants. This study also assessed the role of auditory basis in developing lexical tones by examining the effect of acoustical similarity between lexical tones on perceptual performance.
Methods: In a conditioned head-turn procedure, 10-12 month-old infants learned to turn their heads to the reinforcers when background speech sound was changed from the control syllable, e.g., / qi1/, to the target syllables, e.g., / qi3/. The speech stimuli were three tone pairs: the tone 1 (high-flat tone) vs. 3 (dipping tone) pair is acoustically distinct, the tone 2 (rising tone) vs. 3 pair is acoustically very similar, and the tone 2 vs. 4 (falling tone) pair has some acoustical similarity. These stimuli were recorded by a native female speaker and equalized in RMS amplitude. Fifty-nine infants participated in the study: tone 1 vs. 3 (n = 23, girls = 10, mean age = 11.56 months), tone 2 vs. 3 (n = 21, girls = 12, mean age = 11.36 months) and tone 2 vs. 4 (n = 15, girls = 6, mean age = 11.06 months).
Results: The percent corrects of the tonal perception test indicate that one-year-old infants perform significantly better in discriminating the acoustically distinct tone 1 vs. 3 contrast (M = 79.97%, SD = 8.67) than tone 2 vs. 3 contrast (M = 61.16%, SD = 14.04) and tone 2 vs. 4 contrast (M = 58.63%, SD = 10.48), one-way ANOVA, F(2, 53) = 21.21, p < .001. The a Scheffe post-hoc test shows that the perceptual sensitivity for perceiving the tone 2 vs. 3 contrast and tone 2 vs. 4 contrast is similar and different from the tone 1 vs. 3 contrast.
Conclusions: The one-year-old Mandarin-learning infants are able to discriminate the acoustically distinct tone contrasts but easily confused with the acoustically similar tone contrasts. These results suggest the auditory basis of developing the lexical tone perception. In addition, the result that infants are easily confused with some tone contrasts reveals that the ability to perceive lexical tones is still developing after the first birthday.