LINGUIST List 8.1767

Wed Dec 10 1997

Qs: ESL, Taiwanese, Anaphora

Editor for this issue: James German <jameslinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. H Stephen Straight (Binghamton U/SUNY), ESL College-Level Vocabulary-Size Minima?
2. TONG MIU SIM MALINDY, Taiwanese (Min dialect)
3. Bart Geurts, 'and' and anaphora

I am writing a chapter about English as a Second Language students in
"mainstream" classes at the university level -- observations from
content area faculty. The ESL population includes both immigrant and
international undergraduates. The literature I have found on this
topic includes numerous studies elucidating both the linguistic and
cultural difficulties encountered by such students even when they have
successfully completed a program of ESL study. Surveys of faculty
members point to the same problems. All studies indicate that
vocabulary development -- both general and discipline-specific -- is a
problem for ESL students.

I am wondering if there are any investigations involving adult and/or
college students which indicate just how large a vocabulary is needed
to succeed in college. How big is the vocabulary of a "typical"
incoming freshman who is a native speaker of English and how large a
vocabulary in English does an ESL student need in order to compete in
the mainstream classroom? And, is there any way to correlate this
information with "advanced" or "almost native-like proficiency" on the
ACTFL and ILR proficiency scales?

Judy Rosenthal, Kean University
<jrosenthturbo.kean.edu>

I am beginning a thesis which is going to be a phonetic analysis of
Taiwanese (NOT Taiwan Mandarin). What I have in mind is going to do a
detailed analysis of the vowel and tonal system of the
dialect. Unfortunatly, all the information and references that I have
got so far are solely on tone. I in fact quite desparately need to
know where the reference(s) of Taiwanese phonology can be found and
obtained. Taiwanese is a Min dialect which phonological system should
be highly similar to Amoy spoken in Hsia Men on the South coast of
Mainland China. If there is sufficient responses, a reference list
will be complied and posted on the Linguist List. 

Thank you. 
Malindy Tong

I would like to know if there is any evidence for the hypothesis that
in conjoined sentences like,

	There once was a prince and he was very rich.

it is the lexical meaning of 'and' that enables the anaphoric link
between 'a prince' and 'he'. (This may seem like a strange idea, but
there are actually many semanticists that assume that this is the
case.) It may be hard to demonstrate that this is true in any given
language, but it might be that there are languages in which 'and' is
realized differently depending on whether there is to be an anaphoric
link from the second conjunct to the first, or not. In such a
language, 'and' might be translated differently in:

	Fred bought a sheep and Barney bought two geese.

Bart Geurts

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