台語使用者和上海話使用者的日語語中閉塞音／t/和／d/的發音－關於音節時長的控制

This study investigates the ”voice onset time” (VOT) variation in syllable-initial stops of Sixian Hakka in isolated syllables, according to factors including place of articulation (PoA), following vowel context, and the speakers' age and gender. Thirty-six participants provided speech recordings. They were required to repeat a randomized list of 36 speech stimuli constructed by using 6 syllable-initial stops [p, t, k, p^h, t^h, k^h] preceding 3 corner vowels [i, u, a] in 2 high-level tones [55, 55]. A total of 3,888 samples were measured for VOT values in PRAAT. The research results showed that the factors other than gender affected the VOT production of Hakka syllable-initial stops. In accordance with observations in previous sociolinguistic studies of gender, gender differences concerning the VOT absolute values were also observed despite showing no statistically significant differences. Furthermore, the factorial interaction between the stops' PoA and the following vowel context, which was discussed in detail, showed that vowel height has a stronger effect on VOT than vowel frontness. To conclude, this study substantially contributes to the understanding of VOT and its variation in Hakka, and to further comparisons of the VOT systems of stops between Hakka and other Chinese dialects or foreign languages, particularly for foreign spouses who immigrated to Hakka villages.

Nasalization of stressed vowels in Albanian (especially in the northern Albania Geg dialect) is considered by Albanologists as a very problematic phenomenon and a case study difficult to be solved. The current paper proposes an analysis that frames the phenomenon both at a synchronic and diachronic level. The development of vowel nasalization is investigated by taking into account the most accredited theories in the acoustic-coarticulatory field as well as linguistic universals concerning the spreading of nasalization in the vowel systems of various languages of the world. From a diachronic point of view, particular attention is paid to the original conditions of Albanian vocalism and, above all, to the aspects concerning the results of IE * o and and * e (as well as * a and * e from Latin borrowings). The evolution of these sounds helps to determine both the phonetic conditioning which originated nasalization and its periodization: nasalization developed only before a tautosyllabic nasal consonant (except for those cases where it is a result of analogical leveling) and must have been stabilized after the diphthongization of mid vowels *e and * o . Finally, based on the data available today concerning the geographical distribution of nasal vowels in the Albanian speaking area (including Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro), an alternative hypothesis about the diffusion of the phenomenon is offered. Nasalization in Albanian may have had a gradual spreading, relatively to the number of vowels involved, through a process blocked at its initial stage in the southern Tosk area and in some peripheral Geg areas, and not uniformly extended to the whole Albanian speaking region.

This study aims to examine the extent to which phonics instruction can facilitate word recognition and reading comprehension of low-achieving learners at a junior high school located in Hualien. Twelve ninth graders, with low proficiency levels, were recruited to a complementary phonics support program, implemented twice a week which lasted for fourteen 45-minute class periods over a seven-week period of time. The research design included pretesting learners, before they received phonics instruction, and posttesting learners immediately, following the instruction. Survey questionnaires and qualitative interviews were also conducted. The results of the study revealed that (1) phonics instruction significantly improved low-achieving learners' performance on the measures of word recognition, including word decoding and meaning; (2) the reading comprehension ability of low-achieving learners was developed significantly prior to, and following, the phonics program; (3) learning difficulties which the learners encountered in the program were likely to be multi-syllable word decoding, irregular spelling patterns and vowels; and (4) most participants endorsed the belief that peer tutors may play a positive role during the phonics learning program. It appears that low-achieving learners might well benefit from phonics instruction significantly to develop word recognition and reading comprehension; consequently, the pedagogical practice of integrating orthographic and phonological awareness training into a support program can be of enormous value for such learners to acquire fundamental knowledge of English words.

The 《Stydies in Taiwanese Dialect: Hakka-dialect》is the first data which the Japanese studied on Hakka dailects at the beginning of the Japanese colonial era. The purpose of this paper is to consider the ”Tong Zi Yi Zhu” (the different notes of the same character) in Hakka-Kana to show clearly how Japanese have grasped the Hakka dailects. Consequently, 《Stydies in Taiwanese Dialect》is due to the fundamental phoneme system different from the Hakka dialects and Japanese. Moreover, the difference between the SiYan Hakka and the HoiLiuk Hakka is also visible. In addition, it is thought that a tentative plan of Hakka-Kana was not yet decided, it was in the trial stage.

Vowel reduction is the phenomena, in which the duration and the formant transition of vowels in function words shorten in conversations. The phenomena have been observed in stress-accent languages. In this paper, I will report the results of the research whether or not vowel reduction occurred in a pitch accent language, Japanese. As I mentioned before, vowel reduction has two phenomena: shortening of duration and shortening of formant transition. Firstly, the durations of function vowels (”ga” and ”to”) were shorter than content vowels. Secondly, ”a” in the particle ”ga” was more centralized than the corresponding ”a.” Thus, vowel reduction occurs in the Japanese language although the Japanese language was the pitch accent language. Therefore, the vowel reduction is the part of universal grammar.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first is to investigate the impact of learning English or Spanish as a foreign language on Taiwanese learners' sociolinguistic perception toward cultural globalization. The second is to explore the effect of proficiency in target language on the learners' globalization attitudes. Questionnaires were taken by a representative sample of 60 foreign language students recruited from Wenzao Ursuline College Language in Taiwan. Preliminary results revealed a greater impact of the proficiency level on foreign language rather than the effect of foreign language studied on the sociolinguistic attitudes toward cultural globalization. In addition, learning a foreign language promote a positive socio linguistic percept ion toward the student's mother language and their own cultural heritage.

Mandarin has been affected other languages in Taiwan so immensely that many Taiwanese people are not able to speak their mother tongues. However, in the last decade, Taiwanese has re-emerged and challenged the prestigious status of Mandarin. Many borrowings from Taiwanese has been observed in Taiwan Mandarin. This study uses newspaper corpus as the data source, examines the sociolinguistic functions of the Taiwanese loan words in Taiwan Mandarin based on Hock's (1991) approach of dialect borrowing. Hock stresses the prestige relation between donor and recipient language. Our statistical survey in newspaper corpora indicates that the frequency of loan words such as 走透透 zou-tou-tou 'visit everywhere' is dramatically risen after 1990. Furthermore, we argue with Weinreich's (1974) reasons for lexical borrowing. It is found that some of the Taiwanese loan words are borrowed for filling in lexical gaps in Mandarin, most of loan words are adopted in Mandarin conversation because the speakers consider them being more expressive in showing their attitude and feeling, such as humorous effect, the denotation of solidarity, easing the tone or reinforcing the tone. The Taiwanese society is developing and changing with giant strides. The once substratum influence is now a fashion. The use of Taiwanese loan words is under the joint constraints of social, political and psychological factors.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of adopting a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) as primary supplementary material in blended learning classroom on Taiwanese university EFL learners’ English proficiency levels. The study utilized pre- and post-tests of English proficiency, specifically the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) by Educational Testing Service (ETS), learners’ learning experience and learners’ satisfaction. In this study, thirty EFL learners at a private university in Northern Taiwan participated in a year-long paired-group study, first under blended learning environment while adopting a MOOC as primary supplementary material and followed by traditional face-to-face learning, with each learning mode lasting one semester. All participants were computer science and information engineering majors with intermediate English proficiency based on university placement exams. During the first semester (Fall 2013), consists of EFL learning via the blended mode of teaching, which partially incorporates student-centered learning utilizing Coursera education platform. While The second semester (Spring 2014), traditional learning mode the course is comprised of EFL instruction in the traditional way, i.e., teacher-fronted instruction and in-class assignments with textbook materials. Several scholars have suggested that instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, blended learning with the asynchronous distance learning capabilities of MOOCs could enhance the course content and increase learning proficiency. This paper investigated on such exploration, wherein implementing the online learning experience into English for specific purposes (ESP) course at a private university in Northern Taiwan. This research explained to further understand the implications of blended learning at the tertiary education level in Taiwan. The investigator sought a comprehensive approach to the examination of the blended learning model by utilizing three different sections: students’ learning progress, student’s’ learning satisfaction and students’ learning perspectives. Within-group comparison of the students’ mean scores of the pre- and post-test examinations provided the quantitative assessment of learning progress, while open-ended questionnaire responses and interviews provided the qualitative data comprising the students’ perspective. This research provided a blended learning approach whereby there was a mixture of face-to-face and online learning activities where students would integrate the information and data gathered from both platforms to improve on their learning techniques. The result revealed that the improvement of academic performance and learning satisfaction was attributed to the fact that with the MOOCs assistance, students could study their course materials at their own pace and designated time either at home or in their dormitory rooms. Blending MOOC technology integrates synchronous and asynchronous learning tools that transform and improve the education system and provide room for enforcing learners’ active, autonomous, collaborative, interactive and effective learning techniques.

台灣地區呼吸器依賴病人之發生率、生活品質、及成本效果研究

If the changing process of the Taiwanese literature and its research is one of the most prominent processes, then the works of Lai Ho and its researches will no doubt play a key role in this process. That is to say, the works of Lai Ho and its researches play a rather important role in the turning point of the whole process of the history of Taiwanese literature. Like the messages showed in the statement “Lai Ho: the Father of Taiwanese Modern Literature” which elementarily put forward by Wang Shi-Lang in the middle of 1930s and continued to be used in the Pacific-war period, and which were almost opposing to another statement “Colonial Literature” pronounced by the Japanese literary critics and writers living in Taiwan. When it came to the early period of post-world war II, another efficacy was granted to the works of Lai Ho and its researches, such as the using of Yang Qui who pointed out the achievement of Japanese-ruling Taiwanese literature movement to the Mainlanders of literary circle now living in Taiwan. After some argument and dispute, from the middle of 1960s via Nativist literary debate to the early 1980s around, the statement “Lai Ho: the Father of Taiwanese Modern Literature” was pronounced and recognized again. With the aid of elementary results of literary history and nationalism issue research, we might find that such a statement would surely possess or provide its meaning very close to the nationalist movement. From the other point of view, if we were to say that the ethnical politicizing approximately revealed in the field of anti-KMT movement or supporting inclination of election, then the changing process of this statement will similarly show the same politicizing in the literary discourse. In brief, the main discussion of this paper is to focus on the formation and changing process of the statement ‘Lai Ho: the Father of Taiwanese Modern Literature”, by the way, the relative or opposite voices will surely involved. Nevertheless, the attempt to clear the outline of its formation, conflict and change is our first concern.

Nanchang City, Xinjian District is located in the north of central Jiangxi Province. The traffic is very developed and the location advantage is particularly obvious. Its dialect belongs to the dialect of Changdu Cidu. The new Wangcheng voice system is divided into the common features of the Changdu dialect area and the unique characteristics of the interlanguage language. For example, when the sound is completely voicing, the sound is silenced, and the sound is unvoiced. Turbid initials n, l do not correspond to Mandarin; Wangcheng dialect is innocent, and Rusheng ending is -t, -ʔ ; the differentiation of the type is related to the acousin or not, The trend, although some words still retain the positive reading, but under certain conditions can also be read as Yin. In addition, Wangcheng dialect still has a literary and colloquial readings phenomenon, which has not attracted people's attention so far, and its research results are extremely embarrassing. According to the field investigation, this paper describes the phonological characteristics of Wangcheng dialect and the literary and colloquial readings of the words such as Geng rhyme, Ri mu, and Xia mu. The characteristics are obvious.

La búsqueda de información a través de la World Wide Web es una tarea común hoy en día. Sin embargo, es sobre todo una experiencia textual. Este trabajo propone e implementa un entorno 3D para la representación de los resultados de búsqueda Web en un entorno en tres dimensiones (3D) que es controlada por gestos y reconocimiento de voz. Con el fin de hacer eso, se requieren dos escenarios: una solución de servidor basado en Servicios Web XML que permite ser consumidos por los clientes que están buscando información en la Web; y una aplicación en cliente que permite ser ejecutado como una interfaz gráfica de usuario en el escritorio mediante el uso de comandos de voz y gestos. Esta última aplicación se encarga de modelar gráficamente el entorno 3D de acuerdo con los resultados de búsqueda Web. Un prototipo del sistema propuesto fue implementado, lo que representa un conjunto de resultados de búsqueda Web en un entorno 3D. El escenario 3D es manejada por gestos y comandos de voz; el entorno 3D se basa en la administración de algunas transformaciones 3D tales como la rotación y el escalado de las caras interiores de un toroide. Una evaluación del prototipo en contextos de búsqueda sugiere que hay un alto nivel de aceptación del usuario del modelo multimedia propuesto. Las personas que probaron el prototipo han dicho que tiene una interfaz gráfica de usuario intuitiva, y que tanto el habla como el reconocimiento de gestos han sido una alternativa altamente funcional para las tareas relacionadas con la búsqueda Web. Sin embargo, hay algunos aspectos a mejorar, sobre todo en el apoyo de reconocimiento de voz de diferentes acentos. En general, el prototipo multimedia cumplió con las expectativas de una muestra de los usuarios finales, lo que demuestra que este tipo de interfaces tienen un gran potencial.

This study is concerned with Arabic phonology. In particular it deals with morphophonemic alternations in standard Arabic and Kuwait dialect. The research is carried out within the framework of generative phonology. The work is arranged in four parts. Part one is a theoretical introduction which includes an outline of the different views on the phoneme since early in the century, phonemic analyses, taxonomic and systematic, the different variants of the phoneme, and the different thoughts on treating alternations are all reviewed. Similarly, an outline is provided on the theory of generative phonology. The first impression of it - the transformational view - and its strong abstraction is discussed. The other version of generative phonology - the natural view - which came as a reaction to the transformational abstractness is also outlined. Part two is devoted to standard Arabic. It is divided into two sections. The first of which deals with the phonological system. This includes a discussion on the vocalic system, the consonantal system, the syllable structure, assimilation and stress. Section two deals with the morphophonemic alternations in the language, both masculine and feminine. Part three is concerned with Kuwait dialect. It is also divided into two sections, the first of which discusses the phonological system of the dialect in the same way that the first section of part two discusses the phonological system of standard Arabic. Section two of part three deals with the morphophonemic alternations in the dialect in the same way that section two of part two deals with the morphophonemic alternations in standard Arabic. Part four attempts to account for the phonological dissimilarities between standard Arabic and Kuwait dialect. Such dissimilarities are grouped under: emphatic influence, phonemic merger, phonemic split, vowel insertion and deletion, vowel raising, syllable structure, and neutralization .

The use of paired speaking tasks for the assessment of interactional competence has recently attracted the attention of many scholars in language learning research. The present study aimed at investigating whether task type has any effect on promoting language learners’ interactional competence measured by means of multi-factor qualitative coding of paired speaking tasks. The performances of 92 dyads of conveniently-selected intermediate Iranian EFL learners on four paired speaking tasks were assessed using a rubric developed based on recent models for the scoring of interactional competence. To reveal the factors contributing to interactional competence, confirmatory factor analysis was run rendering the four-factor rubric developed in the present study as a valid measure of interactional competence through paired speaking tasks. In addition, to check the effect of different task types on interactional competence, the researchers calculated ANOVA estimates. Mean difference statistics computed indicated that some significant effect with large effect size existed for task type. Post-hoc comparisons carried out made it clear that from among the four tasks (i.e., Spot-the-difference, Story-completion, Decision-making, and Free-discussion) only the Story-completion task was the source of variability in the scores of interactional competence. The findings are of significance in that they point to the centrality of task type in assessing speaking through paired tasks. The study has certain theoretical and practical implications for foreign language teaching/testing researchers and practitioners.

D-words in the Huojia dialect all occur without a coda consonant or an off-glide and in some cases a mid vowel is added (He 1989, Lin 1993). Huojia D-word formation has been analyzed as having an underlying D-suffix // and an output template that bans codas and complex nuclei (Lin 2001a). Some roots, however, have no D-word counterparts, and the generalization is that any root that ends in a non-high nuclear vowel cannot have a D-word. Within Optimality Theory (OT, Prince and Smolensky 1993), two major proposals have been put forward to account for absolute ungrammaticality. The first is the MPARSE analysis (Prince and Smolensky 1993), in which the constraint MPARSE (which demands that the output must have a morphological structure) is ranked below relevant markedness constraints, and the Null Parse (an output that is phonetically unrealized because of the lack of a morphological structure) is then selected. The second is proposed by Orgun and Sprouse (1999) in which a component called CONTROL acts as a filter to check the grammaticality of the output selected by constraint evaluation in OT. This paper offers an account of the ungrammatical forms under Huojia D-word formation and argues that the CONTROL model is better able to capture the generalizations that a D-word cannot have a coda consonant/glide and that the absence of a D-word results from the requirement that a D-word must be distinct from its root.