Secondary schools in the Netherlands have been offering Chinese Language and Culture as an official exam subject for three years now. Studies on Dutch students SLA of Mandarin are very limited in...Show moreSecondary schools in the Netherlands have been offering Chinese Language and Culture as an official exam subject for three years now. Studies on Dutch students SLA of Mandarin are very limited in number, and established literature often studies participants in their twenties with English as their L1. This study aims to look at improvement shown in tonal production by Dutch teenagers aged 13-17 who follow the relatively new Mandarin course in secondary school, to provide deeper insight into SLA of Mandarin by Dutch teenagers, and into the effectiveness of the course. There were two groups of participants: students with four months of experience in Mandarin, and students from the same school with three and a half years of experience. They were asked to produce a selection of both monosyllabic and disyllabic words. Their tones were visualized using Praat, and compared to both the tonal production of native speakers to identify errors. The production of the two different grades was then compared to one another to identify points of improvement. The results showed that female students showed improvement mainly in pitch contour, and to some extent even acquired tonal coarticulation. The male students showed improvement in pitch height, and very little improvement in pitch contour. For both genders the production of tone 3 appeared most difficult, followed by tone 4, then tone 2. Tone 1 was the easiest to produce.Show less
In this thesis, the phenomenon of dangling topic sentences in Mandarin is investigated. These topics can appear without obvious marking in sentence initial position and are not related to a...Show moreIn this thesis, the phenomenon of dangling topic sentences in Mandarin is investigated. These topics can appear without obvious marking in sentence initial position and are not related to a resumptive pronoun or a gap in the comment. The goal is to explain that these sentences are actually not exclusive to Mandarin, but also appear in many other languages. Furthermore, I provide evidence that suggests that these topics receive a topic marker that is part of the numeration and are thus not as "bare" as they appear to be at first glance. This marker can either be realized prosodically or by a particle.Show less
The focus of this thesis is on the categorization of handwritten Chinese characters. The main question is, ‘How can handwritten Chinese characters be categorized in order to make unknown characters...Show moreThe focus of this thesis is on the categorization of handwritten Chinese characters. The main question is, ‘How can handwritten Chinese characters be categorized in order to make unknown characters findable?’. Handwritten Chinese characters differ from regular or printed Chinese characters. Learning to read handwritten Chinese is not part of any university curriculum and it is usually not taught in language schools. There are only a few sources that can be used to find the corresponding regular form of an unknown handwritten character. Four sources are reviewed in order to explore and judge various methods. This research is based on the methods used in A Manual of Chinese Running-Hand Writing: Especially as it is Used in Japan written by Groeneveldt and De Saint Aulaire (1861), Dictionnaire des formes cursives des caractères chinois (1909) by Stanislas Millot, Sōsho Daijiten (1936) by Sukeyuki Endō and Chinese cursive script: An introduction to handwriting in Chinese (1958) by Fang-yü Wang. The product of this research will be a set of guidelines of what a user-friendly dictionary would look like.Show less
Grammatical gender is one of the ways in which many languages classify nouns. It is not a universal category: for instance, it is absent in Chinese Mandarin, as well as in many other Asian...Show moreGrammatical gender is one of the ways in which many languages classify nouns. It is not a universal category: for instance, it is absent in Chinese Mandarin, as well as in many other Asian languages. The aim of this research, focusing in particular on Chinese speakers, is to investigate to which extent speakers of genderless languages grasp the concept of grammatical gender. If they were asked to associate a noun with a gender, which strategies would they use? This thesis illustrates the results of the nominal classification made by Chinese respondents who were asked to select genders for forty nouns and to motivate their choice. The findings of this study may be helpful in two ways. On the one hand, they may provide information on how the human mind classifies nouns. On the other hand, they may give a new perspective for future studies on second language (L2) acquisition.Show less
This thesis discusses the properties of the current global language English, along with other three languages: Esperanto, Latin, and Classical Chinese who once were or close to be an international...Show moreThis thesis discusses the properties of the current global language English, along with other three languages: Esperanto, Latin, and Classical Chinese who once were or close to be an international language. This paper attempts to figure out if Chinese will replace English as the next global language by listing the properties of a global language following a comparison of the list with properties of Modern Chinese. In order to find out the properties of a global language, this thesis analyzes the reasons why each language became a global or a regional lingua franca and why some of the languages failed to maintain the status of being an international language. The result shows that being a global language often relies on colonial expansion, strong influence in multiple fields throughout the world and the easiness of acquiring the language. Chinese being the only language written with characters and the principle of “Peaceful Rise” of China makes Chinese less likely to be the next global language.Show less
In this thesis I will conduct research regarding the acquisition of the BA construction among native Dutch second language learners of Mandarin. I will look at the following research question: Are...Show moreIn this thesis I will conduct research regarding the acquisition of the BA construction among native Dutch second language learners of Mandarin. I will look at the following research question: Are native Dutch speaking learners of Mandarin as a second language faster in understanding certain features of the BA structure and in acquiring the BA structure then native English speaking learners of Mandarin? This question is suggested by the fact that English is an SVO language, while Dutch is basically an SOV language. Since the BA construction is an SOV structure, it could be possible that based on their first language, Dutch learners of Mandarin are faster than English learners of Mandarin in acquiring this structure. At the end of my research I expect to be able to show some interesting points regarding this question, which could be a basis for more research on this question.Show less
