Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

The possessive marker 的 li55 in Chongqing Mandarin can also function as a coordinator. This function develops from the usage of 的 li55 to link numbers or amounts in calculation. Several restrictions are found on the coordinating function of 的 li55, reflecting its original usage: the conjuncts must be nominal; 的 li55 must be used between every two conjuncts; it can only be used in informal registers; the conjuncts must be all the members of a definite set. The coordinating function of possessive markers is also found in other Sinitic languages, while rarely seen in other language families, meriting further typological investigations.

The current study reports on a preliminary investigation of two conflations in Hong Kong English (HKE) – [n,l] conflation and [r, v, w] conflation – which have rarely been examined in previous studies wherein the two conflations were considered to exist in “free variation”, the result of the limited HKE inventories (Hung, 2000; Sewell & Chan, 2010). However, by investigating a 5791-word mini corpus composed of speeches from 29 HKE speakers, it is believed that a loose pattern exists in the two conflations. This short report hopes to trigger further investigations in the study of phonetic features of HKE – which in turn may help the development of the variety of English in different scopes of scholarship.

Human sensory and emotional systems contribute to cognitive processing in reflecting internal bodily experiences and representing the external world. A proliferation of behavioral and neurological studies has tapped into the effects of sensorimotor and affective information in semantic processing (e.g., Newcombe et al., 2012; Pulvermüller, 2005). Despite that considerable evidence of recruiting sensorimotor mechanisms in language comprehension has been posited, the interaction between sensorimotor and affective systems coded in semantic processing is still an underexplored topic. It is also important to note that emotions are weighed differently across sensory modalities—taste and smell are claimed to be the most “emotional senses” (Mantel et al., 2021). This neurological finding is further attested in the English lexical repository, given that taste and smell lexicons were found to contain more emotional contents than the lexicons of other senses (Winter, 2016). This study aggregated perceptual strengths across six sensory channels (i.e., vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and interoception) (Zhong et al., 2022) into affective ratings (i.e., valence and arousal) (Xu et al., 2021) to investigate the interaction between sensory modalities and emotional valence-arousal dimensions in Chinese. Our findings suggested that smell and interoception, considered the two sensations directly linked to emotional processing, are more emotional and can elicit higher arousal levels than words associated with other senses. This study demonstrates the differentiation of emotional information across different sensory modalities and provides further insights into the interplay between sensation and emotion as manifested in the language.

The prevalent public health measures against the spread of the COVID-19 disease like social distancing guidelines are necessary but they can make us feel isolated and lonely. Young people are even more vulnerable. The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly issued warnings over youth mental health. Medical professionals have acknowledged the existence of COVID-induced stress and its insidious creep into the fabric of student life. Sadly, open discussions on mental health issues are often viewed as a form of weakness, if not a taboo, among students. Our exploratory project aims to re-socialize students through a collaborative mobile app (StudyBird) to boost mental health literacy and its support networks on campus. The concept of StudyBird is similar to a taxi-hiring app which connects randomly available students (both local and international students) to perform their shared social/sports/learning activities together. Once students shared their locations and activities, the system will automatically match the closest students with similar shared activities together. Without the interference of the human preferences (e.g. staying with your own kin), our app promotes and allows students from diverse cultural backgrounds to meet and mingle with one another. The preliminary results from the three test groups (n=29) indicated positive user feedback, especially about enlarging their social networks in their trusted environment, i.e. our campus. Activity matching in the app and stability of our app is yet to improve. Data analytics has been performed continuously by applying machine learning technology to the data on backend to help students predict their learning progress.