Time: October 15, 12:30-13:30
Place：Room 107, Yang Yongman Building, Minhang Campus, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Speaker ：Yuan Boping
Abstract
This talk reports on an empirical study examining how English- and Korean-speaking learners of L2 Chinese process forward- and backward-looking classifier-noun (dis)agreement in Chinese. Native Chinese speakers and advanced English- and Korean-speaking learners completed an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a self-paced reading (SPR) task, using sentences in which the classifier precedes the noun (forward-looking) or follows a topicalised noun (backward-looking). In the AJT, both learner groups, like native Chinese speakers, reliably distinguished agreement from disagreement in both configurations. In the SPR, native speakers showed clear disruptions at violations at the post-critical region in both configurations. Korean-speaking learners showed a reliable effect in forward-looking conditions but not in backward-looking ones, while English-speaking learners showed no effect in either. These results suggest that advanced L2 learners command the classifier-noun agreement constraint off-line but recruit it selectively during incremental processing. Based on our findings, we argue that L2 processing is “noisier” than L1 processing and that the L2 parser is likely to be affected by distracting “noises”, which will be elaborated in the discussion part of the talk.
Speaker Profile
Professor Yuan Boping received his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1993. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, doctoral supervisor in Language and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, Chair of the Academic Committee of the Center for Language and Health Research of the National Language Commission of China, Vice President of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Second Language Studies (John Benjamins). He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of national and international academic journals, including Second Language Research, International Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Lingua, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, and Chinese Teaching in the World, among others.
His research interests include second and multilingual language acquisition within the framework of theoretical linguistics, as well as bilingualism and human health. He has published nearly a hundred articles in leading international and major Chinese academic journals, including Language, Linguistics, Transactions of the Philological Society, Second Language Research, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Language Learning, International Review of Applied Linguistics, EUROSLA Yearbook, International Journal of Bilingualism, Lingua, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Frontiers in Psychology, International Journal of Multilingualism, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Chinese Teaching in the World, and Modern Foreign Languages, among others. He has also compiled two bilingual dictionaries — English–Chinese and Chinese–English — published by Oxford University Press. His latest monograph, Interlanguage Grammars of Mandarin Chinese, was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2026.