Reduplication and word stress in Vietnamese

In this paper acoustic properties of two types of reduplicative compound (full and tone sandhi reduplications) were examined to show acoustic evidence of assymetrical prominence relations (van der Hulst, 2005), in support of a hypothesis that Vietnamese reduplications are phonetically right headed and that tone sandhi is a reduction phenomenon occurring on prosodically weak positions (Shih, 2005). The results show phonetic evidence of prosodic constituency at the level of the bisyllabic word in Vietnamese.

The role of animacy and definiteness in the clitic-DP nexus

We extend Cuervo's (2003) analysis of the Lower Applicative Dative DP in Spanish to account for the animate definite DP preceded by a and the fact that it is not possible to have both an animate dative definite direct object and a dative indirect object in the same clause. We argue that the presence of such a dative DP 'blocks' the upward movement of the direct object DP to the specifier of the Lower Applicative phrase. We analyse the case ‘mismatch’ between the third person accusative clitic and the co-referring dative DP with animate definite reference in River Plate Spanish as resulting from the raising of the accusative clitic to the head of the Applicative phrase and the movement of the DP to its specifier, where dative case is always assigned in Spanish. We propose that similar phenomena observed in some Australian languages are amenable to a similar analysis.

An examination of the factors that influence identification and acculturation

This paper investigated the effects of print media exposure and intergroup contact on ethnic identification and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants. Data was gathered from a survey participated by 265 respondents of Chinese origin. Findings indicated that exposure to the print media did not have a significant effect on ethnic identification and/or acculturation orientation. However, when the factor of intergroup contact was taken into consideration, differences began to occur. Specifically, for respondents from low intergroup contact group, ethnic identification increased with the desire to integrate into the large culture. For respondents from high intergroup contact group, opposite trends were found, i.e. as ethic identification increased, the tendency to adopt integration orientation decreased. Findings from this study suggested the need to combine factors of both interpersonal and mediated communication in the examination of ethnic identification and acculturation. This paper also drew some implications for the media industry and government policies.

An examination of the relationship between social locations of Chinese immigrants and their ethnic newspaper dependency

This study drew upon media system dependency theory (MSD) and social identity theory to examine the relationship between social locations of Chinese immigrants and their dependency on Chinese ethnic newspapers. Data was obtained from a survey participated by 265 respondents with Chinese origin but currently residing in Australia. Results indicated that among the three indicators of social location, age appeared to be a strong positive predictor of the dependency on ethnic newspapers for information. Respondents who stayed longer in the host country tended to be more frequent readers of ethnic newspapers as well. Education did not appear as a significant predictor of ethnic newspaper dependency. These findings suggested the need for us to further investigate the impact of ethnic print media on ethnic minorities in the age of various information sources offered by new technologies.