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Asian 700
Week 04 Assignment (Language & Society)

Hypothesis: Correlations can be identified between specific linguistic behaviour and specific sociolinguistic variables (e.g., age, gender, level of education, ethnicity)

Assignment:
• Formulate a list of specific research questions that language can help shed light on the above hypothesis. (‘shed light’ can mean ‘prove’, ‘disprove’, ‘identify strengths OR shortcomings of…’. ‘tell us more about…’)

Dr Sanders will give examples of how to come up with research questions in relation to a hypothesis in the lecture in Week 03.

• Identify relevant theoretical and methodological literature to help frame your research questions

• Identify the research method(s) you will use to gather and analyse your data

Example 2:  A comparative and contrastive study of auxiliary verbs in Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin
 Background:
Auxiliary verb: ‘helping’ verb (‘can’, ‘want’, ‘like’, etc.)
Documented differences in frequency and meanings between Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin
Example 2:  A comparative and contrastive study of auxiliary verbs in Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin
 Hypotheses:
Differences between Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin exist in terms of the frequency at which specific auxiliary verbs are used.
Differences between Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin exist in terms of the range of meaning of specific auxiliary verbs.

 Research Questions:

1) How similar or different are the meanings in Beijing Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin of specific auxiliary verbs?
2) How similar or different is the frequency of usage of specific auxiliary verbs in Beijing Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin?
3) How do these findings contribute to the on-going discussion of dialect comparison, both within the context of Chinese dialectology and in terms of general linguistic theory?

Method
Identified twelve auxiliary verbs
Created a semantic classification according to the established literature (general and Chinese-specific)
Carried out electronic search of each corpus
Selected first hundred sentences for each auxiliary verb

 Digital Speech Corpora Used:

Beijing Mandarin corpus: developed by the Centre for Chinese Linguistics at Beijing University (spoken & written)
Taiwan Mandarin corpus: developed by National Chengchi University (spoken only)
Conclusion
 Blah, blah, blah

 Thanks for listening!