Neurolinguistic Aspects of the Japanese Writing System


Book Description

Neurolinguistic Aspects of the Japanese Writing System provides an account and an analysis of cases of dissociation between kana (syllabic) and kanji (ideographic) script in reading and/or writing. Organized into five chapters, this book begins by discussing the aspects of the Japanese writing system relevant to neurolinguistic research. Experimental kanji/kana processing studies and clinical case reports are then presented. This book also explains the clinical dissociations in performance between aspects of the writing system. This book will serve as a model for further studies in which a similarly detailed analysis is attempted of the neurolinguistic structure of other non-Western orthographies.




Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan


Book Description

Although the United States Education Mission recommended that the Japanese give serious consideration to the introduction of alphabetic writing, key American officials in the Civil Information and Education Section of GHQ/SCAP delayed and effectively killed action on this recommendation. Japanese advocates of romanization nevertheless managed to obtain CI&E approval for an experiment in elementary schools to test the hypothesis that schoolchildren could make faster progress if spared the necessity of studying Chinese characters as part of non-language courses such as arithmetic. Though not conclusive, the experiment's results supported the hypothesis and suggested the need for more and better testing.




Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese


Book Description

Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population.They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users.Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating.




The Japanese Mental Lexicon


Book Description

This book surveys the psycholinguistic dimensions of lexical access to the mental lexicon in Japanese, and attempts to synthesize the diversity of Japanese psycholinguistic research into the nature of written word processing in Japanese. Ten chapters focus on the nature of such psycholinguistic inquiry and its history, the structural origins of the Japanese script types and their relative frequencies, lexical access studies in kanji, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, romaji, and mixed text processing, laterality preferences in kana/kanji processing and their implications for scientific discussions of language and cognition, evidence from eye-movement studies, the acquisition of orthographic skills by Japanese children, and a review of the implications and conclusions that arise from the contributions of such research. The text is directed at filling the need for an overview of this research because of its importance to theoretical modelling in linguistics and psychology, as well as aphasiology, mathematical and statistical linguistics, educational practices and governmental intervention in respect to language policies, and studies of linguistic and cultural history.




Writing Systems, Reading Processes, and Cross-Linguistic Influences


Book Description

This book provides readers with a unique array of scholarly reflections on the writing systems of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in relation to reading processes and data-driven interpretations of cross-language transfer. Distinctively broad in scope, topics addressed in this volume include word reading with respect to orthographic, phonological, morphological, and semantic processing as well as cross-linguistic influences on reading in English as a second language or a foreign language. Given that the three focal scripts have unique orthographic features not found in other languages – Chinese as logography, Japanese with multi-scripts, and Korean as non-Roman alphasyllabary – chapters expound script-universal and script-specific reading processes. As a means of scaling up the body of knowledge traditionally focused on Anglocentric reading research, the scientific accounts articulated in this volume importantly expand the field’s current theoretical frameworks of word processing to theory building with regard to these three languages.




Motor and Sensory Processes of Language


Book Description

Published in 1987, Motor and Sensory Processes of Language is a valuable contribution to the field of Cognitive Psychology.




Area Bibliography of Japan


Book Description

Provides a general overview of literature relating to Japan and covers a broad range of subject matter, from art, feminism, and linguistics, to corporate culture, history, and medicine. Includes books published since 1980 that are related to the geographical area of Japan and to Japanese culture within that area.




Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics


Book Description

The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field




Visible Speech


Book Description

Visible Speech is an attempt to set the record straight about the nature of writing. John DeFrancis, a noted specialist in the Chinese language, shows that writing can be based only upon a sound system and not upon any other linguistic level. He corrects the erroneous views of Chinese writing as pictographic, ideographic, logographic, or morphemic, and defends his conclusion that because of these misrepresentations, the nature of all writing continues to be misunderstood. Using the writing systems of Sumerian, Egyptian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Mayan, and English, among others, to illustrate his points, Dr. DeFrancis stresses their basic identity as representatives of visible speech, while noting their secondary differences as manifested in their diverse script forms. He proposes a new classification of writing systems based on this theme of diversity and oneness, and makes an impassioned case for the essential phonetic component of all writing. This book reflects the author's sound scholarship and novel insights, which place it in the forefront with such classics on writing as those by Gelb, Diringer, Cohen, Février, and Jensen. The readable style aims at a general audience interested in understanding the nature of the symbols that first strike the eye, while the academic research involved makes it an indispensable work for scholars in the many fields related to language and linguistics.




Cognitive Processing of the Chinese and the Japanese Languages


Book Description

The area of cognitive processing of Chinese and Japanese is currently attracting a great deal of attention by leading cognitive psychologists. They aim to find out the similarities and differences in processing the morphosyllabic Chinese and Japanese syllabary as compared with alphabetic language systems. Topics under the processing of Chinese include: the use of phonological codes in visual identification of Chinese words, the constraint on such phonological activation, recognition of Chinese homophones, Chinese sentence comprehension and children's errors in writing Chinese characters. Topics under the processing of Japanese include: the automatic recognition of kanji within an interactive-activation framework, On-reading and Kun-reading of kanji characters, processing differences between hiragana and kanji, the effect of polysemy on katakana script, and the writing behavior of Japanese and non-Japanese speakers. The interactive-activation model provides the phonologic-orthographic links in processing both language systems. The present volume should add greatly to our understanding of this topic. Many of the contributors are internationally known for their experimental psychological work.




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