This handbook explores quantitative linguistics, pedagogy, and Mandarin language acquisition in an integrated fashion and helps readers grasp how insights from quantitative linguistics can shed light on Mandarin language acquisition. It focuses on issues related to language processing, learning, and teaching and how these aspects are affected or enhanced by corpus-based and computational linguistics. By following a data-driven approach, the handbook demonstrates how theoretical problems in the acquisition of Chinese can be resolved with empirical evidence. The book serves as an essential resource for students and researchers wishing to explore the fascinating field of Chinese language processing and acquisition.
Shou-hsin Teng is a native of Taiwan, educated in Taiwan (Tunghai), UK (Oxford) and USA (UC Berkeley). He taught Chinese as a second/foreign language at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from 1973-1995. In 1995, he went to the National Taiwan Normal University to initiate the first graduate program/department in teaching Chinese as a second language. After retirement, he was invited to Chungyuan Christian University, Taiwan as a Chair Professor of L2 Chinese. While Shou-hsin Teng was teaching in Massachusetts, his research activities publications focused on theoretical syntax and, after returning to Taiwan in 1995, his research and publications shifted from theoretical to applied linguistics and developed a framework of a pedagogical grammar of Chinese. He had been the editor-in-chief in developing A Course in Contemporary Chinese, a series of 6 textbooks, sponsored by the Mandarin Training Center, Taiwan Normal University and published by Linking Publishing Co., Taiwan in 2015 onward.
Li-ping Chang is Associate Professor of the Graduate Program of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan University (NTU). Before joining NTU in 2018, she worked at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University, responsible for the editing of teaching materials and the
creating of the proficiency Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL). Her research focuses on pedagogical grammar, contrastive analysis of learner corpora, and corpus-assisted Chinese language teaching.
Te-hsin Liu is Associate Professor at National Taiwan University. Originally trained as a theoretical phonologist, she also works on second language acquisition and construction grammar. She constructed a corpus on Chinese Idiomatic Constructions for research and pedagogical purpose, and is currently building an interlanguage corpus produced by Romance Language learners, investigating how L1 prosody influences the acquisition of Mandarin tones.
