This study investigates the differences in pragmatic competence between Hong Kong and Chinese mainland university students.Participants included 19 native speakers of English,115 Chinese mainland students,divided into...This study investigates the differences in pragmatic competence between Hong Kong and Chinese mainland university students.Participants included 19 native speakers of English,115 Chinese mainland students,divided into those who had spent time abroad in an English-speaking country(CM A)and those who had not(CM NA),and 97 Hong Kong students,divided into those from an English-medium secondary school(Hong Kong EMI)and those from a Chinese-medium school(Hong Kong CMI).Linguistic proficiency was measured by a C-test,and pragmatic competence by a Metapragmatic Knowledge Test,an Irony Test and a Monologic Role Play.Group scores were compared using ANCOVAs to control for differences in proficiency.The results point to a continuum of pragmatic competence—EMI>CMI>CM A>CM NA—reflecting the groups’access to English in real-life contexts.The differences between the Hong Kong groups and the Chinese mainland groups were clearest in those tests measuring processing capacity(i.e.,Irony Response Time and the Monologic Role Play).CM A,but not CM NA,performed as well as the Hong Kong groups on measures of metapragmatic awareness.The results are discussed in terms of Bialystok’s(1993)distinction between analyzed representation and control of processing.展开更多
The growing number of mobile users, as well as the diversification in types of services have resulted in increasing demands for wireless network bandwidth in recent years. Although evolving transmission techniques are...The growing number of mobile users, as well as the diversification in types of services have resulted in increasing demands for wireless network bandwidth in recent years. Although evolving transmission techniques are able to enlarge the network capacity to some degree, they still cannot satisfy the requirements of mobile users. Meanwhile, following Moore's Law, the data processing capabilities of mobile user terminals are continuously improving. In this paper, we explore possible methods of trading strong computational power at wireless terminals for transmission efficiency of communications. Taking the specific scenario of wireless video conversation, we propose a model-based video coding scheme by learning the structures in multimedia contents. Benefiting from both strong computing capability and pre-learned model priors, only low-dimensional parameters need to be transmitted; and the intact multimedia contents can also be reconstructed at the receivers in real-time. Experiment results indicate that, compared to conventional video codecs, the proposed scheme significantly reduces the data rate with the aid of computational capability at wireless terminals.展开更多
文摘This study investigates the differences in pragmatic competence between Hong Kong and Chinese mainland university students.Participants included 19 native speakers of English,115 Chinese mainland students,divided into those who had spent time abroad in an English-speaking country(CM A)and those who had not(CM NA),and 97 Hong Kong students,divided into those from an English-medium secondary school(Hong Kong EMI)and those from a Chinese-medium school(Hong Kong CMI).Linguistic proficiency was measured by a C-test,and pragmatic competence by a Metapragmatic Knowledge Test,an Irony Test and a Monologic Role Play.Group scores were compared using ANCOVAs to control for differences in proficiency.The results point to a continuum of pragmatic competence—EMI>CMI>CM A>CM NA—reflecting the groups’access to English in real-life contexts.The differences between the Hong Kong groups and the Chinese mainland groups were clearest in those tests measuring processing capacity(i.e.,Irony Response Time and the Monologic Role Play).CM A,but not CM NA,performed as well as the Hong Kong groups on measures of metapragmatic awareness.The results are discussed in terms of Bialystok’s(1993)distinction between analyzed representation and control of processing.
基金supported by the National Basic Research Project of China (973) (2013CB329006)National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 61101071,61471220, 61021001)Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program
文摘The growing number of mobile users, as well as the diversification in types of services have resulted in increasing demands for wireless network bandwidth in recent years. Although evolving transmission techniques are able to enlarge the network capacity to some degree, they still cannot satisfy the requirements of mobile users. Meanwhile, following Moore's Law, the data processing capabilities of mobile user terminals are continuously improving. In this paper, we explore possible methods of trading strong computational power at wireless terminals for transmission efficiency of communications. Taking the specific scenario of wireless video conversation, we propose a model-based video coding scheme by learning the structures in multimedia contents. Benefiting from both strong computing capability and pre-learned model priors, only low-dimensional parameters need to be transmitted; and the intact multimedia contents can also be reconstructed at the receivers in real-time. Experiment results indicate that, compared to conventional video codecs, the proposed scheme significantly reduces the data rate with the aid of computational capability at wireless terminals.
