Supported by the School of Graduate Studies, Academic Activity Grants

Also supported by University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association Student Initiatives Funding

List of presenters

Tomoyasu Akiyama University of Melbourne Applying IRT and G-theory to spoken tests for Japanese secondary students This study explores the possibility of applying two theories (Item Response Theory and Generalizability theory) to spoken tests for Japanese junior high school students. To date, few studies have been carried out on speaking tests at the school level, particularly for junior high schools in Japan. Recent research using two theories in language testing has primarily investigated test validity and reliability for adults and immigrants in a second language context. The present study focuses on item analysis, intra-rater reliability, and the optimum number of raters and tasks in particular context. The various types of data used in this study were gathered from a test administered to 109 students in Tokyo. The test consisted of three tasks and 11 items, conducted by five interviewers. Four raters rated 109 students' performances independently. The paper shows the possibility of using the two theories as useful tools to examine teachers' self-made tests. Sophie Alcock La Trobe University Whose "who" and who's rude? There is a widely held folklinguistic and sociolinguistic belief that women are more polite and more easily offended than men.  However, there has been very little empirical investigation in Australia to ascertain the validity of this gender stereotype.  Also relatively uninvestigated is the construction of what is offensive language and why it is offensive for Australian English speakers. This study explicitly asked participants what they considered to be the most offensive swearword in Australian English. The issues of gender and subcultural stereotypes are explored via a sociolinguistic investigation of 282 predominately  Anglo-Celtic lower middle class students' and soldiers' attitudes towards offensive swearing in Australian English. There is  evidence from the three between-group studies that suggests speaker's attitudes towards offensive swearing can not be aptly categorised by gender alone.  The results of the studies demonstrate that there is a diversity of attitudes towards offensive swearing within and between gender and subcultural groups. Overall, the findings suggest that folklinguistic and sociolinguistic gender stereotypes are problematic, as gender in isolation does not explain or motivate the differences in attitudes towards offensive swearing. Johanna Barry University of Melbourne Differentiation in tone production in Cantonese speaking hearing-impaired children It is generally agreed that most normal-hearing Cantonese speaking children master the six tonal contrasts in their language by two years of age. Furthermore, high tones are acquired before low tones and the high-rise tone before the low-fall tone. Little is known about tone development in hearing-impaired Cantonese speaking children though there is some suggestion that these children can acquire reasonable tonal repertoires despite their hearing-impairment. Here, I describe the process of tone development in hearing-impaired children who have received a 22-electrode cochlear implant. The hypothesis to be investigated is that subsequent to receiving an implant, children will begin to acquire a tonal inventory and will acquire a full tonal inventory more rapidly than they acquire full vowel inventory.  Analysis is done using acoustic measurement of F0 and comparing the results obtained with phonetic transcription of a series of words elicited through picture-identification tasks. The analysis focuses on the production of three Cantonese tones namely, high tone, high-rising, and low-falling. A key assumption for the acoustic analysis is that as production of a particular tone type becomes differentiated from other tone types, the data points derived from plots of onset frequency versus offset frequency will become tighter and more localised in the graph. Results obtained show that while there is a marked improvement in the implant children's control of F0 after receiving the implant, development of a tonal inventory is slower than would be expected for normal-hearing children. Kate Bisshop University of Melbourne The comfort of strangers: Women, talk shows and the self-help message Talk is feminine. It's a familiar folklinguistic claim that women talk too much, with too little consequence, and perhaps television programmers had this in mind when they first designated talkshows as a feature of daytime television, traditionally regarded as part of women's domain. As an element in the broader discourse of femininity, the genre of the talkshow provides women with certain 'scripts' for femininity, scripts that can be evoked in the process of 'doing woman'. The 'talk' in talkshows, however, is not just idle chatter: it claims to have a positive effect on viewers, either by informing, healing, or both. By claiming to be a form of televisual therapy, talkshows also link themselves unavoidably with another phenomenon of contemporary popular culture: the feminine genre of self-help. The topics preferred by talkshows mimic (and are drawn from) those of the most popular self-help books; talkshows rely on the language of self-help; and self-help gurus are regularly called upon as 'experts' to mediate discussion and pronounce judgement on guests. The problem is, what talkshows present viewers with is merely a facade of intimacy; what they ultimately offer viewers are false promises of cure, and simulations of sympathy motivated by voyeuristic interest. They present women with a version of femininity which allows them to be heard, but not healed. Is it possible for women to be empowered, as some have suggested, through such a medium? Or are the premises of the talkshow incompatible with those of feminism? Cathy Bow University of Melbourne An OT account of the vowel system of Moloko Vowel systems of the Chadic languages of central Africa have been analysed with varying numbers of underlying vowels (anything from one to twelve).  Moloko, a central Chadic language of northern Cameroon, has been analysed as having only one underlying vowel phoneme, and a surface system of nine phonetic vowels, realised through morpheme-level 'prosodies' of labialisation and palatalisation, and rules governing vowel height and epenthesis.  Another possible analysis gives an underlying vowel inventory of two, which reduces the rules governing vowel height and removes altogether the need for epenthesis rules.  In this presentation, these two analyses will be examined, and the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory will be called upon to determine the optimal vowel system for Moloko. Marija Bukarica University of Melbourne Critical discourse analysis of ethical review board documentation: A proposed methodology Within the framework of critical discourse analysis, this paper looks at the relationship between language and power used in ethical guidelines and other documentation by university ethical review boards. Questions of particular relevance include what purpose do university ethical review boards serve as well as what are relations of power and how are they expressed and maintained through language in the documentation of university ethical review boards. The paper is divided into two sections. The first section focuses on the field of critical discourse analysis and explores various versions of it. The value of critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research will also be looked at. The vast majority of the papers discussed are analyses of media and in particular representation of media as an instigator of racism. The terms used associated with critical discourse analysis will also be explored. Finally, some problems and possibly future directions for the field will be suggested. The second section looks at the notion of ethics and in particular at the function ethics serve. Purpose and trends of ethics will be explored into more details as well as the apparent lack of writing on it. Lastly, some preliminary findings of the application of critical discourse analysis to the ethical guidelines and other documentation of university ethical review boards will be explored. Emlyn Collins La Trobe University Deciphering undeciphered scripts for dummies The chief objective of this paper will be to outline the seemingly obvious initial steps in deciphering an undeciphered script. "Seemingly obvious" because a surprising number of linguists have ignored them since they are both tedious and thankless tasks. They include, making a photographic catalogue of all available examples of the script, and establishing from this catalogue an accurate signary of the script. Finally a catalogue, in a simple text based form, of all inscriptions in the script must be created. It is from this text based catalogue that any attempts at deciphering the script should be made. Linear B will be the main example as the story of its decipherment contains both successes and failures. The decipherment of Linear B is also a useful example as it is the most recent if not only decipherment to rely almost entirely on linguistic principles rather than bilingual keys.  Alec Coupe La Trobe University Tense, but in the mood: Temporal deixis in Ao The Mongsen dialect of Ao (Kuki-Chin branch of Tibeto-Burman), in common with many Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan region, encodes temporal reference by means of verbal suffixes. Absolute tense is expressed via finite verb inflections, whereas simultaneity, conditionality, attendant circumstance, and anteriority of activities or situations that are relative to a reference point other than the moment of speech are expressed by non-finite converbal constructions in dependent subordinate clauses. This paper is primarily concerned with the analysis of the absolute tense marking system. Although this could be viewed traditionally as a tripartite system of morphological marking that locates events prior to, contemporaneously with, or posterior to the moment of speech, the paper will argue for an analysis that instead recognises a basic opposition of mood. Unrealised events fall under the category of irrealis and subsume a number of categories expressing non-actuality. Within the realis mood, however, past and present encode a distinction of tense, namely actual events that have taken place versus those that are in the process of taking place. Ao therefore presents a hierarchical system of temporal deixis with tense oppositions at one level dominated by mood oppositions at a higher level. Susan Douglas La Trobe University A prototype study of Hokkien numeral classifiers Prototype theory has proven to be an effective analytical tool which can enable a better understanding of the nature of human categorisation manifest in numeral classifier systems.  In this paper, I will discuss the semantic structure of numeral classifiers in Hokkien, a Southern Min language, within the framework of prototype theory.  The data for this paper was taken with permission from Ng's (1989) study - The Acquisition of Numeral Classifiers in Hokkien, a Southern Min Language.  The classifier usage of twenty adults was examined, the data obtained through counting tasks:  the subjects were asked to count items depicted on a card representing eight semantic categories of animacy, shape and the general classifier, as well as categories for specific items such as 'clothes' and classifiers of arrangement and quanta.  It will be demonstrated that there are identifiable salient features associated with each Hokkien classifier examined which determine prototypical membership.  Moreover, the prototypical members are those category members displaying the highest number of the salient features.  In particular, this paper will consider the saliency of shape and animacy and the nature of category overlap evident in Hokkien numeral classifiers.  The question regarding the nature of classifier change will also be addressed:  whether there is evidence to suggest classifier neutralisation across categories, or whether reanalysis of category membership is occurring.  The issue of variation in classifier use within a speech community is a necessary consideration in determining the direction of numeral classifier change cross-linguistically. Christina Eira University of Melbourne The discursive identity of authority: looking at what shapes language projects Raising the question of who holds what kind of authority in a language project can be a window onto the underlying conceptual authority system which shapes the project. This paper considers the configuration of authority sources in a local bilingual dictionary project to see what this reveals about the discursive structure which frames it. The statements and actions of individuals reproduce, reconfigure and reinterpret the possible frames of thought established in discourse. Because persons, and on a larger scale organisations, operate within current discursive realities in this way, it is possible in asking who or what is treated as an authority, to be at the same time querying which discourses are in authoritative position. I am referring not to individual identities conceptualised in and for themselves, but to their discursive identity. Events, persons and knowledge are perceived and interpreted in the context of discourses, so that an outgroup worker in a minority language community may represent perhaps a scientist framework, or the authority of the dominant culture; while an ingroup worker may represent perhaps the validity of knowledge from the heritage culture, or the privileged status of a particular language variety. My aim in this paper is to introduce the theoretical base of the above position, and open discussion on configurations of authority and consequently discourse in a range of language projects. Annik  Foreman Monash University Canadian vowel shifts and other linguistic mysteries A vowel shift involving fronting of the back vowels and lowering of the front lax vowels has appeared in Canadian English (CE) and Western American English.  The vowel shift appears to depend on the cot-caught merger, which allows /æ/ to lower and this pulls the other front lax vowels lower as well.  The linguists describing the CE vowel shift deduced that it had probably begun in the United States and then spread to Canada.  However, the cot-caught merger, which is crucial for this vowel shift, took place in Canada much before it took place in the Western United States. There is also evidence that other features of the vowel shift were occurring in Canada before there is mention of them occurring in the United States.  This indicates that the vowel shift in Canada may have pre-dated or co-occurred with the same type of shift in the United States. Dialect contact is an unlikely cause of this shift, which leaves the question of how this might have occurred.  Similar mysteries involving the spread of l-vocalisation (currently being investigated by Barbara Horvath) will be described. Antoine Guillaume Research Centre for Linguistic Typology Participial and switch-reference in Cavineña Cavineña (Tacanan, North Bolivia) has a certain number of adverbial clauses marked for switch-reference. The switch-reference markers present several interesting semantic and formal features. Semantically, besides tracking the reference of the subjects between dependent clause and main clause, they also appear to keep track of the transitivity of the main verb. Formally, they are homophonous with case markers. In this paper, I show that the construction in question is better analyzed as a participial construction, primarily used to modify nominals (hence the case markers) but also used to modify predicates. When used as a nominal modifier, the participial takes a case marker, according to the grammatical role of its head noun. When used as a predicate modifier, the participial still takes a case marker but case markers have been reanalyzed as switch-reference markers. I also show that similar phenomena are found in other related languages such as Amahuaca (Panoan) as well as non-related languages such as Jiwarli (Australian) and Latin. Georgina Heydon Monash University "One Mississippi"  - Taming the wild inaccuracies of timed pauses in data transcription This paper is intended to be of practical value to researchers involved in data transcription and will include a demonstration of the software used by the presenter to accurately transcribe silences.  It is hoped that the presentation of this paper will provide a forum for general discussion of transcription issues encountered by attendees in the course of their own research. Narrow transcriptions of data which include timed silences as short as two tenths of a second are commonplace in research which utilises a Conversation Analysis approach.  However little information appears to be available concerning the methodologies used to measure such very short silences in conversation. This paper examines transcription methodologies currently available to researchers, particularly student researchers.  The presenter's own experience in narrowly transcribing police evidentiary interviews is drawn upon in a comparative discussion of various approaches to the problem of timing silences and a software-based solution is suggested. Kawasaki, Kyoko University of Melbourne Reported speech and its effect in Japanese discourse Reported speech, especially a direct quotation, is a tool for making a conversation interesting and dramatic.  Previous researchers have pointed out that direct speech quotation is not an exact reproduction of the speech being reported, and that even the speaker's own thoughts or speech may be quoted for dramatic effect as if it were someone else's.  It has been a problem, however, to distinguish a direct speech from indirect speech.  In this study, I will propose a use of Intonation Unit to determine direct speech in a Japanese conversation.  I will also discuss the gender stereotype appearing in the 'effect' part of direct speech in Japanese. The discussion is organised as follows:  In the first part, I will summarise what has been said about Japanese reported speech -its form and grammatical markers- and I will define direct speech and indirect speech based on prosodic features.  The second part will show the effects of  gender suggestive sentence final particle, used in quotations, including self-quotations, in Japanese discourse. Leslie Layne University of Melbourne Ditransitive verb categories in Categorial Grammar The categories used in Categorial Grammar (CG) must precisely describe the syntactic distribution of the units categorized, using only two basic categories and functions from those categories.  Thus, determining and verifying the category of a specific construction is a monumental first step which must be taken before any further work involving that construction commences. This paper presents one of the fundamental issues that had to be addressed in order to determine the category of a ditransitive verb (in English).  The main question is  - Which argument of the ditransitive verb function equates to the second argument of a transitive verb function?  In more traditional grammars, this argument is known as the 'direct object'.  So, the question of which object is the direct object in a ditransitive verb construction is the puzzle that must be solved. I will present a brief introduction to CG, concentrating on how the categories work.  No previous knowledge of CG should therefore be necessary.  I will then present the two possibilities along with the support for and the advantages and disadvantages of each.  The category that I determine to be appropriate based on purely mathematical/logical principles goes against popular conclusions, and even much of what has been proposed in CG.  However there are a number of syntactic behaviors that support this conclusion. Eva Lindström Research Centre for Linguistic Typology Future or irrealis? The case of Kuot This paper draws on data from Kuot, a non-Austronesian language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. As in many languages of the region, the only temporal distinction systematically encoded in the grammar is that between future and non-future. The marking consists of a particle eba and alternations in certain verbal morphology. The same marking is used in several other contexts, such as imperative (without eba), purpose clauses, and often in 'if-then' constructions. These contexts share a feature of non-factuality, which brings the notion of irrealis to mind. However, some other non-factual contexts typically have no future marking - in particular, negated contexts. There is also a type of procedural habitual which is coded with the marking used for future. This is strong indication that we are not dealing with a straightforward tense category. In another context, following the auxiliary n«mo 'want; be about to', the predicate may optionally take the form used in future contexts, even though the event is in the past. However, the choice has no correlation with the eventuation or non-eventuation of the event. This is a problem for the irrealis analysis. This paper examines the Kuot data with respect to the competing analyses of future and irrealis. Iwa Lukmana Monash University How the Sundanese refer to a third party: a project report The sociolinguistic study of reference to person has considerably focused on the second person, widely known as the study of "terms of address". The present study, on the other hand, focuses on a somewhat neglected area of reference to a third party/person (RTTP). The sample language Sundanese (an Austronesian language spoken in the province of West Java, Indonesia) is one of a few languages that employ speech levels. The study is limited to the investigation of the use of terms of RTTP in workplace situations. The RTTP terms investigated are pronouns and other terms such as names and titles. The study employs a questionnaire-based interview. Conforming to the core sociolinguistic account  variation  the study looks at the way an informant chooses one among the linguistically possible forms of RTTP in a certain situation. Some social variables are explored on their possible influence on the choice of an RTTP term. They are [1] the people involved: speaker, addressee, third person, and other people present at the conversation, [2] the gender of the people, [3] the age of the people, [4] the power relation, [5] social distance that prevail among the people, and [6] two types of formality: formal and casual. It is found that the choice of RTTP terms is influenced by these sociolinguistic variables. This means that in addition to being subject to the informativeness requirement (i.e. the urgency that the speaker assist the addressee with the identification of the referent), the informants also need to conform to the notion of appropriateness, i.e. choosing the right form of RTTP in the right situation. Sylvia Mackie University of Melbourne Some issues in the historiography of Old English clause combining Old English language studies in the second half of the twentieth century are characterised by the confused and often acrimonious relations between two schools of thought. Firstly, the philological approach dominated for much of the century, culminating in Mitchell's Old English syntax, published in 1985. Secondly, the resurgence of interest in language change in mainstream linguistics resulted in a range of studies of OE, utilising various theoretical principles which I will outline briefly. In the main I will be contrasting Mitchell's (1985) approach to OE clause combining with that of Hopper & Traugott (1993). Although their methodological and theoretical frameworks are quite different, they share some significant themes. Both studies take as a core premise the notion that clause combining features evolve over time, changing from pragmatic patterns to 'loose' syntactic combinations and thence to 'tightly bound' subordination units. I'll refer to this as the parataxis to hypotaxis hypothesis. Mitchell theorises that such developments are a result of the emergence of literacy in the Anglo-Saxon community, whereas Hopper & Traugott regard them as symptomatic of grammaticalization. Both studies share the notion that an analysis of OE clause combining needs to include various aspects of the syntax/pragmatics interface. After describing these two approaches, I'll refer to a couple of problems they share including the proposed unidirectionality of the parataxis to hypotaxis hypothesis and some taxonomic challenges thrown up by studies in verb serialization. Mojdeh Mahdavi University of Melbourne Language purification in post-revolutionary Iran Language purification is a type of language planning that is considered as a solution to restore a national language from foreign influences.  Many scholars have provided a description and justification of language planning and they all more or  less agree that language policies are related to the political issues of the government of a country.  Countries such as France and Turkey are/were among the concerned nations that have taken serious measures to purify their language from foreign terminology. In Iran language purification started officially in 1935 by the establishment of an organisation called farhangestan by the then ruling government of Reza Shah Pahlavi.  The duties of farhangestan's organisation during its active years in pre-Revolutionary Iran were to replace Persian terms with foreign words which were mainly Arabic.  After the Islamic revolution in 1979, farhangestan re-opened in 1995.  One of the important duties of farhangestan in post-Revolutionary Iran is to find Persian equivalents for foreign words that mainly have European origins. The aim of this research is to find out whether language purification in post-Revolutionary Iran has the same goals as it has in other countries and if so; to what extent these goals have been achieved within the new years of farhangestan's activities.  We will come to this conclusion by looking at the data that has been gathered from current newspapers, media news, publications on the nature of the Persian language, and textbooks that are used in the educational system in recent years in Iran. Junaidi Mistar Monash University A profile of English learning strategies by Indonesian university students While second/foreign language strategies have been major issues in applied linguistic papers in western countries since the 1970s, studies on the same topic did not emerge in Indonesia until the mid 1990s. This is unfortunate because learning strategies prove to be powerful predictors of learning success. As a matter of fact, it has long been admitted that English teaching in Indonesia has not brought about a satisfactory result. These rationales underlie the present study. In this paper I focus on two issues: 1) the extent to which the students employ learning strategies and 2) whether the strategies correlate with one another. Three hundred and eighty six students from three universities in Malang, Indonesia completed Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). This instrument measures the use of two broad categories of strategies: direct strategies (memory, cognitive and compensation strategies) and indirect strategies (metacognitive, affective and social strategies). Descriptive and correlation analyses were performed. The descriptive analyses revealed that the frequency of use of overall strategies fell within a medium range with metacognitive strategies being used the most frequently and compensation strategies, the least. Surprisingly, the direct strategies were used less frequently than the indirect strategies. The correlational analyses found that the inter-correlation coefficients of those strategy categories were all significant, indicating that they were correlated with one another. These findings imply that strategy training programs should be implemented to increase the use of direct strategies. It is expected that such programs also bring about an increase in the use of indirect strategies. Stephen Morey Monash University The literature of the Tai people of Northeast India Like all societies, the Tai peoples of Assam preserve a wide range of different texts, in a variety of different genres, all of which taken together may be described as Tai Literature. These communities also have their own scripts, and preserve large collections of manuscripts, some many hundreds of years old. The scripts, however, are not well understood by most members of the community, so that literature remains largely oral. This presentation will briefly survey the literature of the Tai, from the perspective of mode (written and spoken texts as well as oral texts based on manuscripts), the age of the text where that can be determined, and the various important genres in the literature. In particular the presentation will examine two texts, · Pu Son Lan (literally: grandfather teaches grandchildren), a text of proverbs and community rules. · Lik Chaw Mahosatta, a Tai translation of a Pali Jataka story. Examples will be presented from the Mahosatta manuscript, from a commentary on that manuscript by an elder of the Tai people, and from oral texts based on the Mahosatta story cycle. Simon Musgrave University of Melbourne Why Indonesian 'di-' is not a reduced pronoun Indonesian has two transitive clause types in which the less agentive argument is the syntactic subject. One construction is only possible with third person actors, while the other is only possible with a pronoun (or pronoun substitute) as actor. Also, first and second person pronouns as actors in the latter construction can be reduced and become proclitics. The quasi-complementary distribution between the two, and the fact that the morpheme before the verb stem (di-) in the first type is similar in shape to the third person singular pronoun (dia) has led several researchers to claim that di- is in fact a reduced pronoun, and that there is only one undergoer subject construction in Indonesian. This paper presents a variety of arguments against that position. Firstly, it is easy to demonstrate that the morphosyntactic behaviour of the two construction types is different in a variety of ways. Secondly, if di- is taken to be a pronoun of some sort, it can be shown that the structures which must be assumed are ill-formed in at least two theoretical frameworks. Finally, treating di- as a proclitic makes it impossible to account for the position of modals and aspectual auxiliaries when they appear in the second clause type. Given that there is no solid historical evidence for the proposed origin of di-, the evidence overwhelmingly points to the conclusion that it is not a reduced pronoun, but is rather a verbal prefix in paradigmatic opposition to meN-. Clodagh Norwood La Trobe University On the tail of two discourse particles in Karo Batak Typically, the discourse particles of Karo Batak, an Austronesian language of Northern Sumatra, are used for a variety of pragmatic functions which include emphasis.  Two of the 'emphatic' particles, me and nge, which have a wide syntactic distribution in modern day conversational texts, nevertheless show a strong tendency to occur in a particular syntactic context. This tendency is markedly increased in older written texts. The canonical word order of Karo is verb initial. Core arguments follow the verb but are often omitted. In a large percentage of instances the two particles under discussion either precede these arguments or may occur in the absence of the arguments. In most instances of their occurrence the two particles are in complementary distribution where me precedes or appears in place of the undergoer and likewise nge is associated with the agent.  With nominal predicates it has been found that me is associated more often with a demonstrative and nge with a personal pronoun. This paper sets out to test a possible theory of grammaticisation of these two particles from erstwhile NP case markers, through to emphatic particles. Hitomi Ono University of Melbourne Distinguishing reference terms and address terms: /Gui kinship nouns and kinship verbs Although distinguishing address terms and reference terms is regarded as a key procedure for finding the structure of a kinship classification system, the procedure is not always simple and sometimes it is simply neglected. In this talk, first I will show that kinship nouns in /Gui, a Central Khoisan language, are divided into two classes according to whether they allow the additional possibility of behaving as verbs or not. I will then argue that these two classes are defined as kinship reference terms and address terms respectively, based on a number of different semantic and pragmatic characters found between them. Finally I will discuss how the two types of terms have been confused in the literature. Amber Parkinson University of Melbourne Italian address pronouns: current trends and uses Since the 1960s, a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to analysing the numerous manifestations of  'forms of address', for example, pronouns or first name/title and last name, in many languages. The present study examines some recent trends in singular address pronouns in Italian (tu, Lei, Voi), looking particularly at data recently collected via questionnaire. Sociolinguistic parameters are essential in this virtually instantaneous decision making process, with the context of the situation, the age of the interlocutors and their familiarity with one another, all contributing to a speaker determining pronoun choice. These factors appear not to have varied considerably over the years however, their weighting in the decision making process may well have. Aek Phakiti University of Melbourne Exploring gender differences in use of state metacognitive strategies in an EFL reading achievement test Few, if any, studies in language testing research have addressed two main concerns of gender differences in relation to strategic knowledge in second language (L2) performance: (1) the existence of gender differences; and (2) their causes or relations to L2 performance. This presentation will look at some of the crucial findings from a study of the relationship of state metacognitive and state cognitive strategies to EFL reading comprehension test performances of 384 Thai university students in relation to levels of success and gender differences. This study aims to provide a detailed picture of metacognitive strategy use concerning gender differences in an achievement test context. The students took an 85 item, multiple-choice reading comprehension achievement test followed by a state metacognitive and state cognitive questionnaire (SMETAQ) on their test performance. Levels of success and gender differences in use of these strategies were investigated using a factorial multivariate of variance (MANOVA). The qualitative data from retrospective interviews, though gathered and used to further explore the differences in the study, will be excluded in this presentation due to the limitation of time. The results demonstrated that (1) the highly successful students reported significantly higher use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies than the moderately successful students who in turn reported higher use of strategies than the unsuccessful students, regardless of gender differences; and (2) unexpectedly, males reported significantly higher use of metacognitive strategies than females. Implications for test design, test construct and further research will be discussed. M. Puvenesvary University of Melbourne What matters to ESL instructors and business professionals in evaluating business writing in an ESL context? This study investigates the potential mismatch between what matters to academics and practitioners in evaluating business writing in an ESL context. The research was carried out in the context of an English for Business course at a tertiary institution in Malaysia, in particular, the evaluation of the business correspondence component of the course. The criteria used by each group, the ESL instructors and the bank officers will reveal the framework for thinking about business correspondence held by these two groups. The study draws on the new rhetoric genre theory (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1993/ 1995; Miller, 1984/1994). The focus of this theory is on the situational contexts in which genres occur and the social purposes or actions these genres will fulfil in particular situations. Data was collected using the verbal protocol methodology and interviews. The results of the study revealed that the bank officers paid attention to institutional context that are considered integral to genre knowledge whereas the ESL instructors' focus was on textual features of the text. These findings have a strong implication for the teaching of ESP courses. Erich Round University of Melbourne The Scope of Attention as a semiotic level: Consequences for semantic argument structure and its cross-linguistic comparison. I wish to discuss some consequences of a particular view of semiosis for what we understand by 'the cross-linguistic comparison of the coding of semantic argument structure'. Within this view of semiosis, the Scope of Attention is considered to be the site of an important interaction between pre-linguistic thought and the linguistic system within which an expression is being formulated. It will be proposed that within two different languages, expressions translatable into English as he put on his coat may well encode different aspects of a 'real world' event, with their translatability reliant not necessarily on shared 'semantic argument structure', but on pragmatics as well as the paradigmatic relationships which hold between various expressions within any one language. This semiotic model raises questions of systematic patterning and bias in the particular 'real world' relationships which any language will preferentially incorporate into the argument structure of its expressions. Given this fact, one might challenge the interpretation of observed linguistic patterning which have been advanced within cognitivist frameworks, as well as restating Whorfian-like views in terms of the 'catching of attention', or 'primary indexicality'. This discussion is related to, but nevertheless different from those centring on the (lexical/grammatical) division of semantic labour and on information structure. I would like to conduct the discussion on a somewhat informal level, and others' thoughts on the matter and are greatly appreciated. Doris Schupbach University of Melbourne Gendered lives: the representation of gender in obituaries Gender aspects in obituaries have so far mainly been examined within the social sciences. These studies put much emphasis on gender distribution and length of the obituaries as well as on their content, i.e. on differences in what is reported in obituaries.  This paper also seeks to explore how women and men, their activities and life achievements are described and referred to. It examines the use of verb phrases of which the deceased is the subject and of nominal substitutes used to refer to the deceased in a small sample (N=16) of obituaries published in "The Age" between 1 March and 28 April 2000. The question whether the relationship of the author with the deceased has an impact on the language of the obituary is also considered.  The analysis focuses on how agency is constructed in the texts. It also builds on a previously proposed framework based on a distinction of private vs. public domains of life. Findings indicate that women's actions and achievements tend to be expressed in a less active manner than men's, apparent in the lexical and semantic choice of the verb or in its form. A slightly higher proportion of the nominal substitutes used in obituaries about women seem to belong to the private domain, particularly if the text is written by a person close to the deceased. Etsuko Toyoda and Yoji Hashimoto University of Melbourne Analysis of new Japanese language placement test batteries using G-theory and Rasch model measurement application programs Since the late 1980s, efficient placement procedure has become increasingly important as the number of Japanese language students increased. At Japanese Program, The University of Melbourne, where the presenters work, new attempts began in 1997 to: 1) minimise the resources needed to conduct placement tests and 2) increase the placement test accuracy. The new placement test procedure currently developed includes two newly invented testing batteries called SPOT (Simple Performance Oriented Test) and SKKAT (Simple Kanji Knowledge and Aptitude Test), along with more conventional devices such as a written composition and a short oral interview. Introduction of SPOT, a new-type dictation test, in 1998 not only saw a drastic reduction in the placement test time, but also proved an overall success as an adequate placement measure. The first trial of SKKAT, another time-efficient test, was given earlier this year. However, at this stage, SPOT and SKKAT need to be used concurrently with other more conventional measurement methods: further validity and reliability studies are essential for them to be used independently of other testing tools. This presentation is an interim report on the SPOT and SKKAT results from Semester 1, 2000, with an emphasis on the test reliability of the two tests. The analyses will be presented in the data format produced by GENOVA, a G-theory application program, and QUEST, a Rasch model application. Drawing from the data, the possible ways of test improvements will be discussed. Alternate Presenter: Marilia Ferreira Research Centre for Linguistic Typology Typological properties of Parkateje language