Ng Bee Chin

Associate Professor, Linguistics and Multilingual Studies

Ng Bee Chin is mainly interested in issues related to individuals growing up in bilingual and multilingual contexts. Her initial research interests are conceptual and semantic development in Chinese children through the study of classifiers. Working and living in Singapore has opened up many exciting research opportunities for multilingualism. More recently, she has been attracted to the ways in which bilinguals and multilinguals experience the world around them. Part of her research on language attitudes and identity focuses on the dynamic interaction between bilingual individuals and the social forces of a multilingual community.

Bee Chin is currently working on several projects dealing with the intersection between social and cognitive aspects of bilingualism. The topics that engage her include:

1. Categorisation in bilinguals
2. The way emotion is encoded in bilinguals
3. Language attitude and identity in multilingual contexts
4. Language inequality and language endangerment in multilingual communities

You can view Ng Bee Chin’s website by clicking here.

Wen Han

Master's student

Wen Han’s current research study focuses on the following: Effects of Biculturalism on Executive Functions: The Case of Bicultural Bilinguals in Singapore.

Due to the rigour of managing multiple languages, bilinguals are often thought to have a number of cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers. The bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis suggests that speaking multiple languages strengthens the bilingual’s Executive Functions skills compared to their monolingual peers, especially in the area of inhibition-control and selective attention (e.g. Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012). However, recent studies have failed to replicate the advantages found in earlier studies, calling into question some cognitive advantages of bilingualism. While researchers have posited a slew of possible reasons and confounding factors, the notion of biculturalism among bilinguals has seldom been discussed in the existing literature (For a recent review, see Lehtonen et al, 2018). Thus, this two-part study seeks to examine the contribution of biculturalism to Executive Functions among highly proficient bilingual Singaporeans aged 18-30. The first study aims to understand if young Singaporeans viewed themselves as belonging to more than a single culture, and attempts tease apart the factors that would predict differences in levels of biculturalism, as well as their frequency of switching between bicultural modes of behaviour. The second study consists of a number of Executive Functions tests that measure participant’s abilities to inhibit incompatible responses and attend to constantly changing, conflicting stimuli. Preliminary results reveal that frequent cultural switchers are better at maintaining attention in a task that requires rules to be followed, and are able to deal with conflicting stimuli significantly faster than less frequent cultural switchers. Importantly, these results highlight another possible confounding variable in previous studies comparing bilinguals and monolinguals, as biculturalism and one’s frequency of switching between cultures may contribute to differences in typical inhibitory-control and selective attention tasks used in the study of the bilingual advantage hypothesis.

Yosephine

Ph.D student

Title of research: Building an Enhanced Sentiment Resource for Processing Indonesian Texts

Yosephine is a Ph.D student at Nanyang Technological University under the supervision of Ng Bee Chin and the co-supervision of Erik Cambria. The TAC members of her dissertation are Francis Bond and Lin Jing Xia. Before joining NTU, she was a research assistant for numerous linguistic research projects, such as language documentation project on endangered Minangkabau languages (University of Delaware) and sociolinguistic project on language use in Indonesia (Cornell University). Her research interests lie primarily in the field of emotion studies and human interaction. She is currently working on building a sentiment resource which can automatically recognize emotions in Indonesian, namely Indonesian SenticNet. SenticNet is a concept-level sentiment resource which combines multidisciplinary knowledge, such as AI, linguistics, psychology, etc. to predict the polarity in the sentiment analysis. In her study, she compiles a corpus of emotion terms in Indonesian and investigates the functions of those emotion terms in their natural language occurrences to enhance the accuracy of the sentiment resource.

Izabella

Project Officer

Izabella graduated in 2017 from Durham University with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Sociology. She is currently a Project Officer on the Silent But All Ears project, studying tone learning in infants.

Publications

Cavallaro, Francesco & Ng, Bee Chin (in press, 2020) Multilingualism and multiculturalism in Singapore. In Peter Siemund & Jakob R. E. Leimgruber (eds.) Multilingualism in Global Cities: Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai. New York: Routledge.

Cavallaro, Francesco, Ng Bee Chin and Tan Ying Ying (in press 2020) Singapore English, in Kingsley Bolton and Andy Kirkpatrick (eds) The Handbook of Asian Languages, Cambridge University Press.

Ng, Bee Chin & Cavallaro, Francesco (2019). Chapter 3. Multilingualism in Southeast Asia: The post-colonial language stories of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. In Simona Montanari & Suzanne Quay (eds.) Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Multilingualism, The Fundamentals (pp. 27-50). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

Tay, RYL & Ng Bee Chin (2019). Effects of affective priming through music on the use of emotion words. PLOS ONE 14(9): e0222965.

Ng Bee Chin and Francesco Cavallaro, (2019). The Annotated Lexicon of Chinese Emotion Words. Word, 65(2), 73-92.

Wong, G., & *Ng, Bee Chin (2018). Moral judgement in early bilinguals: Language dominance influences responses to moral dilemmas. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1070.

Cavallaro, F., Mark Seilhamer, Ho Yen Yee and *Ng Bee Chin (2018) Attitudes to Mandarin Chinese Varieties in Singapore. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication. 28(2), 195-225.

Cavallaro, Francesco, Mark Seilhamer, Felicia Chee and *Ng Bee Chin (2016) Overaccommodation in a Singapore Eldercare Facility. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Vol. 37: Number 8, 817-831.

Ng Bee Chin and Lin Jingxia (eds.) (2016) Special Issue on Language and Emotion in Chinese Languages, Lingua Sinica.

Ng, Bee Chin, Tan, Xue Er Cheryl, Francesco, Cavallaro and Halina Gottlieb (2015). ‘Touch’ Your Heritage: an Interactive Installation on Multilingual Identity. International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era. Volume 4, Issue 1 Special Issue on Intangible Cultural Heritage Documentation, 41-56. Sage Journals.

Ng, Bee Chin, Francesco Cavallaro, Law C.L., Halina, Gottlieb (2014). A Cultural Experience Room: An interdisciplinary and inclusive approach to visualising intangible heritage. In Halina, Gottlieb and Marcin, Szeląg (eds.) Engaging Spaces: Interpretation, Design and Digital Strategies, (pp. 305-318). Proceedings of NODEM 2014.

Cavallaro, Francesco and Ng Bee Chin (2014). Language in Singapore: From Multilingualism to English Plus. In Y. Slaughter and J. Hajek (eds.) Challenging the monolingual mindset. A book in Memory of Michael Clyne, (pp.33-48). Bristol (UK): Multilingual Matters.

Cavallaro Francesco, Mark Seilhamer, and *Ng Bee Chin, (2014). Singapore Colloquial English: Issues of prestige and identity. World Englishes, Volume 33 Number 3, 378-397.

Ng Bee Chin, Francesco Cavallaro, and Koh Shu Ping, Daphne (2014). Singlish can: Speech accommodation in Singapore English. World Englishes, Volume 33 number 3, 398-412.

Kingsley Bolton & Ng Bee Chin (2014). The dynamics of multilingualism in contemporary Singapore. In Bolton, Kingsley and Ng Bee Chin (eds.), Language and Identity in Singapore, Special Issue of World Englishes, Volume 33 number 3, 307-318. In Singapore English. World Englishes, Volume 33 number 3, 398-412.

Bai, L., Ng, B. C. (2012) Self-Other Dimension of Chinese Shame Words. International Journal of Computer Processing of Languages(IJCPOL), Vol. 24, No. )1: pp. 51-78.

Bai, L., Liu, H. Y., Ng., B. C. (2011). A cognitive approach to the lexical semantics of Chinese shame., Proceedings of 12th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop(176-183).

Ng, Bee Chin, Fabrizio Galli and Halina Gottlieb (2011) “Asian Heroes”: An interactive installation for children combining language and mythology”, Rethinking Technology in Museums 2011, University of Limerick.

Tan, Sherman and Ng Bee Chin (2011) Three generations under one roof: A study of the influence of the presence of grandparents on language shift, identity and attitudes. TRANEL (Travaux neuchâtelois de linguistique).

Cruz-Ferreira, M., & Ng, B. C. (2010). Assessing multilingual children in multilingual clinics: Insights from Singapore. In M. Cruz-Ferreira (Ed), Multilingual norms: Language norming in multilingual contexts. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Cavallaro, F., & Ng, B. C. (2009). Between power and solidarity in Singapore: Is there a place for Singlish? Word Englishes, 28(2), 143–159.

Ng, Bee Chin (2008). Linguistics pragmatism, globalization and the impact on the patterns of input in Singaporean Chinese homes. In P. Tan, & R. Rubdy (Eds), Language as commodity: Global structures, local marketplaces (pp. 71-88). London/New York: Continuum Press.