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Cognitive Implications
for Raising
Cross-language
Awareness in Foreign
Language Acquisition
Tina Čok
 Cognitive Implications for Raising
Cross-­language Awareness in Foreign
Language Acquisition
 Tina Čok

Cognitive
Implications for
Raising Cross-­
language Awareness
in Foreign Language
Acquisition
Tina Čok
Science and Research Centre
Koper, Slovenia

ISBN 978-3-031-27828-0    ISBN 978-3-031-27829-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27829-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Lia and Peri, for Lucija and Čedo, with love
 Preface

I wrote this book with many ‘whys’ in mind. Why might this book be
important to linguistics? Why should students of foreign languages or
sinologists read this book? Why should language enthusiasts read
this book?
First and foremost, this book is a culmination of a decade of research
in which I have immersed myself. Furthermore, the fact that the book
focuses on three languages that are rarely mutually studied and compared
makes it somehow original and unique. Although the book reveals lin-
guistic evidence, it also addresses the interplay between language, culture
and behaviour—a well-known but complicated relationship that offers
interesting insights into the way we perceive and construct our reality. A
reality that must be personal and yet common; mine, yours or ours;
Slovenian or Chinese, and which is the basic framework for all kinds of
linguistic, metalinguistic, paralinguistic, extralinguistic, non-linguistic
communication. Moreover, it is hopefully a book that reveals new fea-
tures of a language of a rapidly emerging economy, which might secure
its place among the world’s most important languages. The role of
Standard Chinese1 (hereinafter: Chinese) as a global language has not yet
been defined, but the most important conditions for it to become the

I use Standard Chinese to refer to the official Chinese language in Chinese called Putonghua or
1

Mandarin Chinese, as it is referred to in Western literature.

vii
viii Preface

next lingua franca will soon be met. There are many examples of the
interrelation between language and the power of a nation. One of the
most recent is the linguistic and cultural imperialism achieved by colonial
powers such as the British Empire. One of the reasons I, a Slovenian lin-
guist, wrote this book in English is because of the successful colonial
language policy, backed by military power, that established English as the
official language in the colonies. A linguistic hegemony that was taken
over by the United States, a superpower in the truest sense of the word.
But like all empires before it, the United States is in decline while a new
nation is on the rise. It is estimated that China will become the leading
economic power before 2030, and in many ways, it has already outrun
the United States. However strong China may become in the interna-
tional arena, English remains the overarching language for business, tech-
nology, science, diplomacy, media, military, culture and so on. Chinese
may be the most spoken language in the world, but English is still the
most dominant because to become the lingua franca, what matters is the
number of people who speak a language as a second or foreign language.
Since one of the aims of this book is also to promote the teaching and
learning of Chinese as a foreign language through the application of
empirical evidence and to enhance the teaching and learning process and
resources, I have also written this book taking into account current
Chinese language internationalisation strategies. Language policy in
China has changed over the years. With Xi Jinping’s redefinition of ‘Made
in China’ as something to be proud of, the position of English and
Westerners has also changed. Whereas until recently it was common for
Westerners, regardless of their background or mother tongue, to teach
English simply because they were foreigners, to become a language
teacher in China today, one must have a valid international certificate or
language degree. On the other hand, even though knowledge of English
is a prerequisite for enrolment in many Chinese universities, the fact that
numerous scholarships to study in China are now being awarded to for-
eigners who are invited to stay after graduation can also be seen as a
reverse process to the one in the past, when Chinese students sought their
knowledge abroad. China has become one of the most popular destina-
tions for international students, with hundreds of thousands interna-
tional students pursuing higher education there every year. In the long
 Preface ix

run, the application of soft power methods in education, as in other

fields, could mean paving the way for future Chinese hegemony.
Establishing any form of hegemony, even if one departs from the old-­
fashioned way the French and the British did it, requires a clear language
policy strategy. The earlier colonial rulers knew that language was an
important source of power. They not only imposed French or English as
the language in formal and administrative settings, but also asserted the
superiority of their language among the local population. As part of the
language strategy, the French and the British established language and
cultural centres that played an important role in the linguistic colonisa-
tion process. China copied this pattern and established the first centre for
the dissemination of Chinese language and culture, the Confucius
Institute, in 2004 (South Korea), although it adopted very different
political and diplomatic practices in its efforts to establish a presence
abroad. As of October 2019, Hanban’s homepage listed more than 500
Confucius Institutes around the world.
Since English is still the lingua franca, it is hard to predict whether
Chinese could take over this status. However, the Chinese are aware of
the importance that language has in exercising soft power and achieving
the state’s goals, which is why this tool is widely exploited.
Whether or not Chinese becomes the next global language, this book
aims to be another piece in this puzzle, helping people around the world
who study Chinese to become more aware of the complex world they are
approaching, since understanding the other means understanding the
linguistic, cultural, historical as well as subjective experiences and con-
ceptualisations that have made us who we are.
The insights I offer in this book as a basis for an approach to cross-­
language awareness can also contribute to a more general understanding
of phenomena unique to traditional and contemporary Chinese society,
which are often not accepted and even criticised by the Western world
due to a lack of understanding. Therefore, it is my intention to also high-
light the importance of understanding the behaviour of a group of people
who sometimes think about and conceptualise the world according to the
laws of their first language. The Chinese are thought to process the world
more holistically, that is, experience relationships and understand their
interactions holistically. This trait of Chinese society, which is consistent
x Preface

with the notions of synthetic thinking, may also find its roots in lan-
guage, which makes studies such as this presented in this book impor-
tant. I hope that readers will find the following pages, even if they read
them only casually or in parts, as fascinating as working on this book has
been for me.

Koper, Slovenia Tina Čok

30 August 2022
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to Mateja Petrovčič and Silva

Bratož for their guidance during the writing process, for all the engaging
and useful discussions that helped to bring all my ideas together. A big
thank you also goes to my former professor Martina Ožbot Currie for her
comments and suggestions on publishing my research in the form of a
book. In addition, I would like to thank all the students who participated
in my linguistic tests and made this research possible, as well as my men-
tor at the Centre for Brain in Cognitive Sciences at Peking University,
Prof. Zhou Xiaolin, who said the right words at the right moment and
thus determined my future research path. Special thanks also go to my
editor Cathy Scott for the attention she gave to my work, to the reviewers
for their insightful comments and to the editorial team for all their sup-
port. Moreover, I gratefully acknowledge Lucija Čok for her inspiring
feedback on various aspects of this research and for many other reasons,
too many to be mentioned here.

xi
 About This book

Although this book emerged from a linguistic study, it aims to do more

than just contemplate language structures and linguistic phenomena. It
also encompasses many aspects that are cognitive, social, experiential, but
also politically and ideologically predefined because I felt it necessary to
include several facets that, although not purely linguistic in nature, con-
tribute significantly to language proficiency. To this end, the target audi-
ence of the book can be defined as learners or speakers of Chinese who
are native speakers of a language that is typologically unrelated to Chinese.
The book is divided into six chapters. It starts with an introductory
chapter where I attempt to define unrelated languages and lay the ground-
work for a methodological approach to unrelated language acquisition.
In this chapter, I also consider concepts such as second, third and foreign
language, as well as emerging linguistic contexts such as multilingualism
and plurilingualism in language acquisition. I conclude Chap. 1 with an
introduction to cross-­language awareness, a linguistic competence that I
consider crucial for unrelated language acquisition and whose compre-
hensive identification and acquisition approaches were one of the main
goals of the study in this book.
Chapter 2 is devoted to cognitive approaches to foreign language
acquisition. In this chapter, I discuss the intricate relationship between
language, culture and cognition as proposed by scholars in the fields of
philosophy, linguistic anthropology, and cognitive and applied
xiii
xiv About This book

linguistics, and set forth my ideas about this interconnectedness, which I

believe plays a key role in how people perceive, comprehend and verbalise
the world in their first languages.
With Chap. 3 the study presented in this book becomes more specific.
Using Chinese, Italian and Slovenian as examples, I develop a theoretical
framework suitable for classifying aspectual systems in unrelated lan-
guages. I base my proposal on existing classifications but adopt it slightly
to better fit classifications between languages with less similar features.
This enhanced classification is tested in Chap. 4 using an empirical study
that brings to light evidence of conceptual discrepancies between lan-
guages. The empirical study involves language tests performed with native
speakers of Chinese, Italian and Slovenian who were asked to assess their
perception of the degree of completion of the action expressed by verbs.
The study attempted to prove two main ideas. (1) That unrelated lan-
guages show a greater degree of semantic discrepancy, which is due to
structural differences between languages, but also to the idiosyncrasy of
conceptualisation in the context of the native language. (2) That the
interpretive freedom of the completion of Chinese monomorphemic
verbs leads native Chinese speakers to focus more on the category of pro-
cess than on result, linguistically, but also more generally.
In Chap. 5, I summarise the results of the empirical study and put the
empirical findings into practice by presenting guidelines and recommen-
dations for raising cross-language awareness in third language acquisi-
tion. The empirical findings, which confirm that speakers conceptualise
reality differently often depending on their first language, have shown
that this needs to be taken more into account in the context of foreign
language teaching and learning, as it poses a potential risk for foreign
language learners to develop incorrect linguistic patterns, especially
between unrelated languages, which are difficult to overcome if not prop-
erly recognised and explained. In the final chapter I present the main
conclusions to the research described in this book. The main contribu-
tions are summarised, followed by some suggestions for future directions
of research and practice related to this work.
The conclusions of the research, which needs to be put into practice,
are relevant in the field of foreign language teaching and learning at all
levels and, moreover, can improve approaches in translation studies, as
 About This book xv

the conceptualisation of reality and its subsequent verbalisation can be

challenging even when the language and culture of the language are
already well known. I propose to address this problem through the prism
of contrastive analysis, on the basis of which a high level of cross-language
awareness should be developed among learners. Following an analysis of
the most influential frameworks of reference for languages, which showed
that competences in the area of cross-­language awareness are poorly rep-
resented and insufficiently included, I have developed guidelines and rec-
ommendations to help reduce this competence-­related imbalance and
have drafted a proposal for descriptors to develop competences for cross-
language awareness, using Chinese as an example. Although I focus pri-
marily on Chinese, I have designed the guidelines so that teachers can
easily adapt them to other language combinations.
As a concluding remark, I would like to suggest that the novelty of the
study presented in this book lies in the attempt to break away from the
prevailing approaches in the study of semantic language differences,
which are usually based on notions of intercultural studies that explain
linguistic differences in the light of different cultural patterns and con-
texts that are consequently also identified in the language in question.
The comparison of similar communication situations in languages that
differ morpho-syntactically (e.g., Chinese, Italian, and Slovenian) has
made it possible to identify differences in the understanding of word
meanings or whole messages through cross-linguistic notions analysed
using the approaches of cognitive linguistics.
 Contents

1 I ntroduction  1
1.1 The Role of Linguistic (Un)Relatedness in Language
Acquisition  1
1.2 Defining Language Status Within the Multilingual
Perspective  7
1.3 Aspects of Foreign Language Learning and Teaching  13
1.4 Cross-language Awareness Competence Defined  21
References 24

2 Cognitive
 Approaches to Foreign Language Acquisition 31
2.1 East Asian and Western Cognitive Dichotomies  31
2.2 The Role of Cognition Within Language and Culture  34
2.3 Linguistic Relativity and/or Universal Grammar  40
2.4 Language: Culturally (In)Dependent Phenomenon?  43
2.5 If a Lion Could Speak, We Could Not Understand Him  50
References 57

3 Classification
 of Verbal Actions in Typologically Unrelated
Languages 63
3.1 Aspectual Features and a Cross-language Classification
of Lexical Aspect  63
3.2 Chinese Aspect System  81
xvii
xviii Contents

3.3 Italian Tense-Aspect System 102

3.4 Slovenian Aspect System 114
References124

4 Empirical
 Evidence of Conceptual Discrepancies Between
Languages129
4.1 Research Methodology 130
4.2 Analysis and Interpretation of the Results 134
References156

5 Guidelines
 and Recommendations for Raising Cross-
language Awareness in TLA159
5.1 Approaches and Techniques for Integrating Cross-
language Awareness into Foreign Language Teaching 160
5.2 Elements of Cross-language Awareness in the
Established Curricula 164
5.3 Guidelines and Recommendations for the Development
of Cross-language Awareness 173
5.4 Final Thoughts on Cross-language Communication 183
References186

6 Implications
 of the Topic and Directions for Practice and
Future Research189
6.1 Implications for Practice 190
6.2 Implications for Future Research 191
References192

I ndex193
 Abbreviations

* Ungrammatical sentences
? Marginally acceptable, unusual sentences
LE Perfective marker regardless of its position in the sentence
–le Post-verbal LE
le Sentence final LE
MA Question particle
DE Structural particle
CL/CLF Classifier
BA The ba construction
RVC Resultative Verb Compound
PERF Perfective
IMPRF Imperfective

xix
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Screenshot of the Chinese version of Task 1, created in

PsychoPy131
Fig. 4.2 Screenshot of the Chinese version of Task 2, created in
PsychoPy132
Fig. 4.3 Screenshot of Task 3 for Italian 132

xxi
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Proposed features of verb types and their classification 79

Table 3.2 Aspect markers in Standard Chinese (summarised after Chen
2005)85
Table 4.1 Assessment of the degree of completion at the lexical level
according to the verb type in % for all three languages 135
Table 4.2 Perceived degree of completion for accomplishment verbs in
Chinese and Italian 138
Table 4.3 Verb type according to the degree of completion (in % for
Chinese and Italian) 153
Table 5.1 Proposal of the descriptors to develop cross-language
competences179

xxiii
 1
Introduction

1.1 The Role of Linguistic (Un)Relatedness

in Language Acquisition
The relations and developments between languages, which have been
most thoroughly studied in the field of linguistic typology and contrastive
analysis, have occupied a rather marginal place in contemporary language
acquisition practice. Considerations of the structural, semantic and
conceptual diversity of languages affecting the process of language
learning and teaching have never seemed relevant enough to provide an
adequate framework for the development of approaches that draw on the
notion of these linguistic diversities. The main reason for this absence is
probably the fact that in the twentieth century, which is when the field of
language learning experienced its greatest boom and produced most of
the pedagogical notions and approaches we still rely on today, most
foreign language teaching and learning took place between relatively
related languages. In Slovenia, for example, as in other EU countries,
learning a language in the first half of the twentieth century meant
learning the language of the neighbour (Italian, German, Croatian) or
the language of business and politics (English, French, German). It was
not until the turn of the millennium that new trends in language
acquisition emerged. In the course of globalisation, which turned the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

T. Čok, Cognitive Implications for Raising Cross-language Awareness in Foreign Language
Acquisition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27829-7_1
2 T. Čok

world into a global village, people became increasingly interested in the

languages of distant and exotic countries.
This book is motivated by the experience of the author, who has been
studying and teaching Chinese in Slovenia for the past decade. The
content, therefore, focuses mainly on examples from the process of
learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language in Europe. In EU
countries where there is no significant diaspora from distant countries,
foreign language teaching has been established mainly on the principles
of learning and teaching related languages. This is also evidenced by the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR),
which is methodologically designed for the teaching and learning of
European languages, although it is increasingly used to design classes for
other languages with very different typological backgrounds. This is a
weakness that will be analysed and reviewed in more detail in Chap. 5.
Another necessary development in the field of foreign language
acquisition1 that directly addresses the problem of unrelatedness between
languages is the expansion of the research field of teaching and learning
L2 by adding concepts for L3 and additional languages.2 In cases where
English is learned from kindergarten or primary school onwards by non-­
native speakers, it has become the L2 par excellence, while other European
languages have become L3 languages, leaving the status of additional
language3 to all the distant languages that are increasingly included in the
school curricula—a problem that has already been addressed by De
Angelis (2007), Hammarberg (2010) and others.
This emerging linguistic venue calls for new definitions and new direc-
tions in language education. In the CEFR, languages such as Chinese,
Korean, Arabic, Japanese, all of which are considered L3 and additional
languages, have one important feature in common: they are all unrelated
to any subgroup of European languages, be they Romance, Germanic,

1
Foreign language acquisition is a term that is not really widely used or well defined in the litera-
ture. It is predominantly used in a more general sense to cover all specific areas of language acquisi-
tion from the second language onward. It is in this sense that the term is used in this book.
2
For the sake of simplicity, I deliberately omit the terminological distinctions between L2 and FL2,
which are specific to ethnically mixed areas.
3
Instead of using the linear sequence model or symbolic tags such as L ≥ 3 or L > 3, I use the ter-
minology first introduced by De Angelis (2007).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pogo Planet
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Pogo Planet

Author: Donald A. Wollheim

Illustrator: Hannes Bok

Release date: March 11, 2024 [eBook #73148]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Columbia Publications, Inc, 1941

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POGO

PLANET ***
 POGO PLANET

By MARTIN PEARSON

(Author of "Cosmos Eye", "The Unfinished City", etc.)

Introducing that modest little superman, that shrinking

violet of destiny, Ajax Calkins, and a world where you
had to hop, in some way, to get where you wanted to go!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Future combined with Science Fiction October 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
As my ship hit the darkness that was the outer atmosphere of
Midplanet, I thrilled to the thought that I, Ajax Calkins, had at last
achieved my rightful place among the pioneers of space. Even when
my ship bounced on the green soil, flew end over end upwards to
come down ka-plunk in the wrong side of a gooey thick swamp, I
exulted that I was the first in possession of a major planet that had
been overlooked by the rest of the interplanetary crowd.
As I picked myself up from the midst of a pile of miscellaneous
equipment, hiking ropes, elephant guns, para-rays, spare shoes and
cans of Unifood, and rubbed my bruised arms and head, I thought of
how many millions would give their all to be in my place.
Midplanet! How the whole system had thrilled when its discovery
was finally determined last year! For decades science had known
there was a planet between Saturn and Uranus, ever since Pickering
had proved the perturbations of those planets' orbits pointed to a
body between them. Yet telescopes had always failed to detect it.
Few had taken it seriously. Yet, it was there.
It was discovered finally by electromagnetic induction coils at the
Mars Prime Observatory. It was rechecked from Flagstaff and
searched for by Tycho Eye. The latter could not see it. It was still
invisible, a strangely dark world.
It was then that I conceived my great idea. For years I had secretly
nourished my grievance against the world into which I found myself
born. All the great heroic acts had been done. The major planets
pioneered, Gretelspoon had at last opened up Pluto, and there was
nothing left for me to do to show that I too was made of godlike stuff.
But Midplanet ... there was my chance!
Hastily I outfitted a small spaceship with all that I would need. Hastily
but craftily I had the orbits charted and the controls processed. My
destiny was always certain for had it not been my destiny to come
into a large fortune early in life? Surely this had been ordained?
Then I had hurtled through space towards Midplanet alone, secretly.
The world would not know of my triumph until I returned to tell them
and receive their adoring plaudits. Months went past while I endured
the hardships of space-sickness, the cosmitch, and voidal ague.
At last Midplanet loomed dark in the celestial panorama. Still it cast
no light, still it was a black orb sailing silently on its mighty orbit,
unattended by any moon.
Finding that my ship was irrevocably destined to hit the planet, I
determined to land rather than turn back. So it came about that I
plunged down through the darkness and found to my amazement
that after several hundred yards of opaque gaseous envelope, I
emerged into brilliant blue sky and rapidly approached the green
surface.
After the crash and after I had picked myself up and rubbed arnica
on my black-and-blue spots, the problem of the dark planet turned
light demanded my attention.
I realized that some strange gas or mixture of gases chanced to
make up the outermost strata of the atmosphere of Midplanet. A
gaseous compound that absorbed light one way but would not pass
it once it had struck the surface of the planet. So that above the
planet remained swathed in lightless mystery, while below the sky
seemed to radiate blue and the lighting and warmth was held in to
appear as a beautiful spring day on Earth.
This then had been the circumstance which had kept Midplanet
veiled from the sight of man until I, Ajax Calkins, tore aside the veil. I
felt a glow of warmth suffuse my body with pride for this
accomplishment.

Buckling a para-ray to my belt (for I did not think heavier weapons

were necessary in this peaceful looking scene), I stepped to the door
of the ship and forced it open. At my feet the swamp oozed and
gurgled. A scant distance away the bank of solid ground lay. I leaped
the distance and I am proud to say misjudged it by a mere foot or so.
Dragging myself out of the thick gummy mess I clambered to the
bank of the strangely greenish soil, placed one foot forward,
scowled, and raised my right hand.
"I hereby take possession of this land in my name, Ajax Calkins, and
proclaim it subject to my will as Emperor." This I pronounced with
firm dignity becoming a Magellan or a Cortez.
You may seem surprised that I should make myself ruler of this land
and not merely annex it to the Interplanetary Union? Why should that
surprise you? Was it not mine by right of priority? And how, indeed,
do you think kingdoms and empires are won?
I am not a modest man. I have always said that I am a man of great
destiny. Why should I bow to traditions?
Having satisfied my will, I looked about.
Before me stretched a long rolling plain, green as if covered with
fields of grass. Yet it was not grass but a curious green hard clay that
seemed to make up the soil. Far to the distance low hills rose. The
oddest feature of the soil was the fact that it was interminably
interlaced with deep sharp cracks like a clay that had been baked
improperly and cracks all over.
It seemed to me that there was a strange discoloration far off in the
base of the hills from which white and grey plumes of vapor arose as
if marking the factories of some hillside city. A city it could well prove
to be and if that were so, then I had found a capital and subjects!
I set out to walk the several miles to the hills. I had sufficient
equipment for such a reconnoiter already on me.
The going was not easy. The ground was flat and hard enough to
walk on, but the deep cracks and narrow crevices which one
constantly came across made the trip difficult. I would have to leap
perilously over the more narrow cracks or else carefully find a way
around the wider ones.
It seemed to me that it would be difficult to make roads across such
a terrain, the bridges would be innumerable. I wondered how the
natives got around. I had seen no sign of animals as yet, but that
was not to be considered surprising if there were a city so near.
There were plants, a large number scattered here and there in
clumps, reddish and greenish masses somewhat like the vegetation
of our American Western deserts.
After walking and jumping and still more walking and leaping I
became tired after about an hour. The city was still a distance away
but it could now be seen with greater distinctness. It was indeed
what I had thought, a cluster of buildings obviously constructed for
intelligent beings and there were indeed columns of smoke rising
from them. More than that I could not distinguish.
I had come across no roads as yet which was odd if this were a city
though comprehensible considering the nature of the ground.
At last I saw a building of some sort in my path. It was a small
structure, hardly more than a frame-work construction of clay. I made
my way to it and looked at it. The building itself was nothing, just a
frame-work as I had said. It was what was propped up beside it that
puzzled and amazed me.
It was a nine-foot cylinder of shining metal. About the middle of this
metal shaft was fixed a circular frame. There were a number of what
might be controls set in the cylinder just above this central railwork
and a large mass like a doughnut running underneath the metal
hoop which might have held an engine of some sort. The bottom of
the shaft was capped by a large rubbery mass.
I could not figure out what this was. I stood it upright (it was not too
heavy) and looked at it from all directions. It was a puzzle. Then I
climbed on to the hoop affixed to its middle and sat down. The
central shaft ran between my legs, the engine was under me and the
controls faced me. It occurred to me that here was a machine
designed to be operated by someone in my position and of my
general size.

Because I am afraid of nothing, I touched the controls and pressed

them. Below me there was a sort of murmuring and rumbling. Then
the cylinder seemed to vibrate slightly, to grow more tense. I grasped
the metal bar tightly.
There was a terrifying hiss and then a terrific crash and the cylinder
suddenly hurtled into the air. I held on for dear life, my composure
dreadfully shaken. The whole machine bounced upwards into the air
and then came down on its rubber-capped bottom. I held on. It hit, a
shaft within the cylinder contracted and absorbed the shock and
suddenly flicked out again and up we went.
As I grasped the main tube for dear life I realized what it was. A pogo
stick! A giant, mechanically controlled, powered pogo stick!
Up and down, jarring and violent, down and up. I was dizzy and ill
and I didn't know how to stop it. It was progressing madly in the
general direction of the city. I pushed buttons wildly when I wasn't
holding on for dear life but I didn't seem to get the right combination.
The stick would hurtle wildly forward into the air many dozens of feet
then come down to hit the earth with a shock, contract, and then
recoil violently again and up with a sickening jolt into the air again.
I saw that it was a means for travel over terrain impassible because
of its crevices and cracks to wheeled vehicles or beings on foot. I
saw this as the unguided power-pogo came down directly into a
narrow crack. The capped bottom slid between the sides, the engine
box hit the sides of the narrow cleft hard, there was a terrific kick and
the shaft hit out again futilely in the airy emptiness of the depth
below it, and I went sailing out head over heels to land several yards
away in the midst of a band of Midplanetarians.
The next thing I knew I was being pinned down by a number of grey
fuzzy arms while a kangaroo looked down at me and questioned me
in a squeaky language. At least it looked like a kangaroo for it had
the giant legs and the long powerful tail of one, it had upstanding
mousey ears, a pointed rodentlike face, and a mammalian body
covered with short grey-brown hair. Around its waist was strapped a
belt-like harness from which several pouches were slung. In one
hand it held a weapon like a sort of combination of pistol and sling-
shot.
Naturally I did not answer its questions. It, the chief kangaroo-man,
shrugged its shoulders and motioned to its fellows who were holding
me down. They allowed me to get to my feet when I was surprised to
find that I was still all in one piece and that they had not touched my
equipment including my para-ray.
A little distance away was standing a simply gigantic power-pogo,
towering a couple of dozen feet high, with a large circular platform
set around its middle. Facing that they started to walk towards there.
Started, I say, for they walked in kangaroo leaps and I simply fell
when they tried to make me do the same.
They picked me up bodily and bounded over and up to the platform.
There they hold on to straps attached to the main cylinder and
waited. I think I must have fainted because I have no recollection of
the trip outside of a nightmare of terrible leaps and falls.

When I came to again it was in the city by the hills. Several of the
creatures were standing around me trying to question me in their odd
language and, of course, making no headway. I felt that this was not
the time to inform them of my imperial accession, I was not sure that
they were the most fitting inhabitants of this world to receive that
honor. There might be other intelligent races inhabiting the same
planet even as there are on Venus.
Accordingly I kept my mouth shut and stared them down. That was a
feat of which I could be proud considering the odd nature of their
eyes and faces.
Finally they led me away in short bounds to a building and up a ramp
to a room. There they thrust me and closed the door.
The room was large, partly open to an interior patio. But it had
another inhabitant. A girl!
She was standing by the open semi-balcony staring into the
courtyard. When I exclaimed, she turned sharply and looked at me.
She was dressed surprisingly like an earth girl, she looked very
much like the earth type. I congratulated myself on having picked for
my empire a planet which held a race so similar to my own. But my
hopes were dashed two seconds later when she opened her mouth
and said in perfect English:
"Hello, stranger, how'd you get to Midplanet so soon?"
I recovered my composure and introduced myself modestly, not
telling her of the position I had taken upon myself. "And who are
you?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm Nadia Landor and I came with the Official I. U. Expedition.
Our ship is about thirty miles away and I came here on a geological
survey in a single-seater flier. I stopped to say hello but our hosts
don't seem to know the meaning of the word."
"Oh," I said and fell silent. What was I to say? I had been so certain
that I could get to Midplanet first and now it seemed that the Union
had beaten me out again. Then, I squared my shoulders. This was
no way for Ajax Calkins, Emperor of at least half Midplanet, to act.
My destiny would see me through.
"You need have no fear," I said. "I will find a way for us to escape."
She looked at me oddly and smiled. "Oh, that? That's all settled.
We'll escape immediately if you want to. I've fixed things with our
buggy friend."
"With whom?" I gasped.
"Why, haven't you seen the buggers yet? Look, there's Bosco in the
yard." She beckoned to the inner courtyard. I went over to her side
and looked.

In the courtyard, standing just below us stood a monstrous insect. A

thing somewhat larger than a horse. A big squat compact looking
broad-backed creature. For a moment I stared at it without
comprehension and then suddenly its appearance struck a
responsive chord in my brain. It was a flea, a gigantic flea!
"Isn't he cute?" murmured Nadia. "He's agreed to help us escape."
"He's what? Do you mean to say he's...." I started.
"Intelligent?" she finished. "Yes, the buggers have a rather high
intelligence. Not as good as our kangaroo friends but nonetheless
clever. The fleas are a sort of semi-barbarian group inhabiting a
section about a thousand miles away. This fellow, whom I call Bosco,
was captured and doesn't like the idea of making a banquet for some
kangaroo holiday."
I goggled at the creature and it stared with an interested flicker of its
feelers at me.
"I'm glad you still have your para-ray. It was all that I was missing.
Come on, let's go now." Nadia suited her actions to her words by
vaulting the stone balustrade and landing astride the monster bug's
back. I gingerly followed her and seated myself in front.
"Now what?" I said for I didn't know how this was going to help us
escape.
"Hold tight and use your ray when the guard appears," she said and
then screamed at the top of her lungs. I was nearly paralyzed myself
with the sound but the guard who opened the gate was more so and
I beamed him nicely.
Bosco seemed to sink lower and then his monstrously powerful legs
smashed down and we made the most colossal bound I have ever
dreamed of. That super-flea must have covered at least three
hundred yards with that first bound and he must have made two
hundred at least with every subsequent bounce.
We held on for dear life and the air whished past us like mad. Behind
us the city of kangaroos sprang to life as they saw their assorted
prisoners escaping and very soon I saw over my shoulder that a line
of gigantic steam-powered pogos were bounding along after us,
each manned by several armed creatures.
The flea was fast but the pogos, powered by terrific steam-boilers,
were equally so. And thus we raced across the clay creviced terrain,
two humans on the back of a flea-colossus followed by a single-file
line of puffing steel pogos, their plumes of smoke leaving a trail
behind them.
I turned and tried to pick off the riders with my ray but it was
hopeless, so violently was everything going up and down. I gave up
and clung for dear life to the hard neck of our steed.
But it seemed to be impossible to shake off our followers. They
remained fast on our trail and after a while I realized that Bosco was
tiring out, his leaps were not so high or far.

"What shall we do?" called Nadia to me. "We can't shake them."
It was then that the idea occurred to me that saved us. We were
already very close to where my spaceship had landed and I
succeeded to conveying in signals what I had in mind to our quite
intelligent flea.
On we went and when we came to the side of the swamp in which
my ship had landed, Bosco gave a terrific leap which must have well
set a record for all Midplanet and sailed fully five hundred yards
across the swamp to land exhausted on the other side.
But the pogos could not make that great leap, nor could the giant
things stop so easily. On they rushed and one after another they
landed in the middle of that thick gummy deep swamp-like mass.
The automatic vibrations of their shafts continued but their bases
were hopelessly gummed in. The crews were hurled off in all
directions and fell helplessly into the gooey morass.
We were saved! My ship was around at the other side but we could
walk it. Nadia signalled our thanks to the bugger and it bounded off
alone towards the distant horizon.
As we walked, Nadia complimented me on my trick of the swamp. I
glowed within and, turning to her, said:
"Let us stay here and master this world, my Empress. I, Ajax Calkins,
lay my heart and a planet at your feet."
But women are fickle creatures and cannot understand the ways of
the great. She laughed and said: "Don't be silly, my husband is
waiting for me at our own spaceship."
And then when we found that my ship had, while I had been away,
sunk into the swamp completely and that we would have to walk the
twenty or so miles to Nadia's craft, she laughed even louder. Women
do not appreciate destiny.
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