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The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

Online ISBN:
9780199983322
Print ISBN:
9780199856336
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

William S-Y. Wang (ed.),
William S-Y. Wang
(ed.)
Electronic Engineering, University of California at Berkeley & The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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Wang, William S-Y. (王士元) is Professor Emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley. He is Director of the Joint Research Center for Language and Human Complexity at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include biological and evolutionary bases of language, and historical development of the Chinese language.

Chaofen Sun (ed.)
Chaofen Sun
(ed.)
East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
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Sun, Chaofen (孙朝奋) is Professor at Stanford University and was Yangtze Scholar at Beijing Language and Culture University. His areas of scholarship are in morphosyntactic changes in the history of Chinese, sociolinguistics and Chinese syntax. He has done extensive research on Chinese historical linguistics and grammaticalization.

Published online:
5 May 2015
Published in print:
1 April 2015
Online ISBN:
9780199983322
Print ISBN:
9780199856336
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The term "Chinese Linguistics" in the title of this Handbook refers to research done on the languages of China, both theoretical and applied. Chinese Linguistics has a long and honored tradition, starting with philosophical discussions on the nature of names by Confucius. Several empirical investigations in Chinese Linguistics followed the philosophical discussions on the nature of language in the Confucian tradition, each a landmark in its own way in ancient China. This Handbook contains eight sections: (1) history, (2) languages and dialects, (3) language contact, (4) morphology, (5) syntax, (6) phonetics and phonology, (7) socio-cultural aspects, and (8) neuro-psychological aspects. It provides not only a diachronic view of how languages evolve, but also a synchronic view of how languages in contact enrich each other by borrowing new words, calquing loan translation, and even developing new syntactic structures. Traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology are joined with empirical evidence from psycholinguistics and cognitive neurosciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this Handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Sinitic languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan. This is the first Handbook that deals with Chinese Linguistics from a broad multidisciplinary perspective. It is a combined effort from scholars working on this field in different parts of the world, including Greater China, Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe.

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