On May 1, 2017 Prof. Meichun Liu, Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Translation of the City University of Hong Kong, gave a talk entitled: "The Chinese Mind: what does Chinese tell us about grammar?"
The abstract of the talk follows:
"Chinese grammar is underspecified in a number of functional domains that are found obligatory in other languages. What is the Chinese grammar sensitive to and what is exactly “coded” in the grammatical system? These two questions have not been answered satisfactorily. This study aims to show that an insightful presentation of the Chinese grammar should depart from the English-biased framework and look into the fundamental mapping principles of FORM (surface coding) and FUNCTION (grammatical meaning) as they are realized in daily discourse of Chinese. Some unique characteristics of Chinese that have been puzzling to linguists include: the frequent use of bare nouns, the frequent omission of subject and object, non-obligatory coding of tense, obligatory presence of a degree marker in adjectival predication, unmarked serial verb construction, marked sequencing constraints (such as verb copying), the diverse use of de in NPs and VPs, the alternating functions of negative markers (mei vs. bu), and a number of controversial ‘aspectual’ markers (le, zhe, guo, zai). The study will demonstrate how a function-based (Givón 1993, Frajzyngier with Shay 2016), construction-oriented (Goldberg 1995, 2005, 2010) approach will offer a more sensitive account of the morpho-syntactic structures of Chinese. After all, “metaphorically and literally, grammar – as musical form - must make sense” (Givon 1993)."
As the abstract indicates, the talk dealt with two issues. The first one was theoretical, dealing with a general linguistics issue: How to describe a grammar of any language. The second was a specific language issue: How to describe the grammar of Mandarin.
With respect to the first issue, Prof. Liu adopted a broadly functionalist approach in which the form and function are considered different entities (Givón 1993, Frajzyngier with Shay 2016, Goldberg 1995, 2005, 2010).
With respect to the second issue, Prof. Liu departed from the frequent application of English or other Indo-European language based categories and argued that Mandarin should be analyzed on its own terms. In particular she has offered a novel analysis of the aspectual markers le, zhe, guo, zai.
Prof. Liu talk was well attended by students and faculty from the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations and from the Department of Linguistics. I have counted about 25 people.
Following Prof. Liu there was a lively discussion in which both students and faculty participated. As a result, the talk and discussion exceeded the time originally scheduled for the presentation.
We are are most grateful to the Center of Asian Studies for co-sponsoring the presentation by Prof. Meichun Liu.
Written by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Professor of Linguistics at CU Boulder