The past decade and a half has witnessed a great deal of renewed interest in the study of Chinese linguistics, not only in the traditional areas of philological studies and in theoretically oriented areas of syn chronic grammar and language change but also in the cultivation of new frontiers in related areas of the cognitive sciences. There is a significant increase in the number of students studying one area or another of the linguistic structure of Chinese in various linguistic programs in the United States, Europe, Australia and in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Several new academic departments devoted to the study of linguistics have been established in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the past few years. The increasing research and study activities have also resulted in a number of national and international conferences, including the North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL), which has been held annually in the United States; the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL), which has had its fourth meeting since it was launched by Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 1990; the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (lACL), created in Singapore in 1992 and now incorporated in Irvine, California, which has held its annual meetings at major institutions in Asia, Europe, and the US.

Klappentext

New Horizons in Chinese Linguistics is an introduction to the state of the art' of Chinese linguistics, focusing especially on developments in the past two decades. The papers included in this volume are written by authors whose scholastic achievements in their respective fields have placed them among the most renowned linguists of the Chinese language. As a reflection of their expertise, these papers not only provide a panorama of the significant works done on various aspects of Chinese... but also use examples... to illustrate the important theoretic issues, the basic linguistic principles, and the research methodology of each field of modern linguistics. Whoever reads this book, linguist and non-linguist alike, will learn something from it. I think it should be on the book-shelves of everyone who does Chinese linguistics or is interested in it.' (Professor Yafei Li, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison). Chinese is one of the few languages, outside of the languages of the Indo-European family, that have a long tradition of linguistic scholarship of their own. This tradition has continued to date and continues to bring new results, often with interesting (though unnoticed) consequences for linguistic theories developed in the West. The study of modern Chinese is characterized by attempts to understand the nature of Chinese in light of explicit linguistic theories and how the study may in turn help shape the future of mainstream linguistic theory. The ten chapters collected in this volume address a major area in both traditional and current theoretical research, as well as areas that represent newly cultivated frontiers in cognitive science: language diversity, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Audience: This volume can be used both as a textbook for upper-division or graduate introduction to Chinese linguistics, and as a reference handbook for the linguist or general reader who would like to know about the current state of Chinese linguistic research.

Inhalt
1 Tonal Geometry -- A Chinese Perspective.- 2 Recent Generative Studies in Chinese Syntax.- 3 Recent Developments in Functional Approaches to Chinese.- 4 Tonal Evolution and Tonal Reconstruction in Chinese.- 5 Recent Issues in Chinese Historical Syntax.- 6 Stages and Strata in Dialectal HistoryCase Studies of Heng County, Da County and Shipo.- 7 Linguistic Diversity and Language Relationships.- 8 Quantifying Dialect Mutual Intelligibility.- 9 Theoretical Issues in Language Development and Chinese Child Language.- 10 Neurolinguistics: A Chinese Perspective.- List of Contributors.