Studies in Chinese Language: Volume 8

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Studies in Chinese Language, the eighth volume in the Collected Works of Professor M.A.K. Halliday, approaches the Chinese language from several interesting vantage points, ranging from studies of medieval to modern grammar, phonology, and discourse. Professor Halliday's doctoral thesis, 'The Language of the Chinese, Secret History of the Mongols, provides the basis for the first section of this volume, with extracts from the book as well as the original Chinese text, which is one of the earliest known texts written in Mandarin, included in full on the accompanying online resources. The second section focuses on modern Chinese grammar, while the third looks at Chinese phonology. The final section, Grammar and Discourse', includes papers on grammatical metaphor and scientific discourse in both Chinese and English.

Reviews

In this volume, Professor Halliday describes the Chinese language system in terms of categories of grammar, lexis, and phonology, in both medieval and modern Chinese, Putonghua and Cantonese. This lays the foundation of his systemic-functional framework in general linguistics. His pioneering work on probabilistics in Chinese grammar and his observation of grammatical metaphor herald the heyday of contemporary corpus linguistics and text linguistics. Michael Halliday has proved himself worthy of the honour to be recognized as one of the most influential linguists today, and to be ranked along such great names in Chinese scholarship as B. Karlgren, H. Maspero, Chao Yuenren, Luo Changpei, Wang Li, and L Shuxiang. * Hu Zhuanglin, Tenured Professor, Peking University *
An initiative greatly to be welcomed. * IH Journal *
The papers selected in this volume show that Halliday has made a comprehensive study of Chinese language. The volume is of great value not only to linguists who are interested in studies of the Chinese language but also to those who are keen on language teaching and cultural communication. * Discourse Studies *
A major enterprise comparable to a grand retrospective of the paintings of some prominent artist of a distinctive school. * Roy Harris, Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

Professor Jonathan J. Webster is Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong. He is also the Managing Editor of the International Linguistics Associations journal WORD, and the editor of the forthcoming Journal of World Languages (2014). M.A.K. Halliday was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney.