The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics PDF Author: William S.-Y. Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199856338
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 793

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas. This Handbook contains eight sections: history, languages and dialects, language contact, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, socio-cultural aspects and 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. It also accompanies traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology with empirical evidence from psychology and neurocognitive sciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Chinese languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics PDF Author: William S.-Y. Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199856338
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 793

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas. This Handbook contains eight sections: history, languages and dialects, language contact, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, socio-cultural aspects and 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. It also accompanies traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology with empirical evidence from psychology and neurocognitive sciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Chinese languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Nationalism and Language Reform in China

Nationalism and Language Reform in China PDF Author: John DeFrancis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Chinese Under Globalization

Chinese Under Globalization PDF Author: Hongyin Tao
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814350699
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The nine papers collected in this volume examine recent trends in language use in mainland China, and the associated social, economic, political, and cultural manifestations.

The Chinese Language

The Chinese Language PDF Author: John DeFrancis
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824810689
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

Nationalism and Language Reform in China

Nationalism and Language Reform in China PDF Author: John DeFrancis
Publisher: New York : Octagon Books, 1972 [c1950]
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Language Policy in the People’s Republic of China

Language Policy in the People’s Republic of China PDF Author: Minglang Zhou
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402080387
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Language matters in China. It is about power, identity, opportunities, and, above all, passion and nationalism. During the past five decades China’s language engineering projects transformed its linguistic landscape, affecting over one billion people’s lives, including both the majority and minority populations. The Han majority have been juggling between their home vernaculars and the official speech, Putonghua – a speech of no native speakers – and reading their way through a labyrinth of the traditional, simplified, and Pinyin (Roman) scripts. Moreover, the various minority groups have been struggling between their native languages and Chinese, maintaining the former for their heritages and identities and learning the latter for quality education and socioeconomic advancement. The contributors of this volume provide the first comprehensive scrutiny of this sweeping linguistic revolution from three unique perspectives. First, outside scholars critically question the parities between constitutional rights and actual practices and between policies and outcomes. Second, inside policy practitioners review their own project involvements and inside politics, pondering over missteps, undergoing soul-searching, and theorizing their personal experiences. Third, scholars of minority origin give inside views of policy implementations and challenges in their home communities. The volume sheds light on the complexity of language policy making and implementing as well as on the politics and ideology of language in contemporary China.

Language and Social Change in China

Language and Social Change in China PDF Author: Qing Zhang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134610564
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Language and Social Change in China: Undoing Commonness through Cosmopolitan Mandarin offers an innovative and authoritative account of the crucial role of language in shaping the sociocultural landscape of contemporary China. Based on a wide range of data collected since the 1990s and grounded in quantitative and discourse analyses of sociolinguistic variation, Qing Zhang tracks the emergence of what she terms “Cosmopolitan Mandarin” as a new stylistic resource for a rising urban elite and a new middle-class consumption-based lifestyle. The book powerfully illuminates that Cosmopolitan Mandarin participates in dismantling the pre-reform, socialist, conformist society by bringing about new social distinctions. Rich in cultural and linguistic details, the book is the first of its kind to highlight the implications of language change on the social order and cultural life of contemporary China. Language and Social Change in China is ideal for students and scholars interested in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and Chinese language and society.

Language Education in China : Policy and Experience from 1949

Language Education in China : Policy and Experience from 1949 PDF Author: Agnes S.L. Lam
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622097502
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Language Education in China: Policy and Experience from 1949 is unprecedented as a comprehensive study of the multilingual circumstances in China. It tracks policy changes in the learning of Chinese, foreign languages and minority ethnic languages in China since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. On the basis of survey and interview data, the experiences of different age cohorts of learners are presented as "windows" to the realities of language education policy implementation over the last half century. The effects of political changes, language backgrounds and various motivations for learning, at both the national and individual levels, are vividly presented in this composite story of China and learners in China.

A Billion Voices

A Billion Voices PDF Author: David Moser
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
ISBN: 1760143308
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese. 'If you want to know what the language situation of China is on the ground and in the trenches, and you only have time to read one book, this is it. A veritable tour de force, in just a little over a hundred pages, David Moser has filled this brilliant volume with linguistic, political, historical, and cultural data that are both reliable and enlightening. Written with captivating wit and exacting expertise, A Billion Voices is a masterpiece of clear thinking and incisive exposition.' Victor H. Mair, American sinologist, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature 'David Moser explains the complex aspects of Putonghua against the backdrop of history, delivering the information with authority and simplicity in a style accessible both to speakers of Chinese and those who are simply fascinated by the language. All of the questions that people have asked me about Chinese over the years, and more, are answered in this book. The history of Putonghua and the vital importance of creating a common language is a story David Moser brings to life in an enjoyable way.' Laszlo Montgomery, The China History Podcast