22 May | China Seminar | Chao's Grammar: Historic or historical? by Jeroen Wiedenhof (LIAS, LUCL)
Yuen Ren Chao’s 趙元任 Grammar of spoken Chinese represents a milestone in Chinese linguistics. At the time of its publication in 1968, it brought a wealth of new data and insightful analyses to the field. But in 2013, how relevant can this inventory of the language still be? In this lecture, I will consider the work’s windfalls and pitfalls for linguistic research, for linguistics teaching, and for language pedagogy.