New Perspectives on Aspect and Modality in Chinese Historical Linguistics

​Barbara Meisterernst is presently a research fellow at the Humboldt University Berlin. She received her PhD in Sinology, Germanic Studies and Linguistics at Münster University and her second PhD, the habilitation, at Hamburg University. Before joining the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 2010, she held a post-doc in Paris, taught as a visiting professor at Ghent University, and worked in a digitization project of the Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit Manuscripts at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Humanities in Berlin in collaboration with the International Dunhuang Project, London (IDP). She is an associate member of the Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l’Asie Oriantale (CRLAO) and the Centre of Buddhist studies at Ghent University. She teaches and taught Classical Chinese, Chinese linguistics, Buddhist Chinese, History of Grammar, and Silk Road Studies at the Humboldt University, the Technical University Berlin, Hamburg University, Ghent University, and MünsterUniversity. She is the author of two books on the grammar of Classical Chinese, co-editor of a book on Chinese linguistics in Europe, editor of a ‘Major Works’ on the Silk Roads (Routledge 2016), and on a collection of articles on Classical Chinese Grammar (Harrassowitz  2016), co-editor of the ‘Routledge Handbook of Applied Chinese Linguistics’, edited by Chu-Ren Huang, Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, and Barbara Meisterernst (to appear 2017). She is the author of around forty articles and book chapters on diachronic studies of the semantics and the syntax of Chinese, on Buddhist Chinese, and on comparative studies of Buddhist translation texts. Her most recent books are Tense and Aspect in Han Period Chinese: A Linguistic Study of the Shǐjì, De Gruyter 2015, New Aspects of Classical Chinese Grammar, Asian and African Studies of the Humboldt University Berlin 45, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016 (editor and contributor), as editor: Routledge Major Works Series: The Silk Roads:Critical Concepts in Asian Studies (4 volumes).

• The Syntax of the Verbs in Archaic Chinese YU Construction.- The Development of the Adverb “QIE 且” in Middle Chinese.- New Insights on the Historical Evolution of the Differential Object Marking in Chinese.- Preliminary Investigation of the Temporal Features of Classical Chinese Verbs.- The History of the Instrumental Nominalization in Chinese.- Some Reflections on the Use and Distribution of Interrogative Pronouns in Medieval Chinese Texts.- Future Meanings, Selection and Volition.- The Diachronic Development of the Aspectual and Modal System of Chinese.- Modality in the General Linguistic Investigations Carried out in China before 1949.- The Modal Verb 應 in Buddhist Vinayas.