Barbara Meisterernst - Böcker

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics is written for those wanting to acquire comprehensive knowledge of China, the diaspora and the Sino-sphere communities through Chinese language.It examines how Chinese language is used in different contexts, and how the use of Chinese language affects culture, society, expression of self and persuasion of others; as well as how neurophysiological aspects of language disorder affect how we function and how the advance of technology changes the way the Chinese language is used and perceived. The Handbook concentrates on the cultural, societal and communicative characteristics of the Chinese language environment.Focusing on language use in action, in context and in vivo, this book intends to lay empirical grounds for collaboration and synergy among different fields.

The areas covering the Silk Roads, the ancient and modern roads from China to the West, including the region of modern Xinjiang, have an enduring and most diverse history. The impact that the political, cultural, and economic exchange on the Silk Roads had on the world cannot be overestimated; this exchange constitutes the first instance of a globalized world. The earliest discoveries from recent archaeological excavations date back almost 4000 years and explorers in the early 20th century evoked a considerable interest in the history of these regions, and the cultural relics they brought back from the oasis towns of the Taklamakan initiated entirely new research fields. For instance, Buddhist studies received a new impact and languages hitherto unknown entered the field of Western research. Since the 1990s the International Dunhuang Project of the British Library has attempted to unify all manuscripts, artefacts, and other materials collected from the Silk Roads in a database accessible to the public in order to enhance the visibility of these cultural treasures for researchers and the general public alike. Different aspects of Silk Road studies constitute a research focus at academic institutions all over the world: Central Asian Institutes study the history and the present political and economic situation of the countries that were part of the ancient net of economic and cultural relations, and academic projects, such as the Turfan Research Centre of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy, the ‘Buddhist Manuscripts from Ghandara’ project at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, and ‘The Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project’ of the University of Washington, Seattle are primarily concerned with the edition of the manuscripts found on the Silk Roads. Initiatives for a more comprehensive study of the multilayered history of the Silk Roads have been launched at several academic institutions, for instance, at the Buddhist Centre of the University of California Berkeley. The collection of articles on the Silk Roads intends to cover the most relevant aspects of studies on the Silk Roads mainly under a historical perspective, but including some material regarding the present situation of the area. It will focus on more recent publications, but occasionally older, but significant publications will also be included.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics is written for those wanting to acquire comprehensive knowledge of China, the diaspora and the Sino-sphere communities through Chinese language.It examines how Chinese language is used in different contexts, and how the use of Chinese language affects culture, society, expression of self and persuasion of others; as well as how neurophysiological aspects of language disorder affect how we function and how the advance of technology changes the way the Chinese language is used and perceived. The Handbook concentrates on the cultural, societal and communicative characteristics of the Chinese language environment.Focusing on language use in action, in context and in vivo, this book intends to lay empirical grounds for collaboration and synergy among different fields.

Many grammatical issues of Archaic and Medieval Chinese still lack a comprehensive analysis. The book provides the first thorough investigation of the syntactic and semantic constraints of the linguistic categories tense and aspect and their relation with the lexical aspect of the verb in Han period Chinese. The author uncovers fascinating details of a language with a highly restricted verbal morphology.

The present study is the first to apply a syntactic approach to the grammaticalization of Chinese modals, based on hypotheses on cross-linguistic diachronic developments of modals from lexical to functional categories as upward movement on a functional spine. The temporal framework of the study covers Late Archaic and Middle Chinese. Early Middle Chinese is a crucial turning point for the development of Chinese from a more synthetic to a more analytic language. This change is attributed e.g. to the loss of a former morphology, which also affects the modal system. Against this background, the negative cycle of Chinese, the relevance of polarity contexts, and the development of a new system of deontic, epistemic and future markers are analyzed. In addition to a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic processes involved in the diachronic changes of the Chinese modal system, the study also provides a comparison with the syntax of grammaticalization of the thoroughly discussed Germanic modals. This constitutes a broad basis for further analyses of the changes in the Chinese language during its long written history, but also for cross-linguistic studies on the syntax of grammaticalization and on linguistic universals.