Title: Distance Iconicity and Motivation of Word Order
Lecturer: LU Bingfu (Professor of Chinese Department of Nanchang University，Director of the Institute of Language Typology)
Chairperson: ZHENG Wei (Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Director of Modern Chinese Teaching and Research Section, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, October 24th, 2018 (Wednesday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
Human language generally follows the semantic distance iconicity, which is formally embodied in spatial distance. The other important principle is pragmatic distance iconicity, which is formally manifested in the order of time. The interaction of these two basic word order motives can fully explain some of the most important word order phenomena, including the different frequency of the six basic word order in human language.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Lu Bingfu (1947 - ), Master of Psycholinguistics from Connecticut State University and Doctor of East Asian Language from the University of Southern California. He has served as professor and director of Capital Normal University and Shanghai Normal University. The main academic part-time jobs are: Editor-in-chief of Oriental Linguistics, researcher of E-Institute of Comparative Linguistics in Shanghai University, editor-in-chief of Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, special editor-in-chief of Japanese Chinese Studies, and special editor-in-chief of Japanese Modern Chinese Studies.