Title: Language and Gauguin’s Three Questions: What Are We?
Lecturer: William Shi-Yuan Wang (Tenure Professor of UC Berkley; Chair Professor of Language & Cognitive Sciences, Department of Chinese & Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Chairperson: ZHENG Wei (Department of Chinese Language and Literature, East China Normal University)
Date: 10 am, March 30, 2018 (Friday)
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:
From the perspective of language evolution, this lecture discusses the second issue of Gauguin’s Three Questions, namely “What are we?” The content includes the following two aspects: first, we humans are unique in having invented language and thus became able to evolve by cultural means, re-shaping our environment as well as ourselves with the technologies we keep on inventing. The power of language was greatly amplified when writing was invented some 6,000 years ago, enabling language to transcend the limitations of space and time. We are unique in the world in having a long phase of ‘childhood’, during which children can acquire a great deal of the fund of knowledge that is constantly accumulating. Second, technologies have doubled our lifespan over the past 150 years, with the expectation that it will be extended even further. As a reflection of our influence on the environment, proposals have been made to name the current geological epoch after ourselves, i.e., the Anthropocene. To emphasize the role of language our species has been called Homo loquens and the Symbolic Species.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Prof. William Shi-Yuan Wang is a world-famous linguist, tenure professor of UC Berkley, Chair professor of Language & Cognitive Sciences, Dept. of Chinese & Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the founder of the division of East Asian Languages and Literature in Ohio State University. He is also member of the Acoustic Society of America, the chair and advisory committee of Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, and a former chair of the International Association of Chinese linguistics. Prof. Wang made outstanding contributions in the field of linguistics. He founded the phonetics lab of UC-Berkley and the Journal of Chinese Linguistics. His “Lexical Diffusion” theory is the first linguistic theory which is put forward by a Chinese scholar and widely accepted and applied by international linguistic community. His recent interests focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of language and cognitive abilities and he and his team’s work frequently appear on important international journals.