Title: Displacement and Viewpoint: A Comparative Study of Japanese and Chinese Based on Language Typology
About the Speaker:Peng Guanglu, a professor, doctoral supervisor and director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Beijing Institute of Technology. His main research areas are Japanese linguistics and Chinese-Japanese contrastive linguistics. He is currently the executive director of the East Asian International Linguistics Association, the director of the Contrastive Language and Culture Association, and a member of the Expert Committee of the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters. He is also a member of the editorial board of Linguistic Research, Acta Linguistica et Litteraturaria Sinica Occidentalia and Journal of Language and Culture, a special editorial board member of the Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages as well as an honorary consultant of the Japanese Language and Culture Series. He has taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing University, Northeastern University and Shaanxi Normal University. He also teaches part-time at Jilin University, Jiangsu University, Southwest University, and Soochow University, and is an off-campus supervisor for students of Master of Translation and Interpreting at Yanshan University. He has presided over and participated in research projects funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China, the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education, and many others at the provincial and ministerial levels. He has published dozens of books, translations and textbooks, and published more than 180 academic papers.
Introduction:"Displacement verbs" are a subcategory of verbs that indicate changes in the spatial position of the subject. In Chinese and Japanese, for example, the most representative ones are "去"/"行く" and "来"/"来る", which are directional (subjective) in nature, i.e. they are opposites in the direction of displacement. Specifically, "去"/"行く" denotes centripetal displacement, while "来"/"来る" denotes centripetal displacement. Although "去"/"来" and "行く"/"来る" are roughly equivalent in their main usage, there are also obvious differences, mainly manifesting in the Chinese context where both "去" and "来" can sometimes be used while it does not the case when it comes to Japanese. This difference can be explained by the category of "Viewpoint", which, from the perspective of language typology, means that Chinese belongs to the language of shifting viewpoint, while Japanese belongs to the language of fixed viewpoint.
Date & Time: November 12, 2022(Saturday), 9：00a.m.—10：30a.m. (UTC+8)
Tencent Meeting Number: 614-251-611
Hosted by: Center for Japanese Studies, School of Foreign studies of Jilin University
The department of Japanese, School of Foreign studies of Jilin University
