East Asian Humanities and Linguistics Workshops: Joint Student Symposium

Date
Thu June 1st 2023, 4:30 - 6:30pm
Event Sponsor
East Asian Humanities Workshop
East Asian Linguistics Workshop
Location
East Asia Library 338
Cherry blossoms in a bowl

 

We invite you to RSVP for the final session of the East Asian Linguistics and Humanities Workshops for the 2022-23 academic year. We’ll be capping off this year’s workshop sessions with a joint Student Symposium featuring four of our very own EALC students. 

Speakers

My Thi Ha, MA student in Chinese Linguistics 

“Cantonese maai4 as a Phase Complement with an Inherent Endpoint: A Morphosyntactic Analysis” 

埋 maai4 ‘approach’ is a verb unique to but highly common in Cantonese (Matthews and Yip 1994). When it follows another verb, scholars like Lee (2012) regard it as a grammatical suffix instead of a verb, neglecting evidence that [Verb+maai4] is in fact a compound, like its compatibility with potential markers m4/dak1 and verbal suffixes like the perfective -zo2. I argue that [Verb+maai4] is a resultative verb compound where maai4 is a phase complement with an inherent endpoint describing the result of an action indicated by the first verb. I will demonstrate [Verb+maai4]’s ability to co-occur with verbal suffixes and potential markers and explain the exceptions. This analysis captures and relates maai4’s diverse functions and addresses existing debates on its meanings and grammatical behaviors. 
 

Lin M Walsh, PhD candidate in Japanese Literature 

“We Stand Here Essaying: Reading Xiao Hong against Ushijima Haruko” 

In this article, I conduct a critical analysis of the essayistic as a literary form. I read the essayistic as an alternative mode of literary world-building to the narrative and the novelistic. By situating essayistic writings in the puppet state of Manchukuo (1932-45), where the power of the narrative is at once potent and porous, I introduce new ways of interpreting the imagined relationship between the personal and the political. 

Writers featured in my analysis are Xiao Hong and Ushijima Haruko, who respectively represent the exodus of Chinese and the influx of Japanese intellectuals across the Manchukuo border after its installation by the Japanese empire. Through an exploration of the interstices between Xiao Hong’s xiaoshuo and sanwen and between Ushijima’s shōsetsu and zuihitsu, I trace the erratic force of the essayistic form to contravene or sustain the totalizing political order. 
 

Taranee Cao, PhD candidate in Japanese Linguistics 

“Reexamining Japanese honorifics – Under-addressed factors” 

Japanese honorifics are often considered to be difficult to teach and to learn. This talk shares part of my dissertation research on bridging latest research in sociolinguistics to language classrooms. The talk will mainly cover factors observed from real-life data that influence the diverse usages of Japanese honorifics. In an era that emphasizes linguistic diversity in language education and de-emphasizes acquiring one single set of normative usages, the research actively argues for including deviating usages in language classrooms and provides thoughts on what matters in language teaching. 
 

Andrew Nelson, PhD candidate in Japanese Linguistics 

"Words for Words: Meiji Linguistics and the (Re-)Invention of Language" 

Meiji scholars deployed a kaleidoscope of terms in their efforts to articulate the nature of language. My presentation showcases complementary quantitative and qualitative methods for demonstrating the unfixed but gradually coalescing meaning of terms for language in  the first issues of the Gengogaku Zasshi (Journal of Linguistics, 1900-1902) and Kokugakuin Zasshi (Journal of Kokugakuin, 1895-present), which have been understudied in histories of Japanese language philosophy. I also highlight treatises laying the groundwork for gengogaku, “linguistics,” by Fujioka Katsuji, Hoshina Kōichi, and Kanazawa Shōzaburō, whose work influenced the 20th century literary and pedagogical movements that defined national—and imperial—belonging.