eastward flows the great river

　　Professor William S-Y. Wang is among the most influential contemporary linguists. For several decades, he has been leading the development of Chinese Linguistics to a higher level. Professor Wang established the famous theory of lexical diffusion, advocating an evolutionary perspective and interdisciplinary methods for research on language and linguistics. His writings have appeared in handbooks, textbooks, encyclopedias, numerous technical journals, and have been translated into several languages.

　　On the occasion of his 80th birthday, numerous pupils and colleagues of Professor Wang come together for the compilation of the Festschrift to pay tribute to him. The Festschrift has over sixty contributions by scholars from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, East Asia, North America and Europe, partitioned in Chinese and English volumes. Authors are active in areas of various linguistic frontiers, investigating language and linguistics from an interdisciplinary perspective. Most of the contributions investigate Chinese language via modern linguistic experiments, archeology, anthropology, psychology and modeling methods and so on, leading readers into new realms of linguistics.

　　This Festschrift shows the achievements of modern linguistics, reflecting Professor Wang’s academic philosophy. It is not only a great reference for seasoned language researchers; it can also help broaden knowledge in Chinese linguistics for students interested in languages. Readers who wish to know Chinese culture will also expand their understanding of it through these studies of the languages in China.

作者簡介

PENG Gang

　　Research Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also adjunct Professor at Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT). His research interest includes experimental phonetics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and hearing impairments.

SHI Feng

　　Professor at Nankai University, Director of the Institute of Linguistics of Nankai University, and Editor-in-Chiefs of Nankai Linguistics and Experimental Linguistics. His research interest is experimental linguistics, including language evolution, language acquisition and language contact.
 

1. How Many Chinese Words Have Elastic Length? —San DUANMU
2. More Gradual Than Abrupt —Umberto ANSALDO
3. Phonetic Features of Colloquial Cantonese —Robert S. BAUER
4. Linguistic Adaptation: The Trade-Off between Case Marking and Fixed Word Orders in Germanic and Romance Languages —Christian BENTZ, Morten H. CHRISTIANSEN
5. On the Value of the Han'gul Letter E in Certain Korean Transcriptions of Ming-Time Chinese —W. South COBLIN
6. Investigations into Determinants of the Diversity of the World╒s Languages —Christophe COUPE, Jean-Marie HOMBERT, Egidio MARSICO, Francois PELLEGRINO
7. From Cognition to Language —Hsin-I HSIEH
8. Arguments for a Construction-Based Approach to the Analysis of Sino-Tibetan Languages —Randy J. LAPOLLA
9. The Language Niche —Helena H. GAO, John H. HOLLAND
10. Contextual Predictability Facilitates Early Orthographic Processing and Semantic Integration in Visual Word Recognition: An Event-Related Potential Study —Chia-Ying LEE, Yo-Ning LIU, Chia-Ju CHOU
11. Larynx Height and Constriction in Mandarin Tones —Scott MOISIK, Hua LIN, John ESLING
12. Bimanual Coordination and Motor Learning in Pianists and Non-Musicians: A 3T fMRI Study —Shu-Jen KUNG, Denise H. WU, Daisy L. HUNG, Ovid J.-L. TZENG
13. Searching for Language Origins —P. Thomas SCHOENEMANN
14. Productivity of Mandarin Third Tone Sandhi: A Wug Test —Caicai ZHANG, Gang PENG
15. On Modality Effects and Relative Syntactic Uniformity of Sign Languages —James H-Y. TAI
16. Visualizing the Architecture and Texture of a Text: A Case Study of Selected Speeches of US
President Barack Obama —Jonathan WEBSTER, Joe CHAN, Victor YAN, Kim WONG
17. Northern-Min Glottalized Onsets and the Principles of Tonal Split and Tonal Merger —Weera OSTAPIRAT
18. Different Semantic Nature of Homonym, Metaphor and Polysemy in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from Behavioral and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Experiments —Fan-Pei YANG, Dai-Lin WU
19. A Few Morphological Functions of the Suffix *-s in Shang Chinese —Ken-ichi TAKASHIMA
20. Computer Simulation of Language Convergence —Tao GONG, Lan SHUAI, Umberto ANSALDO
21. On the Evolution of Language and Brain —Sydney LAMB
22. On the History of Chinese Directionals —Alain PEYRAUBE
23. A Target Location Cue in a Visual Speller: The N200 ERP Component —James William MINETT, Lin ZHOU, Manson Cheuk-Man FONG
24. Consensus in Language Dynamics: Naming, Categorizing and Blending —Vittorio LORETO, Francesca TRIA
25. Data Acquisition and Prosodic Analysis for Mandarin Attitudinal Speech —Wentao GU, Hiroya FUJISAKI Appendix An Interview with Professor William WANG