讲座人：陈平 教授 （澳大利亚昆士兰大学）

时间：2014年12月19日（周五）下午16:10-18:00

地点：北京外国语大学东院 逸夫楼116教室

讲座人简介：

陈平，澳大利亚昆士兰大学汉语语言学讲座教授。先后毕业于北京中国社会科学院研究生院语言系，获现代汉语硕士学位，及美国洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学（UCLA)语言学系，获语言学硕士、博士学位。历任中国社会科学院语言研究所研究员，香港城市大学应用语言学系教授兼系主任，澳大利亚昆士兰大学亚洲语言研究系教授兼系主任、语言与比较文化研究学院副院长。现为昆士兰大学汉语语言学讲座教授兼孔子学院院长。陈平教授的主要研究领域为功能语法、话语分析、语义学、语用学、社会语言学及历史语言学, 先后担任多家国际语言学专业刊物的编辑委员会或顾问委员会委员。

讲座内容：

This seminar presents a characterization of major aspects of referentiality and definiteness and their encodings in English and Chinese. Four aspects of referentiality are discussed, logico-philosophical, semantic, pragmatic and discourse thematic. While some expressions are generally taken as inherently referential or nonreferential semantically, there are no specific linguistic devices, other than preferred encoding types, in English or Chinese to mark the pragmatic referentiality of an expression. Chinese is found to be sensitive to distinction in discourse thematic referentiality, in that it strongly favors the same grammatical encoding, bare NP, for pragmatic and thematic nonreferentials and referents of low thematic referentiality. The term "definiteness"denotes a grammatical category featuring formal distinction whose core function is to mark a nominal expression as identifiable or nonidentifiable. Whereas pragmatic and discourse thematic referentiality is a speaker-oriented notion, identifiability is taken as an addressee-oriented, pragmatic notion relating to the assumptions made by the speaker on the cognitive status of a referent in the mind of the addressee in the context of utterance. The pragmatic distinction between identifiability and nonidentifiability is encoded in English typically in terms of the contrast between definite vs indefinite article. It is encoded in Chinese in terms of distinctive lexical and morphological encodings and in terms of the positioning of nominal expressions in sentences. Unlike the case with English and many other languages, distinctive features of definiteness and indefiniteness cannot be obligatorily and uniquely specified for nominal expressions in Chinese, which leads to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category has not been fully developed in Chinese.

中国外语教育研究中心办公室

2014年11月25日