This book presents a systematic and relatively comprehensive account of the system of MODALITY in Modern Chinese and the functions that realizations of modality serve in the clause and clause complex. Grounded in SFL, the research begins by introducing the system of types of modality in Modern Chinese, investigating the subtypes of modality and their realizations. The study then explores the systems of Orientations that characterize the realization of modalization and modulation in Chinese. After establishing the complete system of modality in Modern Chinese, the research finally examines the functions that realizations of modality serve in the textual structure of the clause and in the clause complex. The study finds that the system of MODALITY is an important interpersonal clause system at the lexicogrammatical stratum of Chinese. There are two distinct types of modality in Chinese: modalization and modulation. Modalization concerns the assessment of probability of the proposition; modulation is concerned with the assessment of the proposal in terms of obligation, inclination, and ability. The systems of ORIENTATIONS make a basic distinction between subjective and objective modality, and between the explicit and implicit realizations. The research also reveals that in the thematic structure of the clause, realizations of modality can serve as the interpersonal Theme in the clause, in the information structure of the clause, realizations of modality can function as the unmarked information focus of the clause or introduce the marked information focus, and in the clause complex, realizations of modality can encode modal meanings and simultaneously construct clauses into a clause complex.

This book describes the grammar of Chinese nominal groups for the purpose of text analysis, drawing upon Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model. Exploring the metafunctional grammatical resources in nominal groups, the book provides a new perspective on conducting text analysis by focusing on the metafunctions performed by various elements in the nominal group. The observations on nominal groups presented here are based on both a working corpus of 180 texts of various types and a large referential corpus of over 16 billion tokens. With clear descriptions of the terminology used, the book presents a case study at the end of each major chapter, which demonstrates how the grammatical resources discussed can be applied to the delicate analysis of authentic texts. This monograph is more than a grammar book, for it offers a new way to engage with a text microscopically and enables readers to approach and analyse a text by focusing on grammatical units below the clause level. The book provides an accessible and valuable resource for readers who are interested in SFL-based typological description, text analysis, translation studies between English and Chinese, English–Chinese comparative linguistic studies, and Chinese language teaching and learning.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 17th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2016, held in Singapore, Singapore, in May 2016. The 70 regular papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 182 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: lexicon and morphology, the syntax-semantics interface, corpus and resource, natural language processing, case study of lexical semantics, extended study and application.

This book investigates a special genre of interpreting in the Chinese context, namely Government Press Conference (GPC) Interpreting. Drawing on the modality system from Systemic Functional Grammar and a corpus of 21 interpreting events, the project explores the regular patterns of modality shifts in Chinese-English GPC interpreting and seeks explanations in the sociocultural context. As a corpus-based project, the book covers qualitative analysis of the sociocultural context, qualitative analysis of the interpersonal effects of modality shifts, and quantitative analysis of modality shifts. This book will contribute to the understanding of the distinctive features of GPC interpreting in China, shed new light on the rendition of modality between Chinese and English in specific contexts, and also inspire new thoughts on the nature of interpreting in general.

This book presents new perspectives on the study of Aspect and Modality in Chinese Historical Linguistics. Based on the international Workshop on Aspect and Modality in Chinese, the book includes the latest research findings in the field to make them available not only to specialists in Classical and Buddhist Chinese, but also to researchers and students of general linguistics and of the universals of language. It also discusses different aspects of the AM (Aspect-Modality) and the TAM (Tense-Aspect-Modality) system of Chinese. It provides a comprehensive overview of both of the universally related systems of aspect and modality. The first part of the book focuses on aspectual features of Chinese; these include basic studies on the syntactic representation of the aspectual structure of the verb phrase in Archaic Chinese, the aspectual function of different object constructions and their development, temporal features of the verb phrase, and the aspectual functions of no minalization processes. The second part includes articles highlighting different aspects of the modal system or the interplay between tense, aspect and modality in Chinese, including a survey on the history of studies on modality in Chinese and the modal and temporal aspectual/markers indicating future meanings, a specialized study on modal deontic verbs in the Buddhist Vinaya texts, the modal function of rhetorical questions in Buddhist Chinese, and a study on the diachronic development of the aspectual and modal system in Chinese.

The two-volume set LNAI 13495 and LNAI 13496, constitute the refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 23rd Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2022, held as a virtual event, during May 14-15, 2022. In total the two-volume set includes 39 full papers and 19 short papers which were carefully reviewed and selected from 214 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: lexical semantics; corpus linguistics; general linguistics, lexical resources; computational linguistics, applications of natural language processing.

As culture and society has become more digitalized, especially when computer science and digital technologies have entered a new era in the twenty-first century, translation studies began to utilize a wide range of tools to enhance its reading of texts and contexts, without which translation both as a practice and as a theorization could barely persist. It has become more apparent that two extreme poles between macro and micro visions have formed the diversified terrains of translation studies. On the one hand, technologies like NLP, topic modeling, network analysis and data visualization make distant reading become possible, thus allowing us to have a paradigmatic view of how human’s ideas, beliefs, values, knowledge and even emotions have spread in some patterns across cultural, geographical and language divides in world history. On the other hand, corpus methods, such as the use of keywords, collocates and concordance lines changed the way by which texts were closely read from linear to vertical. With microscope like corpus tools, we could go deeper into the texture for perception of nuanced meaning. While considering a fact that translation is seldom mono modal in conveying meaning, we have to reconceptualize context as a multimodal environment where audio, visual and other resources interact to convey and make meaning. With regard to the fast development of digital technology, translation studies take an active role in gaining an enhanced capability in promoting transformation. Complexity has been favored in terms of theoretical framework and methodology. New questions are asked; old ones revisited with novel tools; but more areas wait to be cultivated and more questions to be approached by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. We could ask if digital technologies would bring new innovation to study of translation history, a heavily-walled land for traditional humanists who tend to repeat “so-what” to question the less significance of data-driven studies. The idea of high-quality machine translation has become so realistic in today’s market that translation educators have to face the shock wave it brought to translation learners and practitioners and rethink the relation between human translators and algorithms. Machine-translation-assisted communication could help remove boundaries for better communication; but at the same time, it also creates conflicts and leads to confrontation. Thus understood, it is imperative to give a concerned attention to digital translation studies, that is, to study translation by resorting to and drawing on the digital technologies. This Research Topic is intended to promote current directions and new developments in cross-disciplinary critical discourse research. We welcome papers which, from a critical-analytical perspective, deal with contemporary social, scientific, political, economic, or professional discourses and genres. Papers addressing the highlighted topics are especially welcome. In giving weight to these topics, we wish to call to attention some of the most pressing problems currently facing the world.

M.A.K. Halliday (1925–2018) was the founder of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and, undoubtedly, one of the most influential linguists of his time, credited with changing the way that language and linguistics have been taught. SFL, as an appliable theory that approaches language as social semiotic, is the study of the relationship between language and its functions in social settings. Moreover, SFL conceives of language as a resource for making meaning and organizes language systemically as a huge network of interrelated choices of meaning. This book is an introduction to the life and seminal works of Halliday. Targeting both SFL and non-SFL scholars, this book introduces Halliday’s life and work in simple terms, expounds his theoretical conceptions, illustrates how his theories have been applied to various areas of linguistics and offers additional readings for researchers who want to explore this area further. Divided into six sections covering Hallidayan connections, theory and architecture of language, Hallidayan conceptions of language, systems and the modes of meaning, and applications of SFL, this accessible introduction is a key resource for researchers and students within the fields of linguistics and applied linguistics.

The present study is the first to apply a syntactic approach to the grammaticalization of Chinese modals, based on hypotheses on cross-linguistic diachronic developments of modals from lexical to functional categories as upward movement on a functional spine. The temporal framework of the study covers Late Archaic and Middle Chinese. Early Middle Chinese is a crucial turning point for the development of Chinese from a more synthetic to a more analytic language. This change is attributed e.g. to the loss of a former morphology, which also affects the modal system. Against this background, the negative cycle of Chinese, the relevance of polarity contexts, and the development of a new system of deontic, epistemic and future markers are analyzed. In addition to a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic processes involved in the diachronic changes of the Chinese modal system, the study also provides a comparison with the syntax of grammaticalization of the thoroughly discussed Germanic modals. This constitutes a broad basis for further analyses of the changes in the Chinese language during its long written history, but also for cross-linguistic studies on the syntax of grammaticalization and on linguistic universals.