Browsing by Projects - Department "Department of Chinese Language and Literature"

This research project aims at studying the introduction and appropriation of Latin American literature in Hong Kong in the 1970s through an analysis of such articles in local newspapers and literary journals. The adaptation of Latin American literature has created numerous important literary works and marks a milestone in the development of both Hong Kong literature and the formation of local identity. It is also an important case study which could illuminate the unique advantage of Hong Kong literature regarding the instantaneousness, sensitivity, and vision of the import of foreign literature. Current studies on the relationship of Latin American and Hong Kong literature mostly focuses on the individual adoption of magical realism of certain modernist and postmodernist writers. However, such reception as a phenomenon and how it begins has not been sufficiently investigated, and could not be done so unless the primary materials on local periodicals are combed through.

Before postcolonialism swept through Hong Kong academia, many local writers had already reflected upon relevant issues such as colonial governance, Chinese nationalism, and localness, sometimes by questioning the dominance of “Western” culture, and instead show great interest in “Third World” culture. Latin American countries attract these local writers’ particular interest because of their anti-colonial nationalist movements and literature experiments at that time. Some Hong Kong writers take the initiative of introducing them to local readers, and in doing so, they also redefined Hong Kong in the world order by imagining themselves among the anti-colonial “Third World”.

This proposed study integrates some methods of the translation studies and translingual practice into periodical studies to approach the research objectives. It will contextualize the introduction of Latin American literature in the local periodicals during the 1970s. It will compare how writers from various political and aesthetic stances understand and appropriate them, including the long-ignored translating forces from leftist writers. It will also examine the translingual practice of how these foreign literatures are transformed and integrated with local literature development. It contributes to various key issues in the study of Hong Kong literature, including the specific features of 1970s Hong Kong literature, cultural identity, postcoloniality, the interaction between local and foreign literature, and the relationship between local and global context. It will serve as an important case in the study of periodicals, Hong Kong literature, and literary translation in Hong Kong.

Nowadays an increasing number of people learn a second language (L2); however, accents are commonly found among late L2 learners, even after years of extensive exposure to the L2. Although there may be different accent sources in an L2, non-nativelikeness in L2 pronunciation is generally regarded as having been influenced from the learner’s first language (L1). At the same time, during the process of L2 acquisition, the learner’s L1 may also exhibit alteration due to influence from the L2, which is defined as L1 attrition. Research into L1 attrition and L2 attainment, however, has gone in two separate directions in terms of bilingual language development. Consequently, L1 and L2 interactions remain poorly understood.

Current speech learning models (e.g., Flege & Bohn, 2021) generally suggest a common phonetic/phonological space for L1 and L2 in the bilingual speaker’s mental representation, and they thus assume influences from the L1 to the L2. While some research points to the possibility of bidirectional influences between the L1 and L2 segments, it remains to be explored whether the tonal systems also show interactions of the L1 and L2. This proposed study attempts to associate both L1 attrition and L2 attainment and aims to closely investigate the possible interactions of the L1 and L2 tonal systems in Mandarin-Cantonese bilinguals. As two closely related Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese are tonal languages, and the differences in their tonal systems provide a natural environment for testing the hypotheses of speech learning models.

To fill the gaps in previous research, this proposed study has four aims: 1) to systematically examine the bidirectional influences between an L1 and an L2 in terms of the tonal system; 2) to test whether Mandarin-Cantonese bilinguals show attrition of the L1 in tone production and perception and whether they can have comparable performance with native speakers in L2 tone production and perception; 3) to combine both acoustic and perceptual measurements for the analysis of read speech and spontaneous speech, which is our methodological contribution; and 4) to probe potential non-linguistic factors that may foster phonetic attrition of a native language and phonetic acquisition of a target language. This study will recruit immigrants who spoke Mandarin as the only Chinese dialect before arriving in Hong Kong and speak fluent Cantonese. Another two groups of participants will include native Mandarin speakers with limited exposure to other Chinese dialects and native Cantonese speakers, both of whom will serve as this study’s control groups. The participants will perform various tasks in two experiments. The first experiment is the production of read and spontaneous speech, the data of which will be assessed acoustically and perceptually. For the perception experiment of lexical tones, the participants will be required to complete an identification task and a same-different discrimination task.

As the first attempt to systematically investigate the interactions of the L1 and L2 tonal systems in bilinguals, this study will provide evidence for or against the postulates of current speech learning models and advance our theoretical knowledge of L1 and L2 interactions. The results from this proposed research will also inform language teachers of the particularly challenging Cantonese tones for Mandarin-speaking learners, allowing the teachers to revise their syllabi and pedagogies when they are teaching Mandarin-speaking learners of Cantonese. Furthermore, this research will provide immediate research opportunities to undergraduate students, better preparing them for their future academic and career development.

The proposed research takes an innovative and critical approach to the study of print culture and poetics in the Edo period (1603–1867) in Japan. This project will focus on how Selection of Tang Poetry [Tangshi xuan 唐詩選], an anthology of Tang poetry attributed to Li Panlong 李攀龍 (1514–1570, a member of the literati in the Ming dynasty), circulated in Japan in the pre-modern era after being shipped directly from China. Selection of Tang Poetry was one of the most reprinted literary anthologies of the period, and was the topic of zealous discussions by the Ancient Rhetoric School [kobunji gaku 古文辞学] in Japan. The book provided numerous literary models for the contemporary poet to follow, and was regarded as a crucial guidebook at a time when the publishing industries of Japan were flourishing. Through primarily a case study of the circulation of the anthology, this project also seeks to bring together the study of literary criticism, book history, reading history, and print culture. In recent years, East Asian classics written in the Sinitic script have drawn a lot of scholarly attention. Using reprints of Selection of Tang Poetry as a point of departure, this project seeks to introduce a comparative framework and examine how publications in the East Asian cultural sphere-shaped various interpretations of this text. Literary anthologies are one of the most important forms of literary criticism. They shed light on the interaction between elite and popular culture. While established literati often use anthologies to show their poetry preferences, these anthologies enjoy a readership that reaches beyond any single community. Selection of Tang Poetry is an excellent subject for study, since numerous publishers have sought to advocate their own perceptions of poetry through editing. In order to ensure the popularity of their publications, these publishers frequently provided annotations and illustrations when they reprinted the anthology. Thus, in studying the circulation of Selection of Tang Poetry, this project investigates how literary criticism and commercial printing interacted with one another from the 16th to the 18th century. This project will begin by juxtaposing different versions of Selection of Tang Poetry printed in the Edo period. It will shed light on the poetics advocated by various literati and the text of commentaries appropriated by the publishers, as well as how the poetic ideas from different discourses and text resources were manifested in the various reprints of this literary anthology. In addition, this case study will allow us to evaluate the significance of print in both China and Japan, and re-examine any cultural similarities and differences.

This proposed study aims to investigate and examine settlement towns built on the north-eastern steppe of Inner Mongolia in Khitan-Liao (907–1125) with a focus on those recorded as ‘Touxia’ (投下). The impact of these settlement towns was felt not only by their contemporary social, political, and economic structures, but by later Chinese dynasties, as well. They had subsequent impact on the governance of diverse ethnicities and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry societies, and on the connections and interactions between China and Eurasia.

However, what were these towns known as Touxia and what does the term actually mean? This remains a mystery today. The term Touxia first appeared in historical records for the Khitan-Liao, followed by historical literature of the Mongolian-Yuan, and then disappeared suddenly from all later historical Chinese documents. Wang Guowei (王國維) first traced the etymology of Touxia in 1923, attracting sustained scholarly interest ever since in China and overseas. After almost a century of study, researchers generally have concluded that residents in Touxia were Han and other agricultural peoples captured in wars by the Khitan royal family and aristocracy, and these settlement towns are believed to be a unique system independent from the local prefecture and county systems of the empire. However, there are many doubts about this conception of Touxia, including its origin, governance, operation, and development, which has made it one of the major outstanding unsettled mysteries of the Khitan-Liao history.

As the main source of data for the study of Khitan-Liao – Liao Shi (遼史), one of the official twenty-four histories of China – is known for its crudeness, simplicity, and errors, the study of Touxia faces a serious lack of information. In particular, due to the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual coexistence across the vast territory of Khitan-Liao, the study of Touxia faces a distinct ethnolinguistic issue, which makes using only the interpretation of Liao Shi especially unreliable. To solve these problems, this proposed research will collect and analyze multi-source data from the perspectives of history, ethnology, linguistics, and archaeology.

To study Touxia, this project will consist of three stages. The first stage is mainly a visit of historical sites and local museums in the area where Touxia were located – eastern Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning today – to collect and inspect data including stele inscriptions, unearthed archaeological material, gazetteers and other historical records. The second stage is the analysis, starting with the comparison and cross-verification of all available data both newly collected and previously concerned or underestimated by other studies. The study will then examine Touxia from its linguistical origin, etymology, and semantics to its physical emergence, population composition, governance structure, and financial and military relations to the central government at different times of the dynasty. On this basis, the third and final stage of the project will organize and present the new material and associated insights into the Khitan-Liao history. Expected outputs include new arguments on the interpretation of Touxia and a conceptual framework of the local political and administrative institutions of Khitan-Liao through the case of Touxia. Based on collected evidence, the study will contribute to discussion of the centralized and decentralized paradigms of the political systems of that time, to systematic study of the political structure and power order of the empire, and to a juxtaposition between Khitan-Liao and its successors – Jurchen-Jin and Mongolian-Yuan. As the emergence of settlement towns in the steppe region was an innovative practice of the nomadic regime, this proposed study will offer new insights not only for the Khistan-Liao, but also for its influence on subsequent dynasties in pre-modern China and Inner Asia. The study will also have theoretical and practical implications for modern times, particularly in providing historical references for the coexistence and governance of diverse ethnic groups, as well as the process of urbanization in societies.