Keynote Speakers

K.K. Luke is President’s Chair Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Prior to joining NTU in 2009 he was Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Head of the Department of Linguistics from 1997 to 2006.

Prof Luke’s teaching and research are in the area of talk and social interaction using an Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic approach. This research explores the ways in which joint actions are achieved through talk and ‘body language’, and is driven by the fundamental question of what makes communication possible. How are intersubjective understandings achieved in interaction and what role do linguistic and embodied resources play in that process?

Among K.K.’s publications are Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation, Telephone Calls: Unity and Diversity in the Structure of Telephone Conversations across Languages and Cultures, and two special issues on ‘Turn-continuation in conversation’ and ‘Affiliation and Alignment in Responding Actions’ for Discourse Processes and Journal of Pragmatics respectively.

Keynote Speech: Radical Construction Grammar and Its Application in Chinese

Abstract

Construction Grammar has been popular among Chinese grammarians for more than two decades. Numerous papers have been written, from introductions of CG to descriptions of particular constructions and reviews of the literature. Luo Jie (2018) and Chang Fangling (2021) are two recent literature reviews of CG papers based on searches of CNKI and CSSCI. Putting these two reviews together yields some 2000 articles since year 2000, covering a whole gamut of topics under the broad rubric of CG. The vastness of this literature notwithstanding, one particular ‘branch’ of CG is prominent by its absence – William Croft’s Radical Construction Grammar (RCG). In talking about CG, authors have tended to refer to the works of Fillmore, Kay and Goldberg. RCG is casually mentioned once or twice, but there has hardly been a direct engagement with Croft’s ideas or discussion of them in any detail. In truth, RCG is very different from CG. According to Croft, RCG represents a “dramatic break” from all previous theories of grammar. (2001: 4) In this paper, I will elucidate four major tenets of RCG: (1) Constructions as primitives (non-reductionism); (2) Only part-whole relations, no syntactic relations; (3) Constructions all the way down; (4) Constructions are language-specific.