International Symposium on Topic and Focus in Chinese

[Sze-Wing Tang]

'International Symposium on Topic and Focus in Chinese' will be held at
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on June 21-22, 2000. Please check
our website for travel, accommodations, and program and registration
updates:

http://www.cbs.polyu.edu.hk/ctswtang/tang/TF.htm


PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

6/21/2000
09:00   opening remarks
09:30   Huba Bartos
        (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
        Topics, quantifiers, subjects
10:00   Yuan Shen
        (City Univ of HK)
        Focus structures of indefinite-subject sentences in Chinese and
        the use of you
10:30   Horst-Dieter Gasde
        (ZAS)
        Two types of topic in Chinese and German
11:00   break
11:15   Jie Xu and Yuzhi Shi
        (National Univ of Singapore)
        The growth and decline of two focus operations in the history
        of Chinese grammar
11:45   Derek Herforth
        (Univ of Sydney)
        The syntax of focus in late Zhou Chinese
12:15   Danqing Liu
        (CityU of HK)
        Subtopic-prominent dialects of Chinese
12:45   lunch
14:00   Dingxu Shi
        (HK Polytechnic Univ)
        The nature of background topic
14:30   Yulin Yuan
        (Peking University)
        Hanyu huati de yufa diwei he yufahua chengdu
15:00   break
15:15   Chungmin Lee
        (Seoul National Univ/UCLA)
        Contrastive topic in Chinese and Korean
15:45   Sze-Wing Tang and Thomas Hun-tak Lee
        (HK Polytechnic Univ; City Univ of HK)
        Focus as an anchoring condition
16:15   Liejiong Xu
        (City Univ of HK)
        Association between operator and focus
16:45   break
17:00   Yan Jiang
        (HK Polytechnic Univ)
        n-ways in interpreting a topic structure in Chinese
17:30   Marinus van den Berg and Guo Wu
        (Leiden Univ; Univ Western Sydney)
        The pragmatics of topicality in
discourse
6/22/2000
09:00   Ren Zhang
        (York Univ)
        Think constructionally: the case of lian ... dou reopened
09:30   Xiaolu Yang
        (Tsinghua Univ)
        Restrictive focus in L1 acquisition of Chinese
10:00   Nai Fai Wong and Yang Gu
        (Shue Yan College; Chinese Univ of HK)
        Modality, topic, and focus in Mandarin Chinese
10:30   break
10:45   Shu-ing Shyu
        (National Sun Yat-sen Univ)
        Are inverse predications in pseudoclefts possible?
11:15   Suying Yang
        (HK Baptist Univ)
        The presence or absence of identificational focus in the
        shi ... (de) construction
11:45   Jie Xu and Boon Soeng Teoh
        (National Univ of Singapore)
        Focus-marking in Chinese and Malay
12:15   Yang Shen
        (Peking University)
        Mingci duanyu de fenlie yiwei yu fenliexing huati
12:45   lunch
14:00   Mei Fang and Charles N. Li
        (CASS; UCSB)
        Comprehensive basis of clause initial zero anaphora in
        Chinese narratives: constructional schema and cognitive model
14:30   Chen-Sheng Liu
        (National Chi Nan Univ)
        From a pronoun to a topic marker
15:00   Jianhua Hu and Haihua Pan
        (City Univ of HK)
        Deriving the subject-object asymmetry in topicalization
15:30   break
15:45   Yuchau Hsiao
        (National Chengchi Univ)
        Focus alignment in Taiwan Southern Min
16:15   Vicky C.-M. Man
        (HK Baptist Univ)
        Focus effects on Cantonese tones: an acoustic study
16:45   break
17:00   Waltraud Paul
        (CRLAO, EHESS-CNRS)
        Verb copying, object preposing and topic prominence in
        Mandarin Chinese
17:30   Peppina Po-lun Lee and Haihua Pan
        (City Univ of HK)
        Focus, modals, and scope interaction in Mandarin
18:00   Wei-Tian Dylan Tsai
        (National Tsing Hua Univ)
        Object fronting and focus placement in Chinese