33.3269, All: Obituary: Yan Huang 黄衍 (1955-2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3269. Wed Oct 26 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3269, All: Obituary: Yan Huang 黄衍 (1955-2022)

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Editor for this issue: Lauren Perkins <lauren at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 15:57:39
From: Darcy Sperlich [darcy.sperlich at xjtlu.edu.cn]
Subject: Obituary: Yan Huang 黄衍 (1955-2022)

 
It is with great sadness to announce the passing of Yan Huang, at the prime of
his life at 67. He passed away in Cambridge, on the 18th of October. He is
survived by his wife, Lihua, and daughter, Elizabeth. He was a Professor of
Linguistics at the University of Auckland.

Yan Huang graduated from Nanjing University, and he was among the first cohort
of Chinese to win a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, at the
conclusion of the Cultural Revolution. There, he studied with leading scholars
such as Peter Matthews, Nigel Vincent, and Sir John Lyons, completing his PhD
under Stephen C. Levinson. After graduating, he taught both at Cambridge and
at the University of Oxford (where he was also awarded a DPhil), before moving
to the University of Reading (becoming a Professor of Theoretical
Linguistics). Finally, he moved to New Zealand, where he held a Professorship
in Linguistics at the University of Auckland.

Yan Huang’s lasting contributions to linguistics are in the realm of
theoretical pragmatics, where he advanced neo-Gricean pragmatic theory,
particularly in the area of anaphora. This can be found in his first book, The
Syntax and Pragmatics of Anaphora (CUP, 1994 (re-issued 2007)), where he
advanced pragmatic theory to particularly account for Chinese anaphora. Six
years later, he published his second book, Anaphora:  A Cross-Linguistic Study
(OUP, 2000), which showcases his fully fledged revised neo-Gricean pragmatic
theory of anaphora, considering around 550 of the world’s languages. In 2007,
he then published the textbook Pragmatics (OUP), with a second edition
published in 2014. He further contributed to the foundations of the field by
publishing the Oxford Dictionary of Pragmatics in 2012, and edited the Oxford
Handbook of Pragmatics in 2017. Aside from his academic volumes, he had
published many articles and book chapters, given innumerable invited talks at
conferences and universities worldwide, and served on the editorial board of
many distinguished journals. It should also be noted that he was made a
Changjiang Scholar (长江学者), an extremely prestigious position, where he was
affiliated with the Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学).

Aside from his countless academic achievements, he had trained many PhD
students who have become professors in their own right. His personal
dedication to his students was evident to all those that studied under him; he
had a very sharp mind which not only greatly improved their theses, but also
their academic work over the following years. He was generous with his
knowledge, and a key figure contributing greatly to the field’s development.
It cannot be emphasized enough that he will be sorely missed by us all.
 


Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable



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