Seminar Schedule
Upcoming Seminars
Upcoming seminars can be found on the SOL Kalendarium.
Monday, October 27, 2025 (15:15–17:00, Room: H402 or Zoom (hybrid))
Speaker: Jeroen Wiedenhof (Leiden)
Title: Modern Chinese handwriting: Data, methods and research
Abstract:
Chinese handwriting is currently at an intriguing stage of transition, triggered in part by a sharp decline in everyday use, in China as well as globally. The documentation and analysis of this transition is opening up a fascinating new field of research, ever hungry for authentic data and better methods.
The special, even sacred position of scripts in cultural identifications has impacted the way they are being studied around the world. Despite the rise of modern linguistics as a research discipline since the early 20th century, principles from traditional fields such as philology and calligraphy have been tenacious, creating considerable pitfalls for descriptive and empirical research into writing systems — including the study of Chinese scripts.
I present a sinographic perspective on the study of Chinese handwriting, defining “sinographics” as the linguistically informed study of written manifestations of Sinitic languages, such as Chinese characters; or alphabetical orthographies; or linguistic systems of transcription. The scope of the sinographic field explicitly includes adaptations of Chinese scripts for languages outside of the Sinitic group, e.g. for Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese.
In terms of data, I will present some of my materials, and reflect on problems of live data collection and classification. In terms of method, I intend to demonstrate how processing and analyzing these data depends on careful observation and clear-cut research questions. In our discussion, I hope to do a quick check on the status of Chinese handwriting in academic curricula.
Poster:LCEAL - Wiedenhof - Modern Chinese handwriting.pdf
Jeroen Wiedenhof was trained as a linguist and sinologist in Leiden and Beijing. He works as a teacher and researcher at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). Apart from his work in Chinese and general linguistics, he has published on the origin and evolution of language in humankind.
Monday, November 10, 2025 (15:15–17:00, Room: H402 or Zoom (hybrid))
Speaker: Victor Bogren Svensson (SOL)
Title: Voice, Adverbial Verbs and Information Structure in Takituduh Bunun
Abstract:
This presentation reports preliminary findings on information structure in Takituduh Bunun (Austronesian: Taiwan), based on original fieldwork. It examines the functions and grammatical structure of topic and focus markers in the left periphery of the clause, the influence of information packaging on voice selection, and the impact the realization of quantifiers and focus particles as adverbial verbs has on their semantic interpretation. Preliminary findings indicate that topic and focus markers in Takituduh Bunun are used to encode a wide range of information structure functions, and that the choice of voice form is highly sensitive to information structure constraints, constituting another layer of complexity impacting voice selection, beyond grammatical and transitivity constraints. Finally, the realization of quantifiers and focus particles as adverbial verbs appears to render them highly sensitive to voice selection and head movement, offering new insights into the mechanisms underlying quantifier and focus licensing.
Monday, November 24, 2025 (15:15–17:00, Room: H402 or Zoom (hybrid))
Speaker: Jonathan Puntervold (Gothenburg)
Title: In search of equivalence, in search of difference: Japanese linguistic historiography 1895-1945
Abstract: TBA