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Chinese Semiotic Studies

Editor-in-Chief: Wang, Yongxiang

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2198-9613
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Bridging the Unbridgeable

A semiotic solution to seeking tertium comparationis in linguistic analysis

Ningyang Chen
Published Online: 2017-11-16 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2017-0015

Abstract

This paper takes as a starting point the age-long debate over the formidable divide between Chinese and Indo-European languages, a widely endorsed standpoint from which a vigorous line of research has sprung up, with findings reinforcing the “unbridgeable” divide and “specificities” of the Chinese language. Through the lens of semiotics, I revisit some of the pervasive arguments sustaining this view, and identify the unsolved problems concerning the absence of tertium comparationis in comparative and contrastive analyses. Drawing on semiotic insights on the philosophy of language relevant to the debated “specificities” of Chinese, I venture to propose a semiotic solution to mitigate the upheld divide between Chinese and alphabetical languages in Chinese linguistics studies, and argue for a negotiated view against the binary approaches and the skewed methodology in a comparative/contrastive framework.

Keywords: Chinese linguistics; contrastive analysis; semiotic solution; tertium comparationis

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About the article

Ningyang Chen

Ningyang Chen (b. 1989) is an applied linguistics doctoral student at the College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University. Research interests span semiotics, philosophy of language, language and cognition, and corpus linguistics. Recent publications include “Challenging machines to the language game: Wittgensteinian philosophy and future dimensions of artificial intelligence” (2015), “Negotiating with language and culture: Research practice using English as an academic lingua franca” (2016), and “Contemporary notes on the changing language landscape” (2017).


Published Online: 2017-11-16

Published in Print: 2017-08-28


Citation Information: Chinese Semiotic Studies, Volume 13, Issue 3, Pages 255–267, ISSN (Online) 2198-9613, ISSN (Print) 2198-9605, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2017-0015.

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