Recently, the “ergative-absolutive linguistic typology study workshop” hosted by the School of Linguistic Sciences and Arts of Jiangsu Normal University (JSNU) was held on Yunlong Campus. Vice President Qian Jin attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech. Eighteen experts and scholars from 11 universities and research institutes, including Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Minzu University of China, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai Normal University, Central China Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University, Hefei University of Technology, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Changshu Institute of Technology, Lingnan Normal University and Jiangsu Normal University, participated in the workshop and gave keynote speeches.
Ergative-absolutive language phenomenon attracted much academic attention at the end of the last century due to Dixon’s study on Dyirbal, before which the mainstream study in linguistics was largely on subject-object syntactic. Entering the 21st century, the international linguistic field, especially the linguistic typology, began to pay extensive attention to ergative-absolutive languages. Some domestic linguistics scholars have also started to study ergative-absolutive morphology and syntactic in Chinese, ethnic dialects and other languages in recent decades. In this context, the workshop shared 18 researches in total, involving dozens of languages, and discussed argument configuration, argument encoding, syntactic nature and comparative studies in Chinese, ethnic dialects and foreign languages.
Huang Chenglong, the director of the CASS Research Center of Chinese Ethnic Minority Languages and researcher of the CASS Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, gave a summary of the workshop. Prof. Jin Lixin announced the successful closing of the conference and expressed requirements and outlook on the results presentation and the next workshop.
The workshop had clear aims. The participating experts and scholars constantly produced new ideas with fierce discussions and insightful comments. The influence of the meeting was also expanded through livestreaming. It is believed that the success of this event will play a positive role in promoting the study of ergative-absolutive languages in academic community.
