The Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) is delighted to announce that the 6th Lecture of the Macao Humanities Forum (2024/2025) will be held on 24 April 2025. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Professor Fátima Vieira as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on “The University as a Place of Culture: The Portuguese Experience”. Professor Vieira is the Vice-Rector for Culture and Museums and Full Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto, President of the Board of Directors of the Marques da Silva Foundation, and Chair of the Specialized Commission on Art and Culture of the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities (CRUP). As an internationally renowned scholar and researcher, she has devoted her entire career to cultural studies, with particular emphasis on Utopian and Spatiality Studies.

Details of the forum are as follows:
Speaker: Professor Fátima Vieira
Topic: The University as a Place of Culture: The Portuguese Experience
Date: 24 April 2025 (Thur)
Time: 14:00 – 15:30
Venue: E21A-G035
Language: English (with onsite simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin)
*Light refreshments will be served on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please register for the forum by 22 April 2025 (Tue) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0O2daAzvn9wSa7I.

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) is delighted to announce that the 6th Lecture of the Macao Humanities Forum (2024/2025) will be held on 24 April 2025. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Professor Fátima Vieira as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on “The University as a Place of Culture: The Portuguese Experience”. Professor Vieira is the Vice-Rector for Culture and Museums and Full Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto, President of the Board of Directors of the Marques da Silva Foundation, and Chair of the Specialized Commission on Art and Culture of the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities (CRUP). As an internationally renowned scholar and researcher, she has devoted her entire career to cultural studies, with particular emphasis on Utopian and Spatiality Studies.

Details of the forum are as follows:
Speaker: Professor Fátima Vieira
Topic: The University as a Place of Culture: The Portuguese Experience
Date: 24 April 2025 (Thur)
Time: 14:00 – 15:30
Venue: E21A-G035
Language: English (with onsite simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin)
*Light refreshments will be served on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please register for the forum by 22 April 2025 (Tue) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0O2daAzvn9wSa7I.

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) is delighted to announce that the 3rd Lecture of the Macao Humanities Forum (2024/2025) will be held on 15 January 2025. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Professor Lening Liu as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on “Pedagogical Grammar: Its Status and Formation in the International Education of Chinese.” Professor Liu is a Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University and co-director of The Certificate Program of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. He holds a BA in Chinese Language and Literature and MA in History of Chinese Language from Shaanxi Normal University, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Florida. Since 1995, he has been teaching at Columbia University, where he served as Director of Chinese Language Program and Director of Confucius Institute. His research interests include syntax, discourse grammar, and Chinese language pedagogy, among others. His publication record includes influential works such as “A Teacher’s Manual for the Instruction of Chinese: Methods and Techniques” and “A Course on Intercultural Communication.” He has also co-edited widely-adopted textbook series including “Approaching China: Elementary Chinese” and “Understanding China: Advanced Chinese.” He currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee of The International Society for Chinese Language, Editor-in-Chief of International Chinese Language Education, and as an editor for TCSOL Studies.

 Details of the forum are as follows:

Speaker: Professor Lening Liu

Topic: Pedagogical Grammar: Its Status and Formation in the International Education of Chinese

Date: 15 January 2025 (Wed)

Time: 16:00 – 17:30

Venue: E21A-G035 

Language: English (with onsite simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin)

*Light refreshments will be served on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please register for the forum by 13 Jan 2025 (Mon) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ah5ixv3FTJaa9Xo

Abstract:

This lecture explores the nature of pedagogical grammar within the field of International Education of Chinese and examines its development. The speaker argues that the core objective of the discipline should be the creation of a pedagogical grammar and its associated teaching methodologies, rather than focusing solely on peripheral areas such as language policy, theories of second language acquisition, and cross-cultural communication. We will begin by redefining grammar through the lens of Constructional Grammar, which posits that grammar comprises a set of constructions systematically stored in the human mind that link linguistic forms to their meanings—encompassing semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and cultural aspects. These constructions are not abstract rules but rather reflections of actual language use. To formulate a pedagogical grammar, it is essential to integrate the latest linguistic insights from various theoretical frameworks—be they formal or functional—into concrete teaching strategies and activities. This process must adhere to general pedagogical principles, including accuracy, conciseness, and sufficiency, and should be tailored to the specific language context. The acquisition errors typical of language-specific learners and their native language knowledge must also be taken into account. Only after establishing such a pedagogical grammar for Chinese can we effectively identify appropriate methods for teaching its structures and uses. The lecturer will provide examples to illustrate how this grammar is developed and applied in practice.

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) is delighted to announce that the 2nd Lecture of the Macao Humanities Forum (2024/2025) will be held on 29 October 2024. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Prof. Heiko Narrog as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on the topic “Unidirectionality of Grammaticalization and Scope”. Prof. Narrog is a professor at Tohoku University, Japan. He received two PhDs from Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Tokyo respectively. His publications include the monographs Modality in Japanese and the Layered Structure of Clause (Benjamins, 2009), Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Grammaticalization (Oxford University Press, 2021, co-authored with Bernd Heine), as well as three co-edited volumes with Bernd Heine The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2009/2015), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (Oxford University Press, 2011/2021),  and Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Details of the forum are as follows:

Speaker: Prof. Heiko Narrog

Topic: Unidirectionality of Grammaticalization and Scope

Date: 29 Oct 2024 (Tue)

Time: 14:00 – 15:30*

Venue: On-Site (E21B-G016) / ZOOM

Language: English (Simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin will be provided on Zoom)

*Light refreshments will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis

Abstract:

In this presentation, I will discuss the concepts of unidirectionality in grammaticalization in terms of the idea of unidirectional increase in discourse orientation and of directionality of scope in grammaticalization. With respect to the former, when grammatical categories develop, they become increasingly speaker-oriented, hearer-oriented, and text-oriented, for which I use the superordinate label “discourse-oriented.” Concomitantly, they also rise in the hierarchy of syntactic categories. This often expresses itself in movement towards peripheral clause position. This involves an expansion of scope. For over twenty years, a controversy about the change of scope in grammaticalization persisted. On the one hand, in a traditional structuralist approach to grammaticalization, it has been claimed that “structural scope” decreases. However, later, other researchers have claimed just the opposite, namely scope expansion in grammaticalization. In response to the conflicting claims, some scholars have even concluded that there is no directionality. In this presentation, I resolve the apparent contradiction. In conclusion, the “structural scope” in traditional grammaticalization research refers to something entirely different from “scope” in the rest of linguistics. Conversely, both the claim about shrinking scope and expanding scope are correct with respect to the notion of scope to which they refer.

Please register for the forum by 27 Oct 2024 (Sun) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3KjCmsA0bbEnccC

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) is delighted to announce that the 2nd Lecture of the Macao Humanities Forum (2024/2025) will be held on 29 October 2024. The forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from diverse humanities fields to share their research with the FAH community and other UM scholars. All members of the UM community are cordially invited to this splendid event.

In this upcoming forum, we are honored to have Prof. Heiko Narrog as our guest speaker to deliver a lecture on the topic “Unidirectionality of Grammaticalization and Scope”. Prof. Narrog is a professor at Tohoku University, Japan. He received two PhDs from Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Tokyo respectively. His publications include the monographs Modality in Japanese and the Layered Structure of Clause (Benjamins, 2009), Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Grammaticalization (Oxford University Press, 2021, co-authored with Bernd Heine), as well as three co-edited volumes with Bernd Heine The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2009/2015), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (Oxford University Press, 2011/2021),  and Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Details of the forum are as follows:

Speaker: Prof. Heiko Narrog

Topic: Unidirectionality of Grammaticalization and Scope

Date: 29 Oct 2024 (Tue)

Time: 14:00 – 15:30*

Venue: On-Site (E21B-G016) / ZOOM

Language: English (Simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin will be provided on Zoom)

*Light refreshments will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis

Abstract:

In this presentation, I will discuss the concepts of unidirectionality in grammaticalization in terms of the idea of unidirectional increase in discourse orientation and of directionality of scope in grammaticalization. With respect to the former, when grammatical categories develop, they become increasingly speaker-oriented, hearer-oriented, and text-oriented, for which I use the superordinate label “discourse-oriented.” Concomitantly, they also rise in the hierarchy of syntactic categories. This often expresses itself in movement towards peripheral clause position. This involves an expansion of scope. For over twenty years, a controversy about the change of scope in grammaticalization persisted. On the one hand, in a traditional structuralist approach to grammaticalization, it has been claimed that “structural scope” decreases. However, later, other researchers have claimed just the opposite, namely scope expansion in grammaticalization. In response to the conflicting claims, some scholars have even concluded that there is no directionality. In this presentation, I resolve the apparent contradiction. In conclusion, the “structural scope” in traditional grammaticalization research refers to something entirely different from “scope” in the rest of linguistics. Conversely, both the claim about shrinking scope and expanding scope are correct with respect to the notion of scope to which they refer.

Please register for the forum by 27 Oct 2024 (Sun) via https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3KjCmsA0bbEnccC