Issues in Chinese Functionalism: An Interview with Sandra A. Thompson

Abstract

Issues in Chinese Functionalism: An Interview with Sandra A. Thompson Chiung-chih Huang University of California, Los Angeles PROFILE Sandra A . Thompson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She specializes in discourse and language universals, and is particularly interested in the role of patterns of conversational discourse in shaping morphosyntactic regularities. She is the co-author with Charles L i of Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. She has co-edited Studies in Transitivity with Paul Hopper, Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse with John Haiman, and Discourse Description with William C. Mann. INTRODUCTION The functional approach to Chinese has been one of the major trends in the study of Chinese grammar. This approach takes the position that language functions primarily as a tool of human communication and that linguistic forms are derived from and motivated by this communicative function. The approach challenges autonomous views of grammar, and explores the relationship between grammatical structures and the contexts in which they are used. Professor Sandra Thompson is one of the best-known Chinese functionalists and IAL is pleased that Prof. Thompson agreed to be the subject of this interview. In this interview, the topics include the central tenets of the functional approach, the development of Chinese functionalism, the lack of morphological complexity in Chinese, and the controversial issue of grammatical relations in Chinese. In addition, more personal questions include her initial interest in Chinese, her preparation of the famous Chinese Reference Grammar, and the focus of her recent research. This interview presents not only Prof. Thompson's view of Chinese functionalism, but also her personal experience as a researcher in this field. Issues in Applied Linguistics © Regents of the University of California ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 5 No. 2 1994 409-423