C.T. James Huang (; born 1948) is a Taiwanese-American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

. He is a professor of linguistics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Huang was born in a small township of

Fuli, Hualien Fuli Township () is a rural township located in southern Hualien County, Taiwan. Geography The township is located at the Huatung Valley. It has 10,849 inhabitants with 3,993 households around. The population is composed of Hakka, Hoklo, and ...

, in Taiwan. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from

National Taiwan Normal University National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU; ), or ''Shīdà'' is an institution of higher education and normal school operating out of three campuses in Taipei, Taiwan. NTNU is the leading research institute in such disciplines as Education and ...

in 1971 and 1974, respectively, and in 1982 earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. He received the Linguistic Society of Taiwan's Lifetime Achievement award in 2014 and was elected a Fellow of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

in 2015. In 2016, he was elected an

Academician An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life. In syst ...

in the Convocation of the

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

's division of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2019 he was elected a Member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

(The Academy of Europe). Huang has published articles and books in both English in Mandarin Chinese within the

generative grammar Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistic ...

framework of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, extensively on the structure of

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

grammar. His influence in the field is widely credited for "paving the way and leading the development of Chinese theoretical syntax"; "without his pioneering research ..such a field would not exist in the rich way we presently know it". In 2009, Huang collaborated with Y.-H. Audrey Li and Yafei Li to co-author a Cambridge Syntax Guide spanning the work of the past 25 years in theoretical Chinese syntax. In 2015, Huang received a

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

comprising the work of 21 specialists in Chinese syntax, which is headlined by his own most recent publication on the subject of both

synchronic Synchronic may refer to: * ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie * Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time *Synchronicity Synchronicity (german: ...

and

diachronic Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic l ...

approaches to syntactic analyticity in Chinese parametric grammar.

Books

* * * * * * *

References

External links

Homepage

Faculty Webpage @ Harvard

Linguist List 'Famous Linguists' Autobiographical
Living people Generative linguistics Syntacticians Linguists from Taiwan Harvard University faculty 1948 births National Taiwan Normal University alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Linguists from the United States {{China-linguist-stub