Strengthening International Cooperation: The International Conference on Chinese Language Contact and Typology

International Conference on Chinese Language Contact and Typology was successfully held on the Tai Po campus of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) from 24 to 25 March 2023. This conference was organised by the Department of Chinese Language Studies (CHL) and the Centre for Research on Chinese Language and Education of EdUHK, and co-organised by the Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l’Asie Orientale (CRLAO) of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France and Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germany.

This conference is based on the Hong Kong-France joint project named PROCORE (Ref no. F-EdUHK801/20). During the conference, scholars from world-renowned institutes and universities from seven different countries and regions, including CRLAO of CNRS in France, Université Paris Cité, University of Helsinki in Finland, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Japan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Baptist University, EdUHK, University of Macau, Beijing Language and Culture University, Jinan University, and Shanxi University, delivered key-note speeches and had heated discussions with all the participants in the conference, stimulating numerous new insights in research on Sinitic language contact and typology.

Dr Cong Wang, the Hong Kong PI of the PROCORE project and the Assistant Professor of CHL at EdUHK, introduced the advancing process of PROCORE over the past two years and presented the team members and research results. Dr Wang said, “We hope we can maintain contact in future academic exchanges, jointly explore cutting-edge issues and research achievements in Chinese language contact and other language phenomena and make greater contributions to promoting global multilingual communication and understanding”.

The success of this conference provides an opportunity for the Chinese language research community to understand the current international cutting-edge trends in Chinese language contact and typology research, as well as a good communication platform for young scholars. It further promotes the development of Chinese language contact and typology research and demonstrates the foresight and internationalisation of EdUHK in Chinese linguistics research.