This workshop brings together scholars from mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States to present recent work and exchange viewpoints on how to analyze expressions of modality like kě ‘can’, dāng ‘should’, and bì ‘must’ in Chinese from the 5th century BCE onward. Such expressions have received considerable attention in the linguistic literature on European languages, but extensions of these findings to unrelated languages like Chinese are far less numerous. We aim to combine Chinese and Western perspectives on this topic to better understand how a broader theory of modality might apply to modal markers in Classical Chinese and how they have developed in the modern language. The workshop consists of presentations by invited speakers, followed by a roundtable discussion on issues raised by these presentations. The event is open to the public, and talks will be given in either English or Mandarin Chinese.

Speakers include Gu Feng (Nankai University), Zhu Guanming (Renmin University), Barbara Meisterernst (Taiwan Qinghua University), Wu Hsuehju (Taiwan University), Deng Lin (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), and Edith Aldridge (University of Washington).

Organized by Edith Aldridge (Linguistics) and Zev Handel (Asian Languages & Literature). Schedule forthcoming.