Wang Li
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the politician, see Wang Li (politician)
| Wang Li | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 10, 1900 Guangxi, China |
| Died | May 3, 1986 (aged 85) Beijing, China |
| Occupation | linguist |
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Wang Li (Chinese: 王力), or Wang Liaoyi (王了一), (1900-1986) was a Chinese linguist.
Born into a poor but educated family in Bobai (博白), Guangxi, he was largely self-taught before entering the Tsinghua University in 1927. There he was taught by Yuen Ren Chao and Liang Qichao, among others. Encouraged by Chao, he went to Paris to study linguistics in 1927. There he devoted himself to the study of phonology, and attended the class of Theoretical linguistics by Joseph Vendryes. He got his PhD from the University of Paris with his experiments done on the tones of the Bobai dialect, following the line of Liu Bannong.
To eke out a living, he translated works of French literature into Chinese during his stint in Paris. He would translate more after his return to China, including the plays of Molière, and a version of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal in classical Chinese verse.
He returned to China in 1932, and began his academic career. Before the Second Sino-Japanese War, he taught in the Tsinghua University. From 1939 to 1940, he studied in the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Vietnam, learning the Vietnamese language, which aided his study of historical Chinese phonology. In 1946, he began to teach in the Zhongshan University. One of his students there was Michael Halliday. In 1948, he switched to the Lingnan University. In 1954, he began to teach in the Peking University, until his death.
He called his study "Study where both dragons and worms are carved" (龍蟲並雕齋), which indicates the fact that he, as a prolific writer, produced highly technical theses as well as popular textbooks and essays. His important works include:
- Hanyu Shigao (漢語史稿 "A sketch of the history of the Chinese language")
- Hanyu Shilüxue (漢語詩律學 "The study of the metrical rules of Chinese poetry")
- Tongyuan Zidian (同源字典 "A dictionary of word families [in the Chinese language]")
[edit] External links
- (Chinese) Biography and bibliography, with related essays and memoirs
