On the afternoon of June 1, the Linguistics Research Center of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University held the 13th Linguistic Salon in the Liangzheng Hall of Building 7. This salon was lectured by Mao Taoyuan, a distinguished professor and doctoral supervisor of the College of Foreign Languages, Soochow University. Teachers and graduate students of the School of Linguistics and related fields of the College of Foreign Languages participated in the Salon.
The title of Professor Mao Tiaoyuan’s report is “Research on Pragmatic Competence in Biolinguistics”. He first introduced the broad and narrow biolinguistics research, and then focused on the “internal and foreign pragmatic competence model” he recently proposed, and compared the main domestic and foreign statements on pragmatic competence, and finally sorted out the theoretical influence and practical value of the research. Professor Mao’s explanation was profound and simple, covering a wide range of subjects. The lecture triggered an enthusiastic response from the teachers and students. Everyone had an in-depth discussion with Professor Mao on the distinction between internal pragmatic competence and foreign pragmatic competence, the interaction between pragmatic competence and other grammatical modules, and the empirical test of pragmatic competence. The lecture and discussion were extremely beneficial.
Professor Mao Tiaoyuan received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University and was engaged in post-doctoral research in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States from 2017 to 2019 (co-supervisor is Professor Noam Chomsky). Professor Mao’s main research interests cover the main fields of biolinguistics such as syntax, language acquisition, semantic-pragmatic interface, language philosophy, and language teaching and language policy research. He has published many articles in international and domestic core journals.
