Twenty-nine scholars from different countries and regions, such as France, Finland, Italy, Japan, mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, gathered at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) to attend the International Conference on Chinese Language Contact and Typology from 24 to 25 March 2023. The conference was a combination of a two-year research project entitled ‘Inclusive and Exclusive: Language Contact between Sinitic Languages and Altaic Languages’ under the Hong Kong-France joint research scheme PROCORE. The participants reported on their research, covering Chinese personal pronouns, the study of personal pronouns in various languages of the Altaic language family, syntactic borrowing, and other issues related to language contact.

The conference was organised by the Department of Chinese Language Studies (CHL) and the Centre for Research on Chinese Language and Education at EdUHK; and co-organised by the Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l’Asie Orientale (CRLAO) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germany. 

Professor John Lee Chi-Kin, President (Designate) and Vice President (Academic) and Provost of EdUHK; Professor Xu-Song Dan, Member of Academia Europaea and Head of a European Research Council project at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; and Dr Liang Yuan, Acting Head of CHL at EdUHK, delivered opening speeches at the conference.

Professor Lee extended a warm welcome to the participants on behalf of the University. He said, “Chinese language research is one of the fields in which EdUHK excels. In the context of the current national effort to build and develop the Greater Bay Area, the convening of this international conference on Chinese language contact and typology meets current societal needs and provides participants with a comprehensive understanding of the historical development of Chinese language”. Professor Lee highly valued the significance of this conference, and introduced the development and construction of academic research of EdUHK.

Professor Xu-Song is the French Principal Investigator (PI) of PROCORE project. She explained the origins of the conference and the development of the project team. 

Dr Liang said, “This conference not only provides a platform for experts and scholars to exchange ideas with and learn from each other, but also facilitates the continuous development of Chinese language contact research.”  

Dr Cong Wang, Hong Kong PI of the PROCORE project and Assistant Professor of CHL at EdUHK, expressed her gratitude to the participants on behalf of the conference organisers and PROCORE’s Hong Kong team. Dr Wang reported on the project’s progress over the past two years, and presented the research results. She hoped that the participating scholars could maintain contact in future academic exchanges, 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.