Academics Grant Li - Chinese and Linguistics

"I am interested in the relation between language structure and its meaning," said Grant Li, who has a deep appreciation for the fundamental similarities between languages. Grant was born and grew up in the northeast of China, where standard Chinese is spoken. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Irvine, and taught Chinese at Smith College before coming to Marlboro College. He teaches all levels of Chinese, as well as theoretical linguistics.

Teaching Philosophy

“Though many believe that Chinese is hard to learn, I try to make the language accessible to students with activities in class conducive to developing their communicative skills,” said Grant, who always brings fun and joy to language learning. In linguistics, he emphasizes the theoretical and formal approaches to the nature of language, reflecting his view that fundamentally all languages are the same. He believes that languages differ on the surface due to various interactions of a finite set of surprisingly simple grammatical principles. "Because of the nature of linguistics, students interested in any language can work with me—not only Chinese language students, but Spanish, German, even English students. A comparative study across languages is particularly fascinating, as it often reveals the nature of language better."

Student Plans and Collaborations

Student research trip to China, funded by the Freeman Foundation, to study language and local culture, summer 2010.
A research-based examination of the nature of second language acquisition, focusing on the complications associated with adult language learning, specifically of English speakers learning Mandarin. Chris Odegard '10, languages/linguistics.

Scholarly Activities

Grant's research interests lie in the syntactic theory interfacing with semantics and morphology. In his recent book, Tao of Division: Syntactic Conditions on Distributivity (分之道:复数名词分别义的句法条件) (2009), he proposes an elegant theory to explain why languages differ in expressing distributive meanings of plural nouns. "In essence, I developed a theory by doing away with other theories that specifically address the problem," he said. "Rather than working directly I focused on the whole system of grammar, from which solutions to the specific problems would follow, via a free ride." He presented a paper on distributivity at the 2010 conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics.

B.A., Heilongjiang University, 1982; M.A., Heilongjiang University, 1987; M.A., University of California, Irvine, 1995; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1997; Marlboro College, 2008 –