國立清華大學語言學研究所及歷史研究所將於2018年9月10日至9月11日假清大人社院舉辦學術研討會「東西交會：早期泰西人士對漢字文化圈語言的記述及其對華語語言學史的影響」。
本次會議的目的在於為歷史，語文和語言學三大學術領域提供連結的橋樑。會議主題為西方與漢字文化圈的早期接觸，特別著重於西方對漢語官話及方言早期的語法和語言學研究，並且探討其對於漢語語言學在西方和東方的發展所帶來的影響。會議特別聚焦在台灣的歷史和語言情況，以及與西方世界的初始接觸，更將會重點介紹17世紀以西班牙語紀錄的閩南語抄本語料。此語料紀錄是近期於菲律賓聖道頓馬士大學（University of Santo Tomas）檔案館中尋獲。屆時，連金發教授將向參與的國際學者介紹有關這些語料的研究成果。
這些語料紀錄不但對台灣語言研究有相當高的價值，對中西方早期接觸的歷史考究，特別從台灣的角度來看，是十分珍貴的。這些抄本、語法研究、字典和相關報告，大部分由西方傳教士所撰寫，為西方和東方不同語言的首次接觸建立了極好的基礎。在18世紀初，這些早期的漢語語言學著作初次呈現於西方。這使得歐洲學者們對世界語言類型上的差異，興起了極大的關注。這種關注使19世紀的語言學家，如Joseph Edkins, Friedrich Schlegel, August Conrady 和Georg von der Gabelentz等，展開了對漢語和南島語（及其它非印歐語系語言）類型學和句法學的早期研究。
暫訂議程如下：
Lien, Chinfa: Spanish Transcriptions of Taiwanese Southern Min from the 17th century
Henning, Klöter : The beginnings of Hokkien manuscript lexicography
Peyraube, Alain: The History of Chinese Grammars in Chinese and Western Scholarly Traditions
Aldridge, Edith: The linguistic relevance of the Austronesian languages in Taiwan for Historical Linguistics
Lee, Yuzhong: The underlying logic of 17th century Spanish-Phillippine Minnan dictionaries and the evolution of their compilation
Ochiai, Izumi and Chao-Kai Shih: Siraya songs in dormancy: Decipherment.
Adelaar, Alexander: When the West met the East: impressions from 17th century Formosan and Dutch texts
Uchida, Keiichi: 關於近代西洋人的漢語研究
Gianninoto, Mariarosaria: Transposing linguistic categories and terminology: examples of interplay of Western and Chinese linguistic traditions
Meisterernst, Barbara: Georg von der Gabelentz and Chinese and East Asian Linguistics
Yoshida, Yukata: Chinese in Sogdian script and Sogdian in Chinese characters
When the West met the East: Early Western Accounts of the Languages of the Sinosphere and their Impact on the History of Chinese Linguistics
September 10-11, 2018
Venue: CHSS Building, National Tsing Hua University
The conference ‘West meets East’: Early Western Accounts of the Languages of the Sinosphere and their Impact on the History of Chinese Linguistics to be hosted by the Institute of Linguistics and the Institute of History at National Tsing Hua University 2018, September 10-11, aims to provide a bridge between history, language and linguistics. The general theme of the conference will be early contacts between the West and the Sinosphere, their reflection in early grammars and linguistic studies of different Chinese languages, and their impact on the development of the field of Chinese linguistics in the West and the East. Particular focus will be on the history and linguistic situation of Taiwan and its first encounters with the West. A special objective of the conference is the presentation of the 17th century transcriptions of Taiwanese Southern Min in Spanish that have been discovered recently in the University of Santo Tomas, the Catholic University of the Philippines. The conference will give Prof. Lien Chinfa the opportunity to present his research on these materials to an international scholarly audience. These manuscripts are invaluable for the study of the Taiwanese language, but also for the historical study of early contacts of Westerners with China, and in particular with Taiwan.
The transcriptions, grammars, dictionaries and reports mostly written by Western missionaries constitute the basis for the first encounters of the West with the different languages of the Sinosphere.
When these early linguistic works on the languages of the Sinophere first made their appearance in the West in the early 18th century, they created a great interest in the typological differences of the languages in the world. This interest resulted into the first typological and syntactic studies on the Chinese and Austronesian languages (and other non-Indo-European languages) by linguistics such as Joseph Edkins, Friedrich Schlegel, August Conrady and Georg von der Gabelentz in the 19th century.