Fuzhen Susan Si

Dr. Prof. of Linguistics

Dean of the Department of Linguistics

Co-founder of the Department of Linguistics at BLCU

Personal email: sifuzhen@blcu.edu.cn

Personal website: http://faculty.blcu.edu.cn/sifuzhen/en/index.htm

Dr. Prof. Fuzhen Susan Si received her PhD degree from Beijing Language and Culture University and worked with Professor Noam Chomsky as a Post doctorial visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT 2006-2007. Her major research and teaching interests include theoretical linguistics and language relevant interdisciplinary areas: biolinguistics and brain sciences, in particular. More recently, Fuzhen Susan Si is focusing more on syntactic cartography and its consequences in language use, language acquisition and language disorders associated with aging. Her major theoretical contributions are as follows: (1) theoretical assumptions on various Chinese functional heads (as can be seen in a series of articles on Chinese “DeP”, and articles on split light verb structures, possessive structures, demonstrative structures and so on); (2) theories on “language motivations” aiming at answering various “Why”  uestions relevant to origins of Chinese words and structures; (3) introduction of Chomsky’s theories, biolinguistic theory in particular, into Chinese; (4) studies on scientific methodologies in linguistics. The language data in her studies are mainly from Chinese, English, and some Turkic languages (Uygure and Kazakh for example).

Fuzhen Susan Si is a co-founder (together with Dr. Prof. Rector Li Liu) of the Department of Linguistics at BLCU and the founder of the International Association of Syntactic Cartography (based in Macau). As a theoretical linguist, she has maintained close collaborations with many international linguists and scientists from EU, US, UK and other Asian Countries. As a founding director of the newly established department of linguistics at BLCU (the pioneering one in China as well), she is willing to work together with more colleagues, inside and outside of the department, from home or abroad, and to build up a “Dream Team of Theoretical Linguistics”, making the new-born department a new center in linguistic studies, in China and in Asia as well, in a near future some years from now.