My work in linguistics started in the structuralist framework in the early ’60s but turned to the generative trend in the late ’60s. In the mid-’70s, I began to work in the theory of case grammar and, as a result, became more interested in the functional theory, which seems to be better suited for the analysis of the Chinese language. My research took the natural course from functional syntax to discourse grammar. For the past 20 years or so, I have thus been working in both of those models, incorporating cognitive principles of language. My research efforts in those areas have resulted in three recent books and several dozen journal articles and book chapters. I also tried other interests such as language teaching and historical syntax. For about fifteen years, my research activities were equally divided between synchronic and diachronic studies of Chinese. That diversion resulted in the publication of a book on historical syntax (in English) in 1987, which was later translated into Chinese and published in Beijing.

For teaching, language courses have occupied about a half of my work load. The other half has been in various courses such as “Introduction to Chinese Culture” from the early stage of my career to “Structure of Chinese” and “Calligraphy” in the recent years. I have also taught for the Graduate Program in Linguistics such courses as phonology, syntactic theory, semantics and historical linguistics in the earlier years and discourse grammar and functional syntax in the more recent years.