On the evening of May 7, 2021, the 2nd International Academic Linguistics Seminar (Speaker-1) and the 2021 “Overseas High-end Expert Lecture Series” hosted by School of Foreign LanguagesinHenan University came to a successfulendingin the audience's cloud applause. The keynote speaker at this invitation is Professor Javier Pérez-Guerra (Javier Perez Guerra), from the Department of English Linguistics of the Vigo University, Spain, one of the leading European universities. He has delivered five lectures on the theme“Linguistic Variation in English: From Data to Theory”. Nearly 300 teachers and graduate students from various schools have attended these lectures.
In hisfirstlecture, Professor Javier Pérez-Guerra systematically introduced three core elements of research design: data construction, statistical analysis, visualization and its interpretation. Withreference to thesecondlecture, he discusses the differences in the acquisition of English inflections by English learners in different countries from the cross-language perspective, and the study finds that English as a second language learner (L2) prefers to use the marked multiple comparatives. During thethirdlecture, he makes a cluster analysis of 5 different Registers based on the Crown corpus, and finds that the Theme function of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) proved to be suitable for the categorization of registers, and language users adopt specific linguistic strategies to meet specific situational demands.Regarding thefourthlecture, the word sequence of VO and OV is modelled and analyzed in the English evolution, and the research finds that statistical analysis of forces favoring OV after/during the fixation of word order in English:Late Middle and Early Modern English. In addition, the influence factors such as pragmatic intention, information structure, communication function, old and new information structure in English sequence are also discussed. In terms of thelastlecture, a comparative analysis of the academic texts of native English speakers (L1) and English learners as second languages (L2) found the language complexity of the advanced learners is closer to English native speakers, and that Soft Sciences students used more complex expressions than hard Sciences.
Finally, at the end of the lecture, Professor Javier Pérez-Guerra received a unanimous appreciation and affection from the audience, all of them are looking forward to his next excellent lecture series for School of Foreign Languages in Henan University.
Professor Javier Pérez-Guerra's series of these five lectures not only helps the audience to illustrate the data construction and its statistical analysis in a more systematically and scientifically way, but also gives them a penetrating insight of research design through his own case studies and experiences. In a nutshell, Professor Javier Pérez-Guerra has won a great deal of praise from teachers and students for his scientific frontiers and his witty personal charm.
(News Reporters: Cui Miaomiao, Shen Mihao)
