BAESP

  People
 
  Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. (Prof.)

Basic Information

Name: Professor Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen Phil.Cand., MA, PhD
Position: Chair Professor and Head
Qualification: (Ph.D. UCLA, M.A. UCLA, Phil. Cand. Lund University)
Doctor of Philosophy,
Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.
Dissertation title: Text-generation as a Linguistic Research Task.  1989.
Master of Arts,
in linguistics, Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.
Dissertation title: Choosing Tense in English. 1984.
Candidate of Philosophy,
in English and Linguistics, University of Lund, Sweden. 1980.
Room No.: AG401a
Tel No.: 2766 7537
Email: christian.matthiessen@polyu.edu.hk

   

Teaching Areas
Grammar and discourse and grammar; functional grammar for English language teachers; text/ discourse analysis; text analysis and translation; functional language typology; systemic functional linguistics; the evolution of language.

Research Interests

  • Systemic-functional theory and metatheory in general; the complementarity between theoretical, representational and computational specifications of models; computational support in theoretical and descriptive models.
  • Development of theoretical and computational models of systems.
  • Modelling of the meaning base (ideation base, interaction base and the text base) of a text processing system.
  • Investigation of multilinguality through analysis of parallel and comparable texts (English and German, English and Swedish), research into translation issues in various languages through research students (English and Chinese, English and Japanese, English and Korean), and modelling of it in text processing systems: multilingual text-generation; text-based and ‘target language’ oriented translation.
  • Revision and extension of a systemic functional grammar of English (documented as Matthiessen, 1995, English systems: Lexicogrammatical cartography, which is a primary resource in various research projects, and in a database system, SysRef, and as Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
  • Development of comparable accounts of grammars of languages other than English, in particular focus through research students, including work on French, Vietnamese, Akan, currently with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Òkó, Thai, Bajjika.
  • Development of comprehensive, text-based systemic functional typology, translation model and other aspects of the field of multilingual studies.
  • Exploration of the evolution of language as a key part in the evolution of humans (with emphasis on the co-evolution of “meaning” and “matter” in human systems — language and the brain, language and social systems).
  • Application of functional theory and description in discourse interpretation, profiling of persons and institutions (e.g. in clinical contexts in hospitals), comprehensive register/ text typology based on context with semantic and lexicogrammatical correlates, etc..
  • Exploration of language and the brain in reference to an ordered typology of systems (physical — biological — social — semiotic), with a focus on “resonances” across these different systemic orders.