The theories of contemporary linguistics in this paper include theoretical frontiers of contemporary formalism, functionalism, cognitivism, and structuralist linguistics. The foreign language teaching in this paper includes the teaching of Chinese as a second language. To discuss the connection between contemporary linguistic theories and foreign language teaching is in fact to answer two main questions. First, whether or not foreign language teaching requires contemporary linguistic theories? Second, whether or not foreign language teaching plays a role in promoting the theoretical construction of the language discipline? This paper gives affirmative answers to the above two questions through specific facts. Finally, it is pointed out that contemporary linguistic theories can be connected with foreign language teaching and must be connected. The key to solving the problem is that foreign language teachers should learn and master contemporary linguistic theories and consciously apply them to foreign language teaching, using appropriate teaching language converted from academic language. Therefore, foreign language teachers, including Chinese teachers, should not only be a “teacher”, but should become an excellent instructor and outstanding researcher at the same time.

There are universal features between languages, but there are also certain individual differences. In the aspect of phonetic representation, it lies in the difference of individual phonemes; while in terms of phonological representation, it mainly manifests in the differences between the phoneme combination mode and the prosodic mode. The systematic study of prosodic structure has always been one of the subjects of the study of phonological theories in the west. The difference between English and Chinese languages in prosodic patterns is chiefly displayed in syllables, feet and rhythm patterns. Through the review and investigation of the theory of Prosodic Phonology and Prosodic Hierarchy Theory, especially the comparative analysis of the different Chinese Prosodic Hierarchical frameworks and theories, it is considered that Prosodic Hierarchy Theory can be applied to interpret that syntax has some restriction on the change of the phonological system, especially the prosodic features. Moreover, the prosodic hierarchy of Chinese prosodic structure shares some commonality with the universals proposed by Nespor & Vogel, and it is also consistent with the hypothesis of strict layer hierarchy. The analysis of Chinese prosodic structure can definitely provide a strong support for the universality of the theory of prosodic structure.

：From the perspective of the Cartographic Approach framework, this article aims to analyze the Incompleteness Effects in Chinese imperfective aspect sentences, deeply explain various salvaging devices of the Incompleteness Effects in different syntactic domains, and propose the Temporality-anchoring Generalization to semantically illustrate the representative mode of the interior/exterior temporality in Chinese imperfective aspect sentences. Different from the progressive aspect marker zai, the general imperfective aspect marker -zhe exhibits the typical Incompleteness Effects. The temporal anchoring in Chinese imperfect aspect sentences means making evaluation toward event time EV-T according to assertion time AST-T. As the head of the phase AspP₁above vP, the [+ central coincidence] feature of the progressive aspect marker zai means that AST-T time is within EV-T time, so possesses its independent temporality-anchoring function. The Temporality-anchoring Generalization demands that the aspect marker -zhe should anchor its interior temporality together with its exterior temporality, which shows that the exterior temporality is also quite important to the Temporality-anchoring Generalization. However, the [u central coincidence] feature of the general imperfective aspect marker -zhe implies that AST-T time is overlapped with EV-T time, and can only license its interior temporality in VP domain. In other domains above VP domain (i.e., AspP₂, vP, AspP₁, TP, ModP, FocusP, TopicP and ForceP), the head -zhe serves as an operator Op, and must be licensed by the C-commanding constituents which can bind and assign the exact value to the [u central coincidence] feature so as to license its exterior temporality, therefore realizing the temporality-anchoring function and satisfying the syntax-semantics mapping.

Itô Sohei is a Redologist, a textual critic and also a renowned translator both at home and abroad. His effort has helped to connect the Japanese academia of Redology with its counterpart in China and the rest of the world, enabling Redology in Japan to claim a place in the prospering Redology in the world and making significant contribution to the translation and research of A Dream of Red Mansions. However, after reviewing previous studies at home and abroad the author finds that despite Itô Sohei’s remarkable accomplishment in the translation of A Dream of Red Mansions, researches directed to his translation have just started and are far from satisfying both in quantity and quality. Firstly, although some research results have been published during the last five years, the study of Itô Sohei’s Japanese translation of A Dream of Red Mansions is still scanty and shallow overall. Secondly, the existing researches lack theoretical perspectives and new methodology from translation studies and other related disciplines. In addition, less attention than necessary is paid to some other important issues such as stylistics and reader’s reception of Itô Sohei’s translation of A Dream of Red Mansions in previous researches. This thesis further proposes that the future research should be organically combined with the latest achievements in contemporary translation theories, and the depth and width of the study of Japanese translation of Itô Rinheung’s A Dream of Red Mansions should be broadened, thus translation theories can be truly integrated into the text.

Under the influence of spatial turn in western academic world in the late 20th century, Doris Lessing’s fantasy novels after The Four-gated City (1969) show obvious spatial tendency. She creates various heterotopias, in which she puts her protagonists’ thoughts and various inner activities. The space behind the wall in the living-room in The Memoirs of A Survivor is such a unique heterotopia full of fantasies and reminiscences, providing the heroine with a special place to conduct her pilgrimage beyond reality. From the beginning to the end she passes through the wall several times, stepping into another space and cleaning her soul and spirit there by washing and meditating, and finally she overcomes her spiritual crisis in real life and achieves personal salvation. It is believed in this paper that the existence of such a heterotopia shows the author’s belief in Sufism which she thinks of as a significant philosophy that is able to help her as well as the whole human being to conquer the weakness of human nature. Besides, the space behind the wall is also a place where both the time and the personal consciousness are materialized, which makes it successfully play the role of narrating and push forward the development of whole story through the narrator’s going in and out of it and by connecting what happens in the real world and what the narrator thinks in her inner world.

By referring to A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724—1726) written by the English author Daniel Defoe (1660—1731), as well as basing on the socio-historical contexts of Great Britain from early 18th to the first decades of 19th century, this paper analyzes in detail how the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832) , using picturesque aesthetics and garden planting popular in Great Britain during his lifetime, writes about the problems of modern British social changes in his Scottish historical novel Rob Roy (1817). This paper draws the following conclusions: Scott’s picturesque perspective is a necessary supplement to and a subversion of that modern British “social garden” self-complacently constructed by Defoe, which is both beautiful and commercially centered. At the same time, in Rob Roy, Scott the novelist reveals vividly and dramatically the complex and contradictory characteristics of the transitional moment in Scotland, which was part of Great Britain and transformed with great speed from agricultural to commercial society in the 18th century. Scott also indicates the dilemma, the split of individual identity and pains of those who are caught up in great social upheavals in Rob Roy, an intricate as well as interesting historical novel. However, Scott’s picturesque social ideal is just an illusion in face of the continuously and accelerating speedy social changes in modern Britain.

This study applies Legitimation Code Theory to the investigation of the patterns of interactions between teachers and students in three college classes: Marxism International Relations Theory (Class A), Deutsch (Class B) and English Intensive Reading (Class C). Analysis and discussions are based on the semantic gravity exhibited through the question-and-answer discourses between teacher, and students. In Class A and Class B, there are no gravity variation in the question-and-answer discourses between the teacher and the students, due to the questions themselves raised by the teacher and the answers bounded in the semantic context; while in class C, there are gravity changes in different stages of dialogue between the teacher and students. This research points to the importance of applying the appropriate teaching method matching both knower code and knowledge code. By extending the classes into different specialization areas, and makes comparison between them, this research enhances the dialogue and connection across various disciplinary fields of learning and provides opportunities in investigating the underlying patterns across various disciplinary fields. This research also argues for an active role of English class in providing a cultivated gaze for the knowers through accumulative learning.

Chinese idioms which are abundant, time honored, and widely used, show Chinese speakers’ peculiarity of thought. Studies of Chinese idioms disclose cognitive processes during language comprehension. Professor Zhang Hui’s new book Idiom Representation and Processing: A Neurocognitive Approach is a result of his fifteen years’ research on Chinese idioms. The book has 287 pages, which is divided into 15 chapters, applying event-related potential (ERP) technique to the study on main sub-categories of Chinese idioms, such as phrases, proverbs, xiehouyu and emerging constructions. The book tries to prove viewpoints among linguistic theories and empirical studies of neurolinguistics by combining them with each other, provide convincing evidences with theoretical construction of linguistics, especially to that of cognitive linguistic theories, enrich our understanding of language processing and comprehension in the brain, and offer an important basis to the construction of linguistic comprehension model of psycholinguistics. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the relation between linguistic theories and neuroscientific methods is complicated in that epistemological and methodological questions remain to be tackled. Thus a cohesive correlation between them is in urgent need. The book integrates linguistic and brain views by reporting brand new scientific discoveries and building feasible theoretical models, which is both academically and practically valuable to relevant studies. The review introduces contents and main idea of the book and gives brief comments and expectations.

Morphology and phonology are often regarded as two distinct parts of grammar, but on the other hand, they have also been suggested in many literatures to share a connection much closer than expected. Looking into the range of possible interactions between morphology and phonology, and then probing for their proper linguistic treatments, would be significant both for understanding the nature of human languages and for constructing viable linguistic theories. The new book The Interplay of Morphology and Phonology, authored by Professor Sharon Inkelas, presents a thorough survey on this very topic. It brings under scrutiny the various types of morphology-phonology interactions manifested in natural languages, such as morphologically conditioned phonology, process morphology, prosodic templates, reduplication, infixation, interleaving effects, derived environment effects, phonological interference with morphology, the Bracketing Paradox, and paradigmatic effects. Expository data sets are provided for each type of these interactions, and relevant proposals for treatments are then introduced. In case of competition among different treatments on the same issue, comparisons are drawn to clearly bring out the author’s preference. This article first makes a brief summary on the basic contents of this monograph, and then gives some reflections on its potential relevance to the study of Chinese languages. At the end, this article presents some cautions against the general approach taken by the book which in essence weakens grammar modularity in exchange for analytical flexibility.