Adrian Tien

List of John Benjamins publications in which Adrian Tien is involved.

Title

The Semantics of Chinese Music: Analysing selected Chinese musical concepts

Adrian Tien

Music is a widely enjoyed human experience. It is, therefore, natural that we have wanted to describe, document, analyse and, somehow, grasp it in language. This book surveys a representative selection of musical concepts in Chinese language, i.e. words that describe, or refer to, aspects of… read more

[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 5] 2015. xv, 303 pp.

Articles

Tien, Adrian 2015 Offensive language and sociocultural homogeneity in Singapore: An ethnolinguistic perspective Language and Cultural Values: Adventures in applied ethnolinguistics, Peeters, Bert (ed.), pp. 142–168 | Article

Offensive language use in Singapore’s languacultures appears to be underpinned by cultural norms and values embraced by most if not all Singaporeans. Interviews with local informants and perusal of Singapore’s linguistic and cultural resources led to the identification of eight offensive words and… read more

Tien, Adrian 2009 Semantic prime HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese: In search of a viable exponent Pragmatics & Cognition 17:2, pp. 356–382 | Article

HAPPEN is a member of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) inventory of primes (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka (eds) 1994, 2002). Its English exponent ‘happen’ has been popularly expounded as fa1sheng1 in Mandarin Chinese (e.g., Chappell 2002). This article argues that fa1sheng1 is not the correct… read more