Title Participants Abstract "From colloquialism to metaphorical expression : a diachronic study of Chinese dialect words based on Chán Buddhist literature" "Chen Zeng, Christoph Anderl" "Chán Buddhist literature is not only an important source for the study of religious thought during the Chinese late medieval and early modern periods, but also constitutes a treasure trove for investigating the development of the colloquial language of the respective periods, both in terms of semantics and syntactic constructions. Since the editors of Chán Buddhist literature—such as the Recorded Saying and Transmission of the Lamp texts—claimed to convey the “living words” of the patriarchs and masters, numerous vernacularisms were integrated in the dialogue sections of the texts, and the use of traditional Buddhist terminology was often reduced to a minimum. Frequently, Chán Buddhist texts are among the earliest sources in which these colloquialisms surfaced. In this paper, we focus on expressions which derive from the colloquial language of the late Táng and Sòng periods, and which were integrated in Chán Buddhist literature, often assuming a particular metaphorical meaning in the rhetorical structure of the texts. We reconstruct their original meaning, their use in the Chán texts, as well as their further development in Sinitic languages and dialects. Besides contributing to a better understanding of the vocabulary used in the enigmatic language of Chán literature and the metaphorical mapping of originally colloquial expressions in a religious context, in this preliminary study, we also hope to contribute to a better understanding of the development of semantic items from the perspective of historical linguistics, their complex paths of metaphorical extensions, as well as their usage in local linguistic contexts. In addition, the case studies also illustrate the transformative force of religion on the development of language, and the complex interplay between religious ideas and linguistic expression." "Video self-modeling (VSM) as a strategy to instruct CFL students’ sentence-level stress" "Martin Valcke, Linda Badan, Christoph Anderl" "Sentence-level stress is one of the major means of expressing information focus in oral speaking, and it is of importance for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners to accurately receive and send the right information in conversation. However, research related to teaching stress, especially sentence-level stress, is indeed scarce. In this study, we investigate whether video self-modeling (VSM) is applicable to improve CFL students’ sentence-level stress. VSM, as an innovative strategy, only shows the positive targeted behavior by using videos or audios of oneself, and aims to decrease students’ frustration and the negative influence caused by failed accomplishments. Twelve beginning-level CFL students, taken as the experimental group, received the edited perfect pronunciation audios with their own voice and used these own-voice audios to train their sentence-level stress. At the same time, another twelve advanced-level CFL students were taken as the control group, and received traditional instructional strategies from their class teacher. The whole training continued for ten sessions during a period of two and half months. Quantitative results show that with the help of VSM, CFL students’ sentence-level stress improved significantly as compared to the control group, with increased scores on the pronunciation of sentence-level stress words and increased scores in all three parameters: pitch, intensity, and duration. A post-training survey revealed that the participants’ preference for using their own voice as instructional material resulted in a feeling of success and satisfaction. The findings corroborate the importance of computer-assisted language learning in the second language (L2) field, and add solid evidence of using VSM in foreign-language training." "An initial survey of the iconography of Yúlín Cave 33 : with an emphasis on the tableau depicting Māras’s Attack and Temptation" "Christoph Anderl" "Newsletter #01: Database of medieval Chinese texts (DMCT)" "Christoph Anderl, Laurent Van Cutsem" "This is the first “Newsletter” of the project “Database of Medieval Chinese Texts” (DMCT), briefly and informally introducing aspects of the work that have been done during the last couple of years, as well as discussing recent technical innovations and our plans for the near future. The DMCT is a collaborative project, and our main partner is the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts and is also supported by various other institutions and individual scholars. Contents 1: Message from the editor-in-chief 2: Report by Lin Ching-hui (DILA) 3: Report by the technicians 4: Report by Laurent Van Cutsem 5: Internship reports 6: Educational activities 7: Appendix A: Description of marked-up texts 8: Appendix B: Recent publications" 国学教与研究的现状和未来——中国人民大学国学院十五周年院庆 "Christoph Anderl, Yuè U+8D8A Ji U+59EC" "Northern Chán and the Siddhaṃ songs" "Christoph Anderl, Henrik Sørensen" "John R. McRae : a bibliography" "Christoph Anderl, Christian Wittern" "A bibliography of John R. McRae's books and papers." "Introduction : Chán Buddhism in an inter-religious and cross-linguistic perspective" "Christoph Anderl" "In the introduction, Christoph Anderl gives an outline of the questions addressed in this publication and provides an overview of aspects of early Chan and its relation to the northern and northwestern areas, as well as providing an overview of the research questions discussed in the individual contributions." "Modality without modals : the case of interrogatives in early vernacular texts" "Christoph Anderl" "Linking Khotan and Dūnhuáng : Buddhist Narratives in Text and Image" "Christoph Anderl" "In the propagation and spread of Buddhism throughout Asia, jātaka and avadāna narratives played a decisive role, both in the form of texts and iconographical representations. In this paper I will focus on another set of narratives which enjoyed great popularity in the Dūnhuáng area during the later Tang and Five Dynasties period, dealing with historical projections concerning the origin and transmission of Buddhism. In this stories, “Auspicious Statues” (ruìxiàng 瑞像) play a key role. These “living” statues were thought to have moved from Indian monasteries to Khotan and other regions, serving as agents of the transmission of the Dharma in these areas. Besides reflecting religious key concern during that period, the historical narratives on the spread of Buddhism also give witness to the close diplomatic and family relations between Dunhuang and the Kingdom of Khotan during that period."