杰弗里·利奇的语料库研究之路

The corpus research trajectory of Geoffrey Leech

2014年8月19日,英国学术院院士、著名语言学家兰卡斯特大学荣休教授Geoffrey Leech病逝,享年78岁。Leech教授一生在英语语法、语义学、语用学、文体学、语料库语言学等诸多方面都作出了杰出贡献,是一位具有世界影响的语言学家。Leech教授与中国有着不解之缘。他于1994年受聘为北京外国语大学名誉教授,并多次来华讲学。Leech教授早年毕业于英国伦敦大学学院(University College London),并参与了Randolph Quirk教授主持的著名的'英语用法调查'(Survey of English Usage)项目。Leech教授整个学术生涯都十分注重对真实语用的描写,注重对意义的研究。他主要完成或合作完成的代表作有:《英语语法大全》(A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language,1985)、《语义学》(Semantics,1974)、《语用学原理》(Principles of Pragmatics,1983)、《小说的文体》(Style in Fiction,1981/2007)和'英国国家语料库'(British National Corpus,BNC,1994)。《英语语法大全》,俗称'夸克语法',长期以来是我国语法教学界的权威基准;《语义学》中列举的7种意义已成为语言学方向学生的专业常识;《语用学原理》中提出的'礼貌原则'是礼貌研究的重要基石;《小说的文体》是文体学领域当仁不让的第一教材;'英国国家语料库'是近20年来语料库领域的业界标杆。若一位语言学者拥有一项重要代表作就可称为知名语言学家的话,Geoffrey Leech则名副其实称得上世界级语言学家。况且这里举出的不过是他等身著述之一隅。学术而外,Leech教授最为人称道的是其为人平易谦和,真可谓学者典范。本期特设纪念专栏,深切缅怀Geoffrey Leech教授。本文编译自《利奇应用语言学自选集》一书的前言,感谢外语教学与研究出版社授权编译。

This article presents the Chinese translation of the corpus linguistics related recollections of Geoffrey Leech The original English text comes from his academic autobiography published as the preface to the Selected Works of Applied Linguistics by Geoffrey Leech by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press In the article,Geoffrey Leech recalled that,in his youth,he received influence from J R Firth,Randolph Quirk and Michael Halliday at University College London where he obtained his BA,MA,PhD,and launched his teaching career He participated as a key member in several influential corpus projects,including the Survey of English Usage led by Randolph Quirk,and co-authored a number of widely-acclaimed descriptive grammars of English He founded the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language(now Department of Linguistics and English Language)at Lancaster University,where he led the compilation of the LOB corpus and founded the well-known UCREL centre He was a founding member of ICAME and played a leading role in the construction of BNC He investigated English grammar change through building and studying comparable corpora in his retirement years.