Peng Daxingwang wins China Scholarship Council (CSC) award

Peng Daxingwang, a PhD student in linguistics attached to the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale-CRLAO (Inalco-CNRS-EHESS), has been awarded the "Chinese government award for outstanding self-financed students abroad " by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for the year 2020.

In April 2021, he was also named winner of the Prix Jeune Chercheur by the Fondation des Treilles for the year 2021.

Biography
Peng Daxingwang, currently a PhD student in linguistics at CRLAO (Inalco-CNRS-EHESS), under the supervision of Ms Dan XU-SONG, is working on the Cenchuan dialect, a Sinitique language spoken in northeastern Hunan, China. He regularly goes out into the field to carry out surveys and collect recordings of traditional stories and everyday conversations. His research into the phonology and grammar of the language also focuses on the relationship between the Cenchuan dialect and other Sinitic languages in the same region. To promote his research, he has not only published articles on the phonological system and grammar of this dialect, but has also taken part in numerous international colloquia devoted to Sinitic languages. He was recently awarded the Prix Jeune Chercheur by the Fondation des Treilles for the year 2021 and the "Chinese government award for outstanding self-financed students abroad" by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for the year 2020.

Study on the Cenchuan dialect in Pingjiang (Sinitic) under the supervision of Ms Dan XU-SONG

Thesis summary
This study focuses on a Sinitic dialect spoken in the northeast of Hunan province in China: the Cenchuan dialect. Situated between two distinct areas of Sinitic dialects (the Xiang dialect and the Gan dialect), the Cenchuan dialect has many "mixed" linguistic features, making it difficult to classify.

Our approach is first to extract the phonological system, record the basic lexicons and describe the grammar of the Cenchuan dialect; on this descriptive basis, we then attempt to determine the status of the Cenchuan dialect by comparing it with the xiang and gan dialects in this region in terms of their phonological, morphological and syntactic features.

As with other Sinitic dialects located on the borders of different dialect groups, the determination of where the Cenchuan dialect belongs divides researchers. The lack of data on this language means that it is impossible to make a definite decision in favor of a particular hypothesis. Our work will therefore be the first to provide a detailed description of this language. The traditional method of grouping Sinitic dialects has the drawback of using only phonological criteria, as dialects on the border between two dialect groups often have "mixed" phonological features due to dialect contacts. If phonological criteria alone are unsatisfactory for determining Cenchuan dialect membership, we propose in our work to complement them with morphological and syntactic criteria. Although morphological and syntactic features, like those of phonology, are also affected by language contact, they are relatively less likely to be influenced. These new criteria have the advantage of enriching the comparative analysis by giving it more linguistic factors (phonological, morphological and syntactic) to make the proximities between the Cenchuan dialect and the xiang and gan dialects clearer.

The Chinese government award for outstanding self-financed students abroad is a cash award established by the China Scholarship Council in 2003 for graduate students studying abroad. The government chooses recipients annually based on a record of outstanding accomplishments during their PhD studies in any discipline. This award is the highest award the government gives to graduate students studying outside China. These students do not receive financial support from the Chinese government.