PENG Xinjia

PhD, Assistant Research Professor at Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)

pengxinjia@cass.org.cn

I obtained my BA in English at the School of English, Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2009. In 2017, I received my PhD in Chinese Linguistics at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon. I joined Institute of Linguistics, CASS in 2021.

Research Interests

I am a linguist trained in the cognitive-functional tradition. I conduct empirical linguistic research based on language corpora and cognitive experiments. I am interested in how meanings emerge from ambiguous usage environments and its process of conventionalization. I have dealt with topics such as the Chinese subject-predicate/topic-comment structure, the Chinese chadian’er-mei VP structures, as well as internet neologisms. On the side, I am also working on a project on linguistic iconicity, drawing upon spoken language data from various Chinese dialects.

Chinese Publications

Peng, X., Wu, T. Yan, W. 2025. Internet neologisms and usage trends: A correlation analysis and its implication for the inclusion of new entries in dictionary compilation. Lexicography Studies [Cishu Yanjiu] 3，49-61.

Peng, X. 2024. Revisiting the Grammatical Notions of Subject and Predicate. Contemporary Linguistics [Dangdai Yuyanxue] 5，701-716.

Peng, X., Tao, W. 2023. A usage-based constructionist account of chadianermei (差点儿没) VP and chadianer (差点儿) mei (没) VP. Studies of the Chinese Language [Zhongguo Yuwen] 4, 440-455.

Peng, X., Davies, M. 2020. The internet-based English corpus iWeb and its application in teaching and learning English as a second language. TEFLE [Waiyu Dianhua Jiaoxue] 4, 73-81.

Luo, Q., Peng, X. 2019. An Introduction to Linguistics. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press.

English Publications

Peng, X. 2018. The emergence of a discourse construction in the internet: Technological affordance and socio-cultural factors in language innovation. Chinese Language and Discourse 9 (2), 209-243.

Jing-Schmidt, Z. and Peng, X. 2018. Linguistic theories and teaching Chinese as a second language. In C. Ke (Ed.), Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition (pp. 63-81). Routledge.

Jing-Schmidt, Z. and Peng, X. 2016. The emergence of disjunction: A history of constructionalization in Chinese. Cognitive Linguistics 27(1), 101-136.

Research Projects

(1)Categorization of Internet Language based on Usage Trends and Features, supported by the Chinese National Language Commission Research Planning Committee. PI. Dec 2020- Dec 2022.

(2)Recent Developments in Linguistic Iconicity Research, supported by CASS. PI. Sep 2022-Dec 2024.