​No subject, no verb
The harder, the better, eh?
Unique…and rule-based.
​
E. Allyn Smith
The Ohio State University

​Dissertation Title: “Correlational Comparison in English”
My thesis gives an analysis of the syntax (word order, structure) and semantics (meaning) of sentences like ‘the bigger they are, the harder the fall’ and ‘the faster we drive, the sooner we’ll get there’, etc. They’re ‘tricky’ because they seem to not have the regular structure of English sentences (good old ‘subject, verb, object’ order, etc.) and some, like ‘the more, the merrier’ don’t seem to even have a verb, subject, or object. One main question, then, is whether we have separate grammatical rules and categories in our brains to handle this kind of sentence that are different from the ones we use for other sentences. My conclusion is that these sentences are a combination of unique and rule-based elements but that most elements use the same rules as other kinds of sentences.

​Chinese Marxists Read
The Dream of the Red Chamber,
A Canon Reformed.
​
Marie-Theres Strauss
Free University Berlin, Germany

​My dissertation revolves around literary canon reformation in the first decade of the People’s Republic of China. My focus is Cao Xueqin’s famed Qing-dynasty novel “The Dream of the Red Chamber” (Honglou meng) and the campaign against the literary historian and “Dream”-expert Yu Pingbo in 1954/55. The aim is to show how the entire field of classical literary historiography in China was drastically altered in the 50s to fit the new Marxist paradigm, and how public campaigns against individuals (which would later lead to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution) served to concert divergent opinions and determine the mainstream of cultural thought and practice. Questions and comments are more than welcome at the email address above.