Liyao Chen (he/him/his)

Liyao Chen's research encompasses multiple fields, including linguistics, grapholinguistics (study of writing), philology, and literature. He is particularly interested in the borrowing and adaptation of the Chinese script in other languages as well as the circulation and reception of Chinese-language texts in the premodern East Asian "Sinographic Cosmopolis," the premodern cultural and literary community bound by the shared Sinographic script and a group of canonical texts.

His dissertation, tentatively titled "Encoding the Spoken and Decoding the Written: A Comparative Study of Sinographic Writing in Premodern East Asia," is a study of the transmission, adaptation, and application of Chinese writing in non-Chinese languages based on the linguistic analysis of written sources in various languages, genres, and periods. It examines the relationship between language and writing from two opposite perspectives: (1). encoding the spoken language in written form; (2). decoding the written text in spoken language. Incorporating the theoretical and linguistic study of writing in Western academia with East Asian philological traditions, this study aims to establish a unified theoretical and terminological framework for the cross-linguistic discussion of Sinographic writing on a common ground.