February 27^th, 2014, 5:30pm – 7:00pm, Library Multi-Function Room: Dr Ben Au Yeung will introduce the main themes in each of his books, namely 粵講粵法 (PL1734 .A829 2008), 撐廣東話 (PL1735.A828 2012), 中英大不同: 語法解密 (PE1099 .A829 2011) and 中英大不同2:錯了就 (火羅) 爆的語法問題with particular focus on interesting grammatical properties, such as the relation between Cantonese foul language and number calling, and various translations of “小心XX” into English in Hong Kong. In fact, all these books point to the same direction, drawing attention to the structure of language and the importance of language awareness by means of Cantonese.

Since 2005 when Ben earned a PhD in linguistics at HKUST, he has been teaching at the Chinese Department of CUHK and exploring how to popularize linguistic research in Cantonese in a cross-disciplinary framework in Hong Kong. These four books represent a small step in the journey from linguistics to the public. The book talk will be in Cantonese.