Introducing the Prague School: efforts of Chinese linguists in the past half-century

Abstract

Abstract The Prague School of Linguistics is one of the most important groups in the history of twentieth-century structuralism. Ever since Qixiang Cen wrote on it at the end of the 1950s in his book on the history of linguistics, it has continued to attract the interest of Chinese linguists. This essay explores the half-century in which the Prague School was introduced and studied in China and aims to identify the features of the three stages of these linguists’ efforts.