Professor Peter Li

The Father of Non-Han Chinese Linguistics Li Fang-Kuei Professor Peter Li

What is linguistics? What does a linguist do? . . . He studies the way people speak. . . . What! That's ridiculous? Who does not know how to speak except a deaf-mute? What is there to study?" Li Fang-Kuei, one of the foremost Chinese linguists in the world, encountered the skepticism of his prospective mother-in-law in the 1920s when he returned to China and wished to ask her daughter's hand in marriage. Li studied general linguistics at the University of Chicago with Edward Sapir. His research in American Indian languages took him into the wilds of northern Canada; his study of non-Han ethnic minority languages in China took him to the borders of Tibet, Thailand and Vietnam. Li's career as a scholar, linguist, and adventurer from his idyllic years of study in America, through the war-torn years in China, and peaceful retirement in Hawaii, is tantalizingly sketched in this chronological biography.