Professor Yang Zhenlan was born in January 1963 to a family whose ancestral home is Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. In 1980, she matriculated by examination in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Shandong University. After graduating with a baccalaureate degree in 1984, she pursued graduate studies at Shandong University for an MA degree in Chinese Linguistics, which she obtained in 1987. Afterward, she stayed on as a member of the teaching staff at Shandong University, and has been a faculty member here since that time. In 1997 she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and in the same year she commenced studies for a doctorate while carrying out her faculty duties. Professor Yang obtained her Ph.D degree in 2001, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2004. She became a Dissertation Advisor for Ph.D. students in 2009. Over many years, Professor Yang has been engaged in teaching and research in the fields of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Language Studies, and Theory of Linguistics. Her primary fields of research are Modern Chinese Vocabulary, and Semantics.

Professor Yang has authored and published a significant number of major scholarly monographs, including the following:

· A Study of Coloration in Phraseology in the Modern Chinese Language, (1996)

· An Exploration and Analysis of the Choice and Application of Words and Phrases in the Vocabulary of the Chinese Language, (2002)

· Studies of Dynamic Coloration in Phraseology, (2003)

· A Semantic Study of New Words and Phrases in the Chinese Language in the New Era, (2009)

Major academic papers and journal articles authored by Professor Yang include:

· “A Tentative Discussion of the Meaning of Words and Phrases and the Meaning of Elements of Language”, (1993)

· “A Tentative Analysis of the Reduplicative Configuration in Adjectives”, (1995)

· “The Relationship between the Meaning of Coloration in Language and Context”, (2000)

· “A Preliminary Discussion and Proposition Regarding the Analysis of the Elements of Linguistic Significance in the Coloration of Language”, (2001)

· “The Significance of Dynamic Coloration of Words and Phrases, and Its Relationship to Syntactic Structure, Semantic Structure and the Structure of the Application of Language”, (2001)

· “A Tentative Analysis of the Characteristics of Diachronic Evolution of the Coloration of Words and Phrases”, (2003)

· “A Comparative Study of AA-Type Phonetic Duplicative and Reduplicative Phrases and Expressions in the Modern Chinese Language”, (2003)

· “Linguistic Factors Inducing and Leading to the Evolution and Development of Coloration Meanings in Language”, (2003)

· “The Coloration Meaning of Words and Phrases from the Perspective of Word Formation”, (2005)

· “An Exploration of the Emotive Coloration of the Suffix ‘zi’ in the Chinese Language, With Personal Referencing or Personal Addressing Suffices as Examples”, (2007)

· “Polysemant Words and Phrases Formed by the Evolving and Generating of New Meanings of Terms in the New Era”, (2007)

· “The Categorization Function of the Suffix ‘zi’ in the Chinese Language”, (2007)

· “The Dissemination and Development of Neologisms in the New Erafrom the Perspective of Mass Media”, (2008)

· “On the Characteristics of Newly Formed Synonyms in the New Era,and the Factors Leading to Their Formation”,(2009)

· “On Newly Formed Antonyms in the New Era”, (2009)

· “On the Coloration Meanings of the Neologisms in the New Era”, (2009)

· “On the Relationship Between the Rational Significance and the Emotive Significance of Words and Phrases, with the Use of Adjectives in Zuozhuan as an Example”, (2011)

· “An Exploration of the Critical Commentary [lunzan] Segments in Zuozhuan and Their ‘Praise or Blame’ Functions of Criticism”, (2018)

Professor Yang has also undertaken a number of publicly sponsored research projects, including:

o A Study of Semantic Coloration in Zuozhuan, (sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Education)

o A Study of the Functionality of Chinese Vocabulary, (sponsored by the Shandong Provincial Office for Social SciencesPlanning)

o A Study of Dynamic Coloration Semantics, (sponsored by the Shandong Province Department of Education)

o A Study of Neologisms in the Chinese Language, (sponsored by Shandong University)

For her academic accomplishments, Professor Yang has won a number of prizes and awards, including:

· In 1997, a Level-2 Prize in the Third Annual Competition of University Presses of East China, for Outstanding Teaching Materials and Textbooks (Academic Monographs Section), and, in the same year, a Level-3 Prize for Outstanding Achievements in the Social Sciences in Shandong Province, for the monographA Study of Coloration in Phraseology in the Modern Chinese Language

· In 2001, Shandong University’s Award for Most Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation

· Level-3 Prizes for Outstanding Achievements in the Social Sciences in Shandong Province, for the academic papers “The Significance of Dynamic Coloration of Words and Phrases, and Its Relationship to Syntactic Structure, Semantic Structure and the Structure of the Application of Language”, (2001), and “Polysemant Words and Phrases Formed by the Evolving and Generating of New Meanings of Terms in the New Era”, (2007)

· A Level-2 Prize for Outstanding Achievements in the Social Sciences in Shandong Province for the monograph An Exploration and Analysis of the Choice and Application of Words and Phrases in the Vocabulary of the Chinese Language (Volume 4 of the Chinese Vocabulary Studiesseries, edited by Ge Benyi)

· In addition to the individual prizes listed above, other academic projects and publications in which Professor Yang has participated, such as: An Introduction to Linguistics (participating author/editor), and The Chinese Information/DataProcessing Series (participating project researcher), have also won multiple prizes and awards.

Since Professor Yang joined the faculty of the School of Literature at Shandong University, she has carried out highly useful and successful research and scholarly exploration in the fields of Modern Chinese Language, Linguistic Theory, Vocabulary, and Lexicology and Semantics. She has published a number of scholarly papers and academic articles in various journals such as Wen-Shi-Zhe (A Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy),

Academic Journal of Shandong University, Learning Chinese, Teaching Chinese Worldwide, Qilu Academic JournalandSocial Sciences in Shandong, and many academic monographs. Professor Yang has conducted, with pathbreaking results, research in the field of Semantics in the Modern Chinese Language, especially in the area of Coloration Semantics. Her monographA Study of Coloration in Phraseology in the Modern Chinese Language, published in 1996,was the first monograph on the study of semantic coloration in the modern Chinese language, and filled what was at the time a complete void. It also built, from the ground up, a theoretical framework for the field of Coloration in Phraseology in the Modern Chinese Language, a branch discipline in the larger field of Modern Chinese Vocabulary.Another monograph subsequently authored and published by Professor Yang, Studies of Dynamic Coloration in Phraseology, further completed and improved the theoretical system for the field of coloration in modern Chinese vocabulary from the perspective of the dynamicsof language and semantics. At the same time, Professor Yang has paid attention to the linguistics phenomena relevant to the formation and emerging of neologisms, and published the monograph A Semantic Study of New Words and Phrases in the Chinese Language in the New Era, which systematically analyzed, from the perspective of semantics, the neologisms that have emerged in the Chinese Language since the beginning of the current Era of Reform and Opening Up. To a significant extent, this study has made up for inadequacies and shortcomings in the field of neologism studies in that there had been a significant lack of in-depth research in the area from the perspective of the semantic problems involved. In addition, Professor Yang also participated in the compiling, writing, and editing of An Introduction to Linguistics (Ge Benyi, Chief Editor), serving as one of that book’s principal editors.Furthermore, she also participated, as a principal member, in the research and development of a series of research topics in the Chinese Information/DataProcessing Seriesnational research project.