Overview of Linguistic Studies in China: Statistical Analysis of Research Projects Financed by National Social Science Foundation (2001—2010)

Altogether 853 projects on linguistics were financed by the National Social Science Foundation from 2001 to 2010. To reveal the current situation and outlook of linguistic studies in China, this research made a statistical analysis of time of approval and initiation, forms of expected results,types of subject languages, and distribution of the key words of these projects. The results indicated an annual increase in the number of granted projects, especially in the youth projects; books take up a distinct proportion in result forms; projects about Chinese and English are much more than those about other languages; dialects, corpora, grammar and language teaching are current hot research topics.