Wei Ren Libri

Focusing on the Pre-Qin period, this book delves into how Chinese philosophers like Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi interpreted signs, marking a pivotal era in Chinese philosophy akin to ancient Greece's intellectual flourishing. It highlights the contributions of the Hundred Schools, particularly Mohism and the School of Names, which laid the groundwork for semiotics in ancient China. Understanding their semiotic thought provides crucial insights into the foundations of traditional Chinese semiotics and its lasting impact on later scholarship.

Focusing on the use of networked autonomous agents, this book explores the application of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) in complex tasks across various fields, including space-based applications, smart grids, and machine learning. It highlights how local interactions among agents contribute to achieving overarching system goals. The text also reflects on the significant advancements in MAS technology over the past two decades, particularly in the realm of automatic control.

Pragmatic competence plays a key role in intercultural communication, particularly for students studying in a target community. This book investigates the effect of study abroad on second language learners’ productive and receptive pragmatic competences, as well as their cognitive processes during speech act production. It employs a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to explore learners’ pragmatic development over one year. The inclusion of a control group is a methodological strength of the longitudinal study, many such studies often not including a control group. In addition, the study longitudinally examines learners’ cognitive processes during study abroad with innovative and insightful analyses. The book makes an important contribution to second language pragmatics with regard to developmental changes in both speech act production and perception during such processes.