Language development in this paper refers to the growth and change of the two commonly used languages in Taiwan- namely, Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese. They have grown and changed in the last five decades through the expansion of vocabulary by means of word borrowings, and changes in semantic meaning and morphological and syntactic structures. The two forces contributing to such development can be briefly identified as the globalization of hegemonic English through translation of names or terms, and the influence of Taiwanese and other related factors. This research was based on long-term observation of language use in Taiwan, especially in the Taiwanese language newspapers and other writings from different sources. The data were then categorized into metalanguage. We examine in this paper the development of Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese by tracing their morphological, phonological, syntactic, and semantic sources. Finally, socio-political factors motivating the development are identified from the perspective of globalization and localization as two important overriding criteria in educational and linguistic contexts.
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淡江大學全球化、教育及語言國際研討會論文集=Proceedings of Tamkang International Conference on Globalization, Education and Language, pp.217-236
