Professor Jonathan J. Webster is Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong.

• Introduction, Jonathan Webster (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong); 1. Intelligent Language Applications - Christian Matthiessen (Macquarie University, Australia); 2. Topical Theme in Chinese, Fang Yan (Tsinghua University, China); 3. Realizational Systems, David Butt (Macquarie University, Australia); 4. Nominalization, Verbalization and Grammatical Metaphor - Zhu Yongsheng (Fudan University, China). 5. Explicitation, Erich Steiner (University of Saarland, Germany); 6. Multimodal Meaning - Hu Zhuanglin (Peking University, China); 7. Ontogenesis of Grammatics, Geoff Williams (University College, London, UK); 8. Code-switching and SFL, Huang Guowen (Sun Yat-sen University, China); 9. Understanding Semantic Theory, Ruqaiya Hasan; 10. Creativity and Linguistic Globalization, Edwin Thumboo (National University of Singapore, Singapore); 11. Linguistic Structure and SFL, John Bateman (University of Bremen, Germany); 12. Systemic Functional Grammar and Language Technology, Jon Patrick (University of Sydney, Australia).

"Not many linguistics put their theory on the line and purposefully re/design it for the applications it needs to serve. This group of scholars does so, par excellence, across such diverse arenas as education, computer science, language policy and medicine. East meets West in a series of insightful discussions befitting the launch of the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies at City University Hong Kong"