The evolution of Chinese grammar / Yuzhi Shi, National University of Singapore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shi, Yuzhi, 1963- author.

Standardized Title:

Han yu yu fa yan hua shi. English

Language:

Chinese

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese language--Grammar.

Chinese language.

Chinese language--Grammar--History.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Verb phrase.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax--Research--History.

Chinese classics--History and criticism.

Chinese classics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxi, 583 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

The Chinese language has the longest well-documented history among all human languages, making it an invaluable resource for studying how languages develop and change through time. Based on a twenty-year long research project, this pioneering book is the English version of an award-winning study originally published in Chinese. It provides an evolutionary perspective on the history of Chinese grammar, tracing its development from its thirteenth-Century BC origins to the present day. It investigates all the major changes in the history of the language within contemporary linguistic frameworks, and illustrates these with a wide range of examples taken from every stage in the language's development, showing how the author's findings are relevant to contemporary descriptive, theoretical, and historical linguistics. Shedding light on the essential properties of Chinese and, ultimately, language in general, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students of Asian linguistics, historical linguistics and syntactic theory.

Contents:

Conventions used in the examples; Abbreviations and symbols; 1. Some preliminaries; 2. Copular word and construction; 3. Focus and wh-word; 4. Serial verb construction; 5. Disyllabification; 6. Resultative construction; 7. Information structure; 8. Passive construction; 9. Disposal construction; 10. Verb copying and reduplication; 11. Comparative construction; 12. Ditransitive construction; Aspect and tense; 14. Negotiation; 15. Boundedness of predicate; 16. Classifier; 17. Demonstratives from classifiers; 18. Distal demonstratives from phonological derivation; 19. Pronouns, plurals and diminutives; 20. Structural particles; 21. Word order and relative clause; 22. Conclusions.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 16 Mar 2023).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781108918350

1108918352

9781108924306

1108924301

9781108921831

1108921833

OCLC:

1373629425