Chinese Grammar: A Theoretical Approach (Volume I) (Masterpieces in Chinese Linguistics)

Chinese Grammar: A Theoretical Approach (Volume I) — The Foundational Framework of Chinese Morphology and Grammatical Theory

Serving as the foundational volume of the acclaimed Masterpieces in Chinese Linguistics Series, this book brings the pioneering grammatical theories of Professor Gao Mingkai to the global English-speaking audience for the first time.

In Volume I, Professor Gao establishes a rigorous theoretical foundation by defining the unique nature of Chinese grammar, critically evaluating and moving beyond the historical constraints of applying Western Indo-European grammatical models to the Chinese language. This volume concentrates primarily on General Introduction and Morphology. It tackles one of the most enduring debates in Sinology: the nature and classification of word classes in a language devoid of inflectional morphology.

The text provides a profound analysis of the characteristics of content words and function words, illustrating how Chinese utilizes lexical compounding and word order rather than morphological variations to manifest core grammatical categories. Volume I serves as an indispensable prerequisite for understanding the intricate syntactic and sentence patterns explored in Volume II.