Chinese Sentence Groups

Taking a systematic approach, this book studies the sentence group as an intermediate linguistic unit between sentence and paragraph, covering its definition, characteristics, classifications, construction and segmentation, pedagogical applications, and research implications across theoretical and applied linguistics.

The book makes several significant contributions. Firstly, it provides a rigorous definition of the sentence group and identifies six defining characteristics. Secondly, it develops a multidimensional classification system encompassing twelve structural relations, six functional types and the single layer versus multilayer distinction. Thirdly, it systematically examines both internal and external cohesion between adjacent groups, alongside internal and external segmentation procedures. Fourthly, it demonstrates the pedagogical value of sentence groups in grammar‑rhetorical instruction, language skill training, and logic teaching. Fifth, it explores the explanatory power of sentence groups in theoretical and applied research. Finally, it surveys both Chinese and international research traditions, revealing a convergence on the need for a unit intermediate between sentence and paragraph.

This book is intended for linguists, researchers, and students of Chinese language studies, grammar discourse analysis, applied linguistics, language pedagogy, natural language processing and artificial intelligence, concerned with discourse-level language phenomena. It will also benefit language teachers and educators involved in the teaching of first and second languages.

Wu Weizhang was a professor at the School of Liberal Arts, Communication University of China, and a distinguished linguist dedicated to teaching and research in the Chinese language. Her work spanned Chinese grammar, theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, and broadcast language, with particularly notable contributions to Chinese valency grammar and Chinese sentence-group studies.

Tian Xiaolin formerly served as an Honorary Research Fellow at Lingnan University and Director of the Center for Chinese Language Teaching and Testing. Her research interests encompass pedagogical grammar systems, sentence-group theory, and modern Chinese lexicon, most notably as an early pioneer in the in-depth study of sentence groups in the 1980s and the proposer of the new concept of “community words” in 1993.