Chinese Grammar: A Theoretical Approach (Volume I)

Chinese Grammar: A Theoretical Approach is a major work in the history of modern Chinese linguistics. Written by Gao Mingkai, a distinguished Chinese theoretical linguist and grammarian, the book offers a systematic and theoretically informed study of Chinese grammar, with particular attention to the distinctive structural features of the Chinese language.Volume I introduces fundamental questions in Chinese grammatical research, including the scope and importance of Chinese, the existence and nature of Chinese grammar, Chinese words, the characteristics of Chinese, and methods for studying Chinese grammar. It further examines word classes, morphological changes, compound words, deixis, personal pronouns, numerals, classifiers, aspect, modal verbs, and related grammatical categories.Gao Mingkai's work is especially significant for its attempt to establish a scientific grammar system grounded in the characteristics of Chinese rather than simply applying European grammatical models. His discussions of Chinese word classes, content words, function words, grammatical categories, and the relationship between Chinese linguistic structure and general linguistics remain important for scholars of Chinese grammar, theoretical linguistics, historical linguistics, and Chinese language studies.As part of the Masterpieces in Chinese Linguistics series, this English edition makes a foundational work of Chinese grammatical scholarship available to international readers, researchers, students, and academic libraries.