On Chinese Grammar in the Perspective of History —— A Review of <i>History of Chinese Grammar</i> by Wang Li

Abstract

Wang Li pioneered the study of history of Chinese grammar. History of Chinese Grammar by him is the first general history of Chinese grammar in China. History of Chinese Grammar has made a comprehensive and detailed description and analysis of the problems such as the attribution of parts of speech, the usage, meaning and evolution of words, the emergence and development of syntactical structure, word-formation, and so on. Moreover, the analysis of the historical evolution of Chinese reflects the ideas and methods of grammaticalization theory in modern linguistics, which pays attention to observe the critical environment and the syntactic markers of grammatical evolution. The historical perspective of this book and the view of systematicness and graduality needed in the study of grammar also have a profound impact on later researchers. Limited to the level of research at that time, this book inevitably has some views that need to be further discussed and revised, but the review of it is beneficial to the in-depth study of Chinese historical grammar.