The Evolution of Chinese Grammar from the Perspective of Language Contact

Abstract

Chinese language has been in contact with surrounding minority languages since ancient times. This chapter summarizes the evolution of Chinese grammar caused by contact based on previous studies. There are three main issues. First, the evolution of Chinese word order from the perspective of contact has been deeply discussed. Mandarin is not a typical SOV language, but it does have many features of SOV language, especially that the northwest dialects have almost all the word order features of SOV languages. From Old Chinese to Modern Chinese, the SOV features of northern Chinese gradually increase. The increase of these SOV features is related to the influence of the northern Altaic languages and other SOV languages. Second, the grammatical evolution of Buddhist scriptures translated into Chinese in the Six Dynasties has been studied from the perspective of contact. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhism was introduced into China, and the translation of Buddhist scriptures led to the indirect contact between Chinese and Sanskrit and Pali, which had a great impact on the Chinese language at that time. Third, the evolution of Chinese grammar after the Liao and Jin dynasties has also been developed from the study of the contact perspective. The Altai people ruled northern China in Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing Dynasties, which led to the direct contact between Chinese and varieties of the Altaic language. Finally, the Altai people who lived in the Central Plains switched to Chinese, and Chinese was also influenced by the Altaic language to a certain extent.KeywordsChinese grammarMandarinLanguage contactBuddhist scripturesAltaic languages