The Sweet Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Grammar Studies and Henry Sweet

Abstract

Since the second half of the 1910s, a major movement in China for the reform of the language arose. The goal of this linguistic revolution was to overcome the discrepancy between the archaic-sounding written language and the non-standardized spoken varieties. A uniform language, with standardized spoken and written forms, was necessary for the literacy of the masses; this, in turn, could help them take part in the wider process of cultural modernization of the country. Modernization of the language implied also the modernization of its grammatical description, which had before been modelled on Western categories. During the 1910s and the 1920s, Chinese linguists started a criticism of Western grammatical categories and tried to design new categories on their own. The establishment of logical foundations for each grammatical notion and the adoption of a scientific method of research were considered the best ways for a modern grammar but yet suitable to Chinese grammatical feature. The linguist who seems to have inspired such a revolution in Chinese grammatical study was Henry Sweet. This paper will show that, apart from textual similarities between Sweet's New English Grammar and some Chinese grammars of the 1920s, which have been already pointed out by several scholars, there exist broader resonances in their adoption of a scientific method, their fondness for spoken language, and the choral nature of their works, the production of an entire group of scholars.