Social Sciences in China Review

No.2, 2018

 

The Influence of Chinese and Western Theoretical Interaction on the Development of Views on Sentence Types in the Chinese Language（Abstract）

 

Liu Tanzhou

 

The vernacular movement has gone through 100 years, and it has been 120 years since the publication of the first Chinese grammar book, Ma’s Grammar (Mashi Wentong). For more than a century, Chinese linguistics has been taking the path of exploring the laws of the Chinese language by learning from Western linguistic methods and constantly revising them according to facts in Chinese. During this process, Chinese scholars have gradually come to realize that, between the Western linguistic categories and frameworks and the Chinese languages, there are some fundamental contradictions that cannot be resolved, no matter how hard one tries. The issue of Chinese sentence types is just a case in point. The Chinese language must be understood in light of the Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy. Chinese linguists have gained cultural selfconfidence in the study of Chinese grammar through combining their extensive knowledge of world languages and their profound understanding of Chinese culture. This combination has given birth to some new grammatical categories and systems, which have simultaneously responded to and enriched new Western linguistic theories. These achievements have in turn enhanced the cultural self-confidence of Chinese linguists.