Grammar West to East (eBook)

This book compares the historical development of ideas about language in two major traditions of linguistic scholarship from either end of Eurasia - the Graeco-Roman and the Sinitic - as well as their interaction in the modern era. It locates the emergence of language analysis in the development of writing systems, and examines the cultural and political functions fulfilled by traditional language scholarship. Moving into the modern period and focusing specifically on the study of 'grammar' in the sense of morph syntax/ lexico grammar, it traces the transformation of 'traditional' Latin grammar from the viewpoint of its adaptation to Chinese, and discusses the development of key concepts used to characterize and analyze grammatical patterns.

?Edward McDonald gained his BA(Hons) from the University of Sydney in 1988, his MA from Peking University in 1992, and his PhD from Macquarie University in 1999, with theses on the clause and verbal group grammar of modern Chinese. He has taught linguistics, Chinese language, translation, semiotics, and music at universities in Australia, China, Singapore, and New Zealand. His recent research interests include the application of systemic functional theory to a range of languages including modern Chinese and Scottish Gaelic (Meaningful Arrangement: exploring the syntactic description of texts, Equinox 2008); Chinese language teaching and the hybrid concept of 'sinophone' (Learning Chinese, Turning Chinese: challenges to becoming sinophone in a globalised world, Routledge 2011).

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This book compares the historical development of ideas about language in two major traditions of linguistic scholarship from either end of Eurasia - the Graeco-Roman and the Sinitic - as well as their interaction in the modern era. It locates the emergence of language analysis in the development of writing systems, and examines the cultural and political functions fulfilled by traditional language scholarship. Moving into the modern period and focusing specifically on the study of "e;grammar"e; in the sense of morph syntax/ lexico grammar, it traces the transformation of "e;traditional"e; Latin grammar from the viewpoint of its adaptation to Chinese, and discusses the development of key concepts used to characterize and analyze grammatical patterns.