Mingkai Gao / Rong Zhou
Chinese Grammar: A Theoretical Approach, Volume II continues Gao Mingkai’s systematic and theoretically grounded study of Chinese grammar. As the second volume of this major work, it focuses on sentence construction and sentence patterns, offering a detailed account of how Chinese grammatical relations are formed, organized, and expressed.This volume examines relations of determination, determinative particles, relations of direction, directed words, apposition, coordination, contact relationships, Chinese sentence structure, copulas, elliptical and absolute sentences, complex sentences, inclusive sentences, and compound sentences. It further explores major sentence patterns in Chinese, including negative, interrogative, dubitative, imperative, and exclamatory propositions.Gao Mingkai’s analysis is significant for its effort to explain Chinese grammar on the basis of Chinese linguistic structure rather than by mechanically applying European grammatical models. His approach places particular emphasis on syntax, word order, function words, grammatical relations, and the distinctive ways in which Chinese expresses meaning without relying on inflectional morphology.As part of the Masterpieces in Chinese Linguistics series, this English edition makes an important work of Chinese grammatical scholarship accessible to international readers, researchers, students, and academic libraries. It is especially relevant to scholars of Chinese linguistics, syntax, grammar theory, historical linguistics, and Chinese language studies.
