New Aspects of Classical Chinese Grammar

The objective of the collection of articles presented in this volume is to provide a representative and meaningful selection of present research work on Classical Chinese Grammar. Since the articles cover a temporal range from the Pre-Classical to the Medieval period, the term ‘Classical Chinese’ is used in a more generous sense. Two different but representative lines of research are predominant in this collection: the first focuses on the lexicon of Chinese, and the second focuses on its syntax or on the interface of its syntax and its semantics. Regarding the history of grammatical studies of Chinese, the first approach can be considered as a continuation and refinement of the traditional Chinese linguistic studies with new linguistic tools; the second approach follows and enhances the syntactic approach first proposed for the analysis of Chinese in the grammar of von der Gabelentz. In addition to these two general fields, a third and innovative field of research is included, focusing on the stratification of different linguistic registers in the Ancient Chinese language. With its selection of articles, this volume represents the multifaceted approaches presently employed to study the lexicon and the grammar of Classical Chinese, and it demonstrates the great progress the employment of different theoretical frameworks has induced in the analysis of the grammar Classical Chinese in recent times. This volume intends to convey the relevance of a meticulous and detailed study of the structural properties of Classical Chinese and to demonstrate that this study has to go beyond the mere analysis of apparent similarities.