This two-volume set revisits the nature of nouns and verbs and linguistic categories in Chinese to unravel the different relationships between nouns and verbs in Chinese, English and other languages.
The study seeks to break free from the shackles of Western linguistic paradigms, which are largely based on Indo-European languages and to a great extent inappropriate for Chinese. To this end, the author proposes the verbs-as-nouns theory that sheds new light on the nature of Chinese grammar. The first volume focuses on word classes and nominalization, as well as problems with the analysis of Chinese grammar due to the traditional noun-verb opposition. It also examines the differences between Chinese and English, the referential and predicative nature of nouns and verbs, the asymmetry of the two, and the referentiality of predicates in Chinese. The second volume delves into distinctive aspects of the Chinese word class system, including complements and adverbials in Chinese, the typology and evolution of word classes, indicative and non-indicative negation, monosyllabic and disyllabic combinations, and the phenomenon of markedness reversal.
These volumes are essential reading for linguists and students studying Chinese linguistics, Chinese grammar, and contrastive linguistics.
Volume 1: 1. Introduction: Between Discarding and Recovering 2. Breaking with Earlier Assumptions 3. The Problems 4. The Verbs-as-Nouns Framework in Chinese 5. Realizational Relations and Constitutive Relations 6. The Asymmetry Between Nouns and Verbs 7. The Referentiality of Predicates Volume 2: 1. The problematic status of complements and adverbials 2. Chinese, Tongan, and Latin 3. Shì ‘be’ and yǒu ‘have/there be’ 4. The status and functions of the monosyllabic-disyllabic opposition 5. Markedness reversal and the inclusion pattern 6. Concluding remarks: Destruction and construction in grammatical studies
Biography
Shen Jiaxuan is Professor of Linguistics at Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His main research interests include contrastive studies between Chinese and English and grammatical theories.
