Classical Chinese Grammar

[OneEye]

I'm auditing a course in the coming semester on Classical Chinese grammar. In getting ready for it I've collected a few books on the subject, and I thought it might be useful to list them out here for those who may be looking for this sort of thing. I don't have the knowledge to make any real judgements on the accuracy or currency of the analysis presented in any of the books, but I will say what I know if there's anything.

Edwin Pulleyblank, Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar. University of British Columbia Press, 1995.

This is the only resource in English on this list, and I guess it's about the best thing we have in English. It's not especially thorough (hence the title), and I gather that this book is not well-received among scholars in Taiwan, so proceed with that in mind, but if you really need English, this is your book. The third volume of Shadick's A First Course in Literary Chinese is another option, but it's out of print and from what I understand, it's considered outdated and unwieldy. There is a Chinese translation of Pulleyblank available, but I don't remember the title.

劉景農，《漢語文言語法》。中華書局，1994.

This is an older book (Liu died in 1961), but it comes up all the time. It's the main text for the class I'll be taking, it comes up on every syllabus I've seen here, and I've seen it recommended by many Western scholars as well. The book presents a detailed explanation of the grammar with lots of examples from literature, and has already helped me a lot in the few days I've owned it. My copy is in 繁體字, not sure if there's a 簡體 version available, but I'd imagine so.

左松超，《漢語語法（文言篇）》。五南，2008.

This book is much simpler and more shallow than the previous title, as it is specifically intended for foreigners. If you have no need of an in-depth grammar like the others on this list (Pulleyblank aside), this is a good choice. Clear explanations and lots of examples. According to the back cover, it is also appropriate for Taiwanese high school students. Apparently everything must be multipurpose. 繁體字.

李佐豐，《古代漢語語法學》。商務印書館，2005.

Another book recommended for my class, this one's a good 200 pages longer than 劉景農 above (which is ~350 pages itself). I just bought this one today, but it looks like there's a good deal of sentence analysis in this one. Again, lots of examples from the literature, mostly pre-Qin it looks like. 簡體字.

楊伯峻、何樂士，《古漢語語法及其發展》（上、下冊）。語文出版社，2001.

At nearly 1100 pages, this is the behemoth of the bunch. This book, like 劉景農 above, has been on pretty much every syllabus I've looked at. Another of 楊伯峻's grammar books, 《文言文法》, shows up all the time too, and he also seems to be well-known for his work on 虛詞. The first volume (513 pages) is dedicated to parts of speech, with lots of examples (more than 8000 according to the preface) as always, and the second volume deals with syntax. It looks to be very thorough, and the few examples I looked at on a flip through are clearly explained in relatively simple prose (this is not always the case in Sinology; one of my 訓詁學 books is written entirely in 文言文, despite having been written only 20 years ago). It discusses changes in the grammar from 甲骨文 up through 清代, but it looks like most of the examples are taken from the classical period. 簡體字.

[Daan]

Great post!

This somehow reminds me of the vague plan I had last summer of translating a Dutch dictionary of Classical Chinese 虛字 into English. I co-edited a new edition of that dictionary last year and we had been planning to translate it into English as well. Maybe I should just put a rudimentary English translation up on a Wiki or so, and post the link here for everyone who might want to help improve it. I think the original author would be okay with that, but I'd have to check. Anyone up for that?

[navaburo]

Thanks for the list OneEye. Be sure to post again later when you have had time to get to know these. Maybe I'll invest in one once I hit a milestone in the 文言文 study-group we have going.

[Kenny同志]

I happen to have the book written by 劉景農. Haven't found time to finish it though, so I can't comment.

one of my 訓詁學 books is written entirely in 文言文,

What's the name of this book?

[OneEye]

I believe it's just called 訓詁學, and I don't remember the author. I haven't bought it yet (it's on my reading list as one I'll have to read for a class next year), but on a quick flip through at the book store that's what it looked like. Fairly easy for 文言文, but still not 白話. Much like reading 蔡元培 or 胡適.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks. I have a lot of books on my reading list and I am not particularly eager to read the book soon. That said, I will be on the lookout for it.

[Hugh]

I have a copy of Du's Handbook of Classical Chinese Grammar (ISBN 9781904623748 , on Google books here), and on the whole I think it's very good. The main thing about it is that it's very down-to-earth, and doesn't give in to the temptation to be overly formal just because it's about Classical Chinese.

[OneEye]

I'm unfamiliar with that book. Thanks for mentioning it.

I was taking a look through 《漢語文言語法》 today and was disappointed before I even finished the first chapter. 劉景農 essentially says there are two kinds of Chinese, 文言 and 現代語. He then goes on to explain the differences between these two languages in a fairly ridiculous way. For one, he talks about how "文言" is mostly single-syllable words and "現代語" contains more polysyllabic words. He then goes on to explain this phenomenon by saying that people began using polysyllabic words because things got more complicated and people needed a way to express things more clearly. As if people were communicating in a really confused, imprecise way (I could just see it: 戰國相聲) until suddenly somebody decided it was a good idea to start using polysyllabic words.

More likely, something changed in the phonology of Chinese (specifically, syllables were simplified and thus less distinct) that necessitated disambiguation in some way. And this was likely sometime in the Han Dynasty or so — not exactly 現代. Anyway, this doesn't engender much trust in the rest of the book, so while I'll still be using it (it's required reading for the class I'm auditing), I'll be paying more attention to the more recently-published of the books I mentioned above. Of course, I expected it to be somewhat outdated, so I shouldn't be surprised. I guess what's more surprising is that they're still using it as the main textbook for this class.

[Daan]

I found this cool piece (and the accompanying PDF) on the syllabic question the other day. It turns out to be surprisingly hard to empirically support the idea that there were more single-syllable words in the pre-Han period than in the Han dynasty...cool, right?

[Hofmann]

Maybe it was trying to be politically correct with the 白話文 movement, implying that 文言 never resembled a practical language.

[OneEye]

I kind of thought that too. It does start out with a 毛澤東同志曾經說過 type of thing in the first chapter, and I believe it was originally published in 1959.

Daan, thanks for the links. Interesting stuff, though it certainly does feel (subjectively) like there are more polysyllabic words in post-Han 文言文.

[OneEye]

What's the name of this book?

kenny, it's 訓詁學 by 陳新雄. He was a professor in the 國文研究所 at 國立台灣師範大學 until he passed away last year. I've since found out that his writing style is (to quote another thread) 半文半白而偏於文. I'm reading through his 文字學 book, and here's an example (after a quote from the 說文解字·敘): "此許慎說文字緣起之明文也。不過，關於文字之起源，歷來傳說亦不一，茲歸納如下。" So not all that difficult, but (for me at least) it's slower going than my books written in a more 白話 style. Lots of "是書者，……也," heavy use of 係 as the copula, etc. His books also tend to be really long (the two-volume 訓詁學 is something like 1250 pages), because he seems to like quoting everyone who's ever said anything about whatever he's talking about.

[Kenny同志]

Thank you for the information, One Eye. The size of the book astounded me. Is it any good except heavy quotation?

[OneEye]

I haven't started 訓詁學 yet, but the 文字學 book is pretty good so far. He was a very well-respected scholar, fairly famous as far as this field goes. He's no 裘錫圭 I guess, but not many are. His books on 訓詁學, 文字學, and 音韻學 are pretty standard reference material in the field from what I can tell, though I'm very much a 菜鳥 still.

[Kenny同志]

I just found his 陳新雄語言學論學集 on amazon.cn but no his 訓詁學. The description of the book on the webpage included an excerpt of the preface, which, to my delight, was in very idiomatic文言 (see the quote). Mr Chen seems to have been critical of the 白話文 movement and had a lot of sympathy for the miserable condition 文言 was in. Judging by the preface and what you said above, I have a feeling that his 訓詁學 wouldn’t be a bad read. I’ll see if I can find it somewhere else.

Quote:

余自入学启蒙，因语体文盛行，新学之徒，弃家鸡而乐野凫，怪旧艺而趋简易。故所读者皆粗浅俚俗，浮谈无根，识字之外，别无内涵。翰藻之义，既无所归；沈思 之事，亦未与闻。脑中空白，略识之无而已矣。1955年，余考入台湾师范大学国文学系就读，其时方离神州，初泊海岛。标榜言文一致、手口相将之浅儒，妄改 文字，抛弃国故之浅识，方且高踞学界，风靡一时。言辞章则务逐浅俚，语文字则尽变本源。正所谓“天地闭，贤人隐”之时也。先师瑞安林景伊先生，本其瑞安家 学，蕲春师授，以名父之子，名师之徒，登坛讲学。惩空疏之多弊，痛学术之沦亡，乃出其邃密之旧学，深沈之新知，以启迪颛蒙，拯救危亡。余适逢其会，先生授 以治学之方，勉以勤学之要。于是始稍知语言文字之本源，略识类族辨物之大义。

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[mikelove]

Sad note: Prof. Pulleyblank (see first post) died yesterday in Vancouver at age 90. In addition to his grammar books he was also well-known for his studies of historical Chinese phonology. Between him and John DeFrancis we seem to be losing a lot of legends in the field lately...

[Kobo-Daishi]

MikeLove wrote:

Sad note: Prof. Pulleyblank (see first post) died yesterday in Vancouver at age 90.

That is sad to hear, though, 90 is a long life.

It's too bad he never got to finish his classical Chinese dictionary.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/21575-concise-dictionary-of-classical-chinese/

Kobo.