Selected Papers on Modern Chinese Grammar in the 20th Century

Author: Ma Qingzhu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This collection includes 61 papers, with a focus on those that combine semantic expression for Chinese grammar analysis. It also includes other articles for reference, showcasing the development trajectory and various research tendencies in modern Chinese grammar studies. Chinese grammar has been studied for a century and is now maturing, making it necessary to summarize its progress. I was responsible for the National Social Science Fund Project "Theories and Methods of Chinese Grammar Analysis Combining Semantic Expression in the Past 20 Years" (Project No.: 98BYY018). This book is one of the outcomes of that project. Among the various branches of Chinese linguistics, modern Chinese grammar is a hot field with numerous researchers and achievements, making it impossible to review them all in just a few years. To help middle and high school teachers, university students, graduate students, and other grammar enthusiasts gain an overview of modern Chinese grammar research through dozens of articles, Commercial Press invited me to compile this book. The title is "Selected," and I felt the pressure and found it challenging. However, I still aimed high, inspired by the Guwen Guanzhi (Essentials of Classical Chinese), edited by Wu Chucai and Wu Dihou during the Kangxi era of the Qing Dynasty, which included 222 articles by 60 authors and remains popular after over three centuries. To ensure as much objectivity and fairness as possible, to guarantee the representativeness of the selected articles, and to serve as a starting point for further research, we did three things:
1. Conducted a citation analysis of several major journals published since 1985, 100 specialized books, and 30 doctoral dissertations on Chinese grammar, using a 4,000-person-year statistic. If selected purely based on citation frequency, among the 81 articles cited more than 20 times (with self-citations counted as half), the papers of only three scholars—Zhu Dexi, Lü Shuxiang, and Lu Jianming—would account for nearly 30 articles. Five authors would take up thirty-something articles, and ten authors would account for half of the total. This would limit the book to selecting papers by only a dozen or so authors. To include more authors, we rigidly limited the selection to no more than three papers per author, considering that frequently cited authors often have collected works, self-selected collections, or anthologies.
2. Distributed a questionnaire to over 40 peer experts, using the list of articles in Introduction to Grammar Research compiled by Mr. Xu Shu, to gather opinions and learn about paper award statuses at various institutions.
3. Based on individual feedback gathered at academic conferences and discussions with some of my PhD students, we finalized the selections. This resulted in 61 papers by 48 authors published before the end of 1999, with a focus on discussions of specific issues that are theoretically and methodologically valuable, excluding articles already fully included in Introduction to Grammar Research.
Following Commercial Press's advice, Selected aims to include papers from as many institutions as possible, with a focus on those that combine semantic expression for Chinese grammar analysis, while also including other articles for reference to reflect the development trajectory and various research tendencies in modern Chinese grammar studies. The book prioritizes award-winning papers, ensuring at least one-third of the papers listed in provincial and ministerial-level awards are included. Over four-fifths of the papers are written by PhD supervisors, who account for three-fourths of the total authors, with contributions from all modern Chinese grammar PhD programs and some master's programs in China in 1998. Many other worthy papers were left out due to space constraints, and their introductions can be found in Commercial Press's Annotated Bibliography of Modern Chinese Grammar Works in the 20th Century. Papers by overseas scholars are planned for a separate compilation.