"《The Readings of The Compendium of Chinese Grammar》(Century Library)"

Author: Lu Shuxiang, Wang Haifeng (editors)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The "Mashiyutong" is a pioneering work in modern linguistic theory applied to Chinese grammar, holding a landmark significance in the history of Chinese linguistics. This renowned grammatical treatise was written in 1898. As an innovative work, it has always been challenging to read and use. The distinguished linguist Professor Lu Shuxiang devoted significant effort to annotating, introducing, and commenting on the entire work of Mashiyutong, guiding readers on how to approach it. This made Mashiyutong more accessible and searchable. The current revision incorporates the latest findings from the textual criticism of Mashiyutong. Existing versions of Mashiyutong have been inconvenient for reading and reference, so we compiled this reader to address these shortcomings. The layout has been improved to make it a "readable" work, and an index has been compiled to facilitate researchers in retrieving content. This book has made necessary adjustments to the original book's division into volumes and sections, with detailed chapters marked by fish-tailed brackets 〔〕. Titles have been added where needed. The original book's examples are continuous, but this edition starts each example on a new line and numbers them sequentially, using parentheses （）. The numbering restarts for each chapter, and when citing examples from other chapters, the chapter number is added in Chinese. Since there are numerous examples, they have been categorized, with original explanations or newly compiled sentences highlighted for emphasis. Key words in examples are emphasized, and secondary keywords are enclosed in circles. In the original book, some examples were incomplete, making them difficult to understand, but this edition has supplemented them with full sentences. The base text of this edition is the annotated version by Zhang Xichen, with revisions compared against the Guangxu Jiachen edition published by the Commercial Press. However, Zhang only annotated the examples, not the main text, leaving some errors uncorrected and introducing new ones. The original book contains many incorrect or missing examples, and Zhang's corrections were recorded in annotations, which this edition does not reproduce in full. Despite Zhang's diligent work, there were still many missed corrections, particularly in the latter half. All errors we identified have been corrected without additional annotations. Some examples in Mashiyutong do not align with the preceding explanations, and the supplementary notes are sometimes unsatisfactory. The annotated version by Zhang often cites corrections from other scholars, which this edition selectively incorporates into the footnotes. In Zhang's annotations, there are multiple comparisons between Mashiyutong's arguments and those of others, as well as critiques of its grammatical system. This edition does not include these comparisons lightly, as they extend beyond the scope of a single work's annotations and pertain to the history of linguistics. To assist readers new to Mashiyutong, we have written a detailed introduction that explains its grammatical system and offers some commentary.