Description
In this work, the author is intended to exhibit the structure of the Chinese language in terms of grammar familiar to western readers. He realizes that the Chinese scholars do not study their own language by these rules. The very names we use to designate the part of speechnouns, verbs, adjective and adverb etc., were unknown in China until the influx of western learning. Nevertheless, the Chinese language was a polished instrument of speech ages before that date, and Chinese scholars were as learned and sometimes even as pedantic as the schoolmen of the middle ages. They moulded their style on the classic examples of antiquity, and Chinese literature attains as high a standard of excellence as that of any nation ancient or modern. The western students have neither the familiarity with the classics nor the phenomenal memories of Chinese scholars. As a result, the Chinese language often seems to them an amorphous collection of words and phrases which individually or collectively connote certain meanings. The book is the product of the extensive study of this language and its grammar.
