Shaping Cantonese Grammar – Early Western Contribution

Abstract

The first Westerners to learn and describe Cantonese were Protestant missionaries who arrived in China in the 19th century. Given the almost total lack of local linguistic tools, they began to present Cantonese in grammars, dictionaries, primers and phrasebooks, also devising Romanization systems to transcribe its sounds. The first attempt at describing Cantonese grammar was made by Robert Morrison in a section of his Grammar of the Chinese Language (1815). Many other works followed, compiled also by Catholic missionaries or lay scholars, and dedicated to the analysis and pedagogy of Cantonese. This paper will firstly offer an overview of the very early impressions of the language carried out by Westerners; it will then show how their analyses evolved, becoming more refined and detailed, and eventually − with to the work of T. O’Melia − grew more conscious and independent from the analyses of Mandarin, contributing ante litteram at debunking the myth of “one universal Chinese grammar”.