Introduction − Aspects of the grammatization of the chinese language

Abstract

The author of the passage hereabove is Joshua Marshman (1768–1837), an English Protestant missionary to India who in 1814 published Clavis Sinica, a work on the Chinese language, including a presentation of the elements of Chinese grammar. Marshman was, undoubtedly, a pioneer of the study of Chinese grammar: his Clavis Sinica was one of the earliest grammars of Chinese and his research provided a very deep insight into the matter. Therefore, he is usually included among the scholars who contributed most to the development of studies of Chinese grammar. Yet from his words it can be assumed that he had no knowledge of native Chinese grammar studies and therefore, as far as this linguistic branch was concerned, he flatly dismissed Chinese traditional linguistic research: grammar studies, as Marshman puts it, simply do not exist in China. While in 17th and 18th century essays on the Chinese language, written by European missionaries, Chinese was described as radically diverse, diametrically opposed, and the nature of grammatical studies in traditional China was not a matter of debate, the cliché of the absence of grammar studies in China began to