Ershi shiji Zhongguo yuyanxue fangfalun: 1898-1998 (Chinese linguistic methodology in the 20th century: 1898-1998) (review)

The following quotation from Kun Chang's article "Descriptive Linguistics" (1967) reflects a widespread opinion on contemporary linguistic research in China:

Chinese scholars have done almost no original work on descriptive theory. The theories they subscribe to can only be inferred from their linguistic descriptions. Mainland emphasis in linguistics is on practical applications.

The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (1994) likewise portrays the current state of Chinese linguistics as mainly using "theories developed in the West" (p. 527). Apart from the idea that it lacks originality, few linguists outside China have detailed knowledge of developments in Chinese linguistics during the twentieth century, let alone its methodology. Worse, the purported lack of originality seems to apply a fortiori to Chinese linguistic research.

Chen Baoya's aim in this book is to amend this view and to demonstrate what Chinese linguistics has to offer in the methodological domain. According to Chen, Chinese linguistic research in the twentieth century traveled a long way from imitating Western achievements in the field to developing independent methods of tackling the languages that are in many respects unlike any of the well-known Indo-European languages. Chen demonstrates that underlying this process there was constant progress in methodology, albeit often hidden, as noticed by Kun Chang, between the lines of descriptive expositions.

Although it embraces a period of one hundred years, the book is truly a work on methodology rather than a history of Chinese linguistics. However, while describing methodological issues, Chen does go through major linguistic movements and personalities in chronological order. Another interesting feature of the book is that the description of methodology is often constructed in comparison to major currents in Western linguistics in the twentieth century. Thus, by providing a precise historical context, Chen highlights the differences between Chinese and Western ways of dealing with linguistic data. The book encompasses all fields of linguistic research: syntax, phonology, historical linguistics, and dialectology. This is quite an unprecedented achievement in the comparative history of linguistics. One of the most interesting parts of the book is its account of the developments of the 1980s and 1990s. Even though many details may need more time for a balanced assessment, the overview gives the reader a fair picture of the present state of the art.

The book consists of two parts, corresponding to the two main periods that Chen distinguishes in Chinese linguistics in the twentieth century. The first period starts from the publication of Ma Jianzhong's Ma's Grammar [of the Classical Chinese language] in 1898 and ends in the 1960s. This period is described in chapters 1 to 4 as "Homogeneous Linguistics." Here "homogeneous" pertains to the character of the language data under description.

The second period comprises the time span from the 1960s up to 1998. This period is described in chapters 5 to 7 and is termed "Heterogeneous Linguistics," which is the study of language in the context of its relation to culture and society, both synchronically and diachronically.

Chapter 1 is devoted to Ma Jianzhong's theory of grammar, its methodological achievements, the problems it addresses, and finally its influence on the development of Chinese linguistics.

In chapter 2, the reader is introduced to structuralism, which was set in motion in China from early in the twentieth century with the publication of Chen Chengze's Draft of Chinese Grammar in 1922. The movement developed over the course of the century, reaching...