The Study Of The Chinese Language By The Westerners Living In China During The Latter Part Of The19^thCentury

The China Review, or Notes and Queries on the Far East (1872-1901), is an influential English language periodical focused on sinological studies published in Hongkong from1872to1901. It reflects the latest development in sinological studies achieved by westerners in the latter part of the19th century. Based on an exhaustive review of the linguistic research articles on the Chinese language in all the25volumes of The China Review, referring to the related periodicals such as The Chinese Repository, The Chinese Recorder and other important monographs on Chinese linguistics, the author examines the achievements made by westerners in this field, analyses and summarizes their research methods and results, and tries to find out their theoretical sources in the history of western linguistics and the history of Chinese philology, hoping to supplement the writing of the academic history.Although in recent years great importance has been attached to works on the Chinese language written by westerners in modern history, those that have been introduced and explored are mostly grammar books and textbooks prepared for the study of Chinese as a second language, the feature of which is the synochronic descriptions of the phonetic system and the grammatical system of the language. Achievements made in these two aspects have been recognized in academic history writing. But these do not tell the whole story. Sinological periodicals represented by The China Review reveal richer connotations in the westerners’research work.According to the exploration of the literature, the westerners’research work on the Chinese language displays the following characteristics:First, influenced by European linguistic thoughts, much attention was paid to the diachronic exploration of the Chinese language. Second, pushed by practical needs, much work was done in spoken language research and language learning research. The author illustrates the five linguistic study subjects sorted out from The China Review in the following five chapters.The first chapter, The Historical Comparative Study of the Chinese language, illustrates the proposal of introducing European historical comparative linguistic method to the study of the Chinese historical phonology put forward by Joseph Edkins and other scholars. Criticisms made by E. H. Parker, O. T. Franke and E. J. Eitel are also reviewed, which mainly include criticisms over the theological theory in Edkin’s linguistic thoughts and the violations of the principles of historical comparative linguistics in his research method.The second chapter, Dictionary Compilation and the Study of Chinese Words and Characters, discusses efforts made by western scholars to follow the historical principle of European lexicography in Chinese dictionary compilation. In order to embody etymological relations in the arrangement of words and characters in dictionary compilation, they carried out a research on "phonetic-primitive" system, during the process of which the relations between the form, sound and meaning of a Chinese character were thoroughly discussed.The third chapter, Reflections on the Origin and Evolution of the Chinese Language, introduces the series of academic essays written by T. T. Watters. Emphasis was put on his investigation into interjections, onomatopoeic words and foreign words in Chinese. A prominent characteristic in Watters’research work is his interest in considering the historical origin of the Chinese language as well as the external and internal impetus acting on its evolution.The fourth chapter, Progress in the Learning and Teaching of the Chinese Language, outlines the learning methods summarized by western learners and the development of language textbook compiling. Due to the influence of the second language teaching theory in Europe and the practical needs of language learning, practicability, pertinence and the implicit learning of grammatical knowledge were highly valued in textbook compilation.The last chapter, Westerners’Opinions about Issues Relevant to the Chinese Language Reform, discusses westerners’ proposals for making a uniform scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet as an auxiliary writing system for Chinese characters and substituting vernacular Chinese for classical Chinese in writing. Discussions about uniform scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet and efforts devoted to making and improving the scheme can be seen in all the sinological periodicals and other treatises on the Chinese language. Advocacy of vernacular writing centered around translation and publicizing of the Holy Bible. Its concrete contents and connotations are different from the vernacular movement launched by Chinese intellectuals in the early20th century.