| James Summers, one of the most influential sinologists in UnitedKingdom, was the Professor of Chinese studies in medium-term of19thcentury at Kings College, University of London. The Rudiments of theChinese Language (1864) was written during his teaching of Chinese inthe United Kingdom and was published in London. This book was writtenspecifically for the British who was going to China, with strongpracticability. This essay is divided into five parts: Chapter I isintroduction, which notes the significance of the topic, introducesresearch achievements at home and abroad, the theories, methodsand the sources of corpus; besides, this section presents the life andmajor writings of James Summers and analyses The Rudiments of theChinese Language’s main contents, writing style of and so on.Chapter IIanalyzes phonetic mark methods of The Rudiments of the ChineseLanguage, compares the pinyin phonetic system of this book with thepinyin systems of Thomas Taylor Meadows and Thomas FrancisWade,analyzes the phonetic characteristics of the programmes andevaluates it. Chapter III analyzes the grammar of The Rudiments of theChinese Language, including the morphology and syntax, generalizesand describes the main grammar points in this book. Initially, the eassymainly analyses of the characteristics of the parts of sepeech of TheRudiments of the Chinese Language, then it summarizes the languagephenonemons that appears in the book, analyzes the phrase structuresand syntactic structures. Besides, those grammars are compared withthe grammars in A Handbook of the Chinese Language in order toassess the grammar of the former book. The fourth chapter analyses thevocabulary. It focuses on the analysis the quantity, construction andarranging way of vocabulary in the exercises and vocabulary lists. Itanalyzes the chosing of the vocabulary to see whether it meets the need as a reference book of primary Chinese learning. Then the eassycompares it with The Progressive Lessons in Chinese, to evaluate thevocabulary part. Chapter Ⅴ is evaluation, based on these researches,it gives a conclusion about advantages and disadvantages of TheRudiments of The Chinese Language. The Rudiments of the ChineseLanguage is a primary speaking guidebook. From simple to difficult, itgives a comprehensive introduction on the nature of the Chineselanguage form the three dimensions of pronunciation, vocabulary andgrammar step by step. It’s a positive instruction in Chinese at that time inUnited Kingdom with a large demand. |
