《中国言法》：西方早期重要的汉语文言语法研究著作

Elements of Chinese Grammar(1814)by Joshua Marshman:An Important Monograph of Classical Chinese Grammar during the Early Stage in the West

英国传教士马士曼于1814年撰写的《中国言法》是西方汉语语法学史上一部重要的文言语法专著。相对于此前马若瑟的《汉语札记》和此后马建忠的《马氏文通》等同类著作而言,该著借鉴了历史比较语言学的研究方法和英语教学语法体系的框架,初步构建了汉语文言语法体系。该著兼有汉语作为第二语言教材的部分特点,涉及量词、语序等教学重点,对口语与书面语、汉字教学与语言教学等的关系也有所探讨。该著尚存不足和缺憾,如借用印欧语言的形态概念、重词法轻句法等。该著不仅具有汉语语法学史等史学价值,对当前对外汉语教材的编写亦可提供参考。

Joshua Marshman＇ s Elements of Chinese Grammar is an important monograph in the history of studies on classical Chinese grammar in the West. Compared with the two other books of the kind, namely H. Premare＇ s Notitia Linguae Sinicae and Ma Jianzhong＇ s Ma Shi Wen Tong, this book tentatively created the system of the classical Chinese grammar, by referring to the methodology of historical comparative linguistics and the framework of pedagogical English grammar. It also had some features of TCFL （ teaching Chinese as a foreign language） textbook which involves focal points such as measure words, word order and the relationship between spoken and written Chinese, etc. Though there were some deficiencies in it, such as copying the morphology concept of Indo-European languages, attaching more importance to morphology than syntax, it not only has historical value of Chinese grammatical studies, but also may provide a reference to writing TCFL textbooks today.