A Tentative Analysis of the Origin of Middle Chinese Grammar and Its Historical Position

Middle Chinese is the language used in the period from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty. In recent years researches of Middle Chinese have attracted scholars5 attention. While it inherited some characteristics from the grammar of Ancient Chinese, the morphology and syntax of Middle Chinese underwent obvious elimination and new birth, an important content which laid the foundation for the further evolution of the Early Modem Chinese grammar. Numerous grammatical phenomena started to appear in the Tang and Song Dynasties. The grammar was going through a change in which new formsreplaced old ones, thus being the mediator in inheriting the archaic and beginning the early modem grammar, and therefore occupying an important position in the history of Chinese.