This book is intended to provide a foundation in the grammar of
classical Chinese on which the student who plans to specialize in
classical studies can build, and to give the student of modern
Chinese sufficient knowledge of literary Chinese for his
purposes.
The material was developed over twenty years for use in the
course "Introduction to Classical Chinese," as taught at Cornell
University, where students of Chinese history and literature began
their study of the literary language after one year of modern
Chinese, and students in modern fields after two years. It is
therefore assumed that the student can already pronounce Chinese
words, use a system of romanization, read and write a few hundred
Chinese characters, and understand simple passages of modern
Chinese.
The language studied in this book took shape in the latter half
of the first millennium B.C. and persists as a living medium of
expression today. Bernhard Karlgren has said of it: "All
grammatical expedients which have been current at any time in the
past, can be used promiscuously in the literature of later
epochs."
Texts 1 22 in Volume I constitute the core of the course. With
the accompanying Exercises (also in Volume I), they provide
material for about forty class sessions, thus leaving time in a
normal academic year to take up a selection from Texts 23 34 and
the Additional Texts A N. (All are included in Volume I.) Most of
the first twenty-two texts are from classical works of the
formative period when the basic syntax was established. The
remaining texts illustrate later grammatical forms and contain
subject matter of considerable variety."
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!