This book compares the historical development of ideas about language in two major traditions of linguistic scholarship from either end of Eurasia – the Graeco-Roman and the Sinitic – as well as their interaction in the modern era.

Acknowledgments.- Briefing Key issues and organisational features of this book.- Prelude Framing the problem of language and meaning.- Part I Traditions of language study: Graeco-Roman vis-à-vis Sinitic.- Chapter 1 Language, writing and metaphors for language.- Snapshot 1 Dialectic; Analogy v. anomaly.- Chapter 2 Language in education and the foundations of linguistic scholarship.- Snapshot 2 Ordering of words; Language as manifestation of the way.- Chapter 3 The discovery of language history.- Snapshot 3 Characters and order of universe; Grammatical form as expression of mind.- Chapter 4 From philology to linguistics.- Interlude Establishing a modern paradigm.- Part II The making of modern grammatics: developing tools for the analysis of wording.- Chapter 5 From “(single) articulation” to “double articulation”: meaning ↔ wording ↔ sound.- Chapter 6 “Parts of speech” and “word classes”: defining basic categories for grammatical analysis.- Chapter 7 “Word grammar” and “clause grammar”: separating morphological from syntactic patterning.- Chapter 8 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations: structure and system.- Postlude The long 20th century of linguistics.- Debriefing The history of linguistics and the study of language.- References.

This book compares the historical development of ideas about language in two major traditions of linguistic scholarship from either end of Eurasia – the Graeco-Roman and the Sinitic – as well as their interaction in the modern era. It locates the emergence of language analysis in the development of writing systems, and examines the cultural and political functions fulfilled by traditional language scholarship. Moving into the modern period and focusing specifically on the study of “grammar” in the sense of morph syntax/ lexico grammar, it traces the transformation of “traditional” Latin grammar from the viewpoint of its adaptation to Chinese, and discusses the development of key concepts used to characterize and analyze grammatical patterns.

Addresses two major traditions of language analysis: European & Chinese Provides a sense of the broader social and cultural place of language analysis Gives equal weight to traditional and modern frameworks and their relationship Allows readers to develop a critical understanding of grammatical concepts Enables readers to place theories in intellectual traditions rather than “schools”

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