Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

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Westernization of Chinese Grammar
(2,427 words)

Westernized grammatical innovations in Chinese were largely the result of large-scale translation of Western texts beginning in the late nineteenth century. Translations into Chinese were done primarily via Japanese translations of those texts or directly from English, but also from other European languages. Because the overwhelming majority of Chinese university students going abroad studied in Japan, Japanese lexical and grammatical features used to translate Western texts came to dominate Chi…

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Edward GUNN, “Westernization of Chinese Grammar”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 01 April 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000450>
First published online: 2015



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