Understanding the Chinese Language

This textbook provides a cohesive and comprehensive introduction to Chinese linguistics for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of Chinese. It covers all the main subfields of linguistics, both theoretical and applied, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, second language acquisition, history of the Chinese language, dialectology and sociolinguistics.

Chris Shei is Associate Professor at Swansea University, UK.

Forward. Introduction 1.Chinese sounds 2. Chinese words 3. Chinese sentences 4. Speech acts 5. Sentence final particles 6. Chinese neologisms on the web