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The Chinese language has an attested history spanning more than three millennia, and linguists have reconstructed forms spoken millennia prior to the earliest known examples of written Chinese c. 1200 BC. Chinese may be viewed either as a holistic unit with great internal topological variation, or as an entire language family comprising many groupings of varieties. Written Chinese makes use of Chinese characters, one of the four independent inventions of writing agreed by scholars, and the only one of these remaining in use. Speakers and readers exhibit a high degree of diglossia between both local varieties and Standard Chinese, and between written and spoken language. The historically predominant written form of the language is known as Literary Chinese.

Overviews

  • Chan, Sin-Wai, ed. (2016). The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language. Routledge. ISBN  978-1-317-38249-2.
  • DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN  978-0-824-81068-9.
  • Harbsmeier, Christoph; Needham, Joseph, eds. (2006) [1998]. Science and Chinese Society: Language and Logic. Science and civilisation in China. Vol. VII:1 (Reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN  978-0-521-57143-2.
  • Kane, Daniel A. (2006). Chinese Language: A Survey of Its History and Current Usage. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle. ISBN  978-0-804-83853-5.
  • Kornicki, Peter (2018). Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia. Oxford University Press. ISBN  978-0-192-51869-9.
  • Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. ISBN  978-0-521-29653-3.

Phonology

Grammar

  • Chappell, Hilary, ed. (2001). Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives. Oxford University Press. ISBN  978-0-198-29977-6.
  • Geaney, Jane (2022). The Emergence of Word-meaning in Early China: A Grammatology. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN  978-1-438-48895-0.
  • Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1995). Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ISBN  978-0-774-80541-4.
  • Vogelsang, Kai (2021). Introduction to Classical Chinese. Oxford University Press. ISBN  978-0-198-83497-7.

Morphosyntax

Historical linguistics

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

  • Branner, David Prager, ed. (2006). The Chinese Rime Tables: Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology. Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Vol. 271. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN  978-9-027-24785-8.
  • Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984). Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ISBN  978-0-774-80192-8.

Sociolinguistics

Varieties and dialectology

Grammatology

  • Li, Yu (2020). The Chinese Writing System in Asia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Routledge. ISBN  978-1-138-90731-7.

Palaeography

Lexicography

Dictionaries

See also

References