A Comparison of Two Grammars： The Indo—European Languages and Chinese Language

【Abstract】： This paper discusses the grammatical similarities and dissimilarities between the Indo-European Languages and Chinese language.

【Key words】： grammar， grammatical theories， Indo-European languages， Chinese language， similarities， dissimilarities

Since the publication of Ma's Grammar at the end of 19th century， Indo-European grammatical theories have exerted so considerable influence on Chinese grammar that until today Chinese grammarians still find it is quite difficult to break away from them and establish a distinctive grammatical theory for the Chinese language. It can not be denied that Indo-European grammar theories can be employed to interpret a large number of language phenomena in the Chinese language， however， at the same time， there still exist \"blind areas\" they can not cover. "Below I will discuss the similarities and dissimilarities between the grammars of the Indo-European languages （IEL） and the Chinese language （CL）.

The two grammatical systems are similar in the following aspects，

1.In both languages， sentences are constructed with some basic constituents， such as nouns and verbs.

2.Adjectives are used to modify nouns， and adverbs are used to modify adjectives.

3.There exist some mechanisms to combine multiple nouns or verbs

4.Nouns can be converted into verbs and vice versa

5.Conversion can be realized between agent-patient relation

6.Regarding word classes， nouns， verbs， adjectives， adverbs， pronouns， prepositions， conjunctions and interjections are included.

7.Regarding the sentence constituents， they all have subjects， predicates， objects， attributes， and adverbials.

8.As regards sentence moods， they all have declaratives， interrogative sentences， imperative sentences and exclamations

However， due to the great gulf fixed between the two languages， Chinese grammarians often find themselves in an awkward situation to put some IEL grammatical theories into CL practice. CL， an isolating language， is basically different from IELs， which are considered to be inflecting languages. That is to say， the CL has no morphological changes， presenting a sharp contrast against the IELs， which are abundant in such changes. Firstly， the IELs have prefixes and suffixes， e.g. \"ness\"， \"ation\"， \"ment\"， etc， which can be added before or after a verb or adjective to change their grammatical function （e.g. conversion to nouns） without changing their meaning. But in the CL， there are no such prefixes and suffixes. Secondly， the IELs have an internal discrimination between the finite form and the infinite form （such as infinitives， gerunds and participles）， but the CL do not. The basic dissimilarities between the two sides give rise to the following grammatical dissimilarities.

（1）In IDLs， the function of a word class is usually fixed. For example， nouns can only act as the subjective or objective， adjectives can only act as the attribute or predicative， and finite verbs act as the main verbs in the predicate. However， verbs and adjectives in the CL have no morphological changes， and they play the same function regardless of their different locations in a sentence. That is to say， a word class in the CL may play multiple functions. For example， an adjective may serve as the predicate（這兒干凈）， attribute，（干凈衣服），complement（洗干凈），and even as the subject（干凈最要緊）or object（他不愛干凈）.

（2） The word classes characterized by multiple functions have cause difficulty in word class division， and may result in different interpretation of the same phrase or syntactic structure. For example， without context， \"出租汽車\" can be understood as a verb phrase（to lease cars） ， or a noun phrase （ a car that can be leased）. Owing to the existence of such phenomena， the CL attaches greater importance to the analysis of syntactic structure than the IEL.

（3） The sentences or clauses in the IEL must be dominated by a verb of finite form， while the verbs in the phrases should be infinite. That is to say， there exist one construction principle for the sentences and clauses， and another for phrases. However， this is not the case in the CL. There is no opposition between finite form and infinite form in the CL， and verbs are used in a single form regardless of their location in the sentences. Therefore， sentence or clause construction follows the same principle as that of phrase.

（4）Subjective plus predicate structure and verb plus complement structure manifest another two important features of the CL syntactic structure.

Subjective plus predicate structure is a loose one different from the sentences or clauses in the IEL A pause or modal words can be inserted between the subject and predicate. One important phenomenon is that in spoken Chinese， the subject is often omitted. In addition， subjective plus predicate structure can also serve as the predicate.

（5）In term of sentence order， in the CL， all the modifiers should be placed before the constituents to be modified. Therefore， the modifier should not be too long or complicated. However， in IEL， the postpose relative clauses may contain a large amount of information which modifies the antecedent. Under such circumstances， where there is a need of translation from one to the other， the formal conformity between the two languages should be sacrificed to comply with the governing grammatical rules.

Based on the above analysis， I would like to give my humble opinion towards the development of the CL Grammar. Sublimation is based on assimilation. Since it is a pioneering and challenging job to establish the CL grammar of its own， all the favorable grammatical theories should be assimilated and their advantages should be brought into full play in the CL. IELs， with a long grammatical tradition and mature grammatical system， will contribute to the further development of the CL grammatical theory.