Preface
前言
Zhongwei Shen 沈钟伟

Abstract 摘要
The ten studies in this monograph mostly are revised versions of the sixteen papers presented at the Conference on Chinese Historical Syntax, Stanford, 17th -18th March 1995. This monograph begins with the opening remarks delivered at the conference by Professor William S-Y. Wang, who reviews the state of the art in the study of the evolution of language and its relationship with the study of cognition. The second paper is by Professor Victor Mair who talks about Ma Jianzhong and his motivations in writing the earliest Chinese Grammar in the 19th century. Professor Frank Hsueh’s paper deals with the implications for word order, conjunction, and passivity of the grammatical status of the Classical Chinese verb complement. The subsequent five papers integrate the historical studies with the studies of modern Chinese dialects. Professor Mei Tsu-Lin discusses the dialectal basis of some of the constructions in the Zen Buddhist text Zutangji. Professor Lisa Cheng, James Huang, and Jane Tang, in a joint paper, examine how negative particle questions evolved in history and vary in different modern Chinese dialects, interacting with the verbal aspectual system. Professor Jiang Lansheng employs dialectal information from many modern Chinese dialects to prove that me么 and 们 men share the same origin. Professor Samuel Cheung reviews sources of Early Cantonese materials and the derivations of some Cantonese grammatical elements. Professor Lien Chinfa studies the evolution of the Southern Min tit 得 in light of a set of data taken from Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin texts. Two papers deal with the issue of the genesis of the Chinese verbal suffixes. Professor Cao Guangshun investigates various factors that may bear on the issue, and Professor Ping Chen reconstructs the historical path along which the Mandarin zhe[zhu] 著 became grammaticalized. The editor’s paper discusses the historical changes that ba went through in Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin and the function of ambiguity that it serves in semantic changes.

One paper on zhe by the editor was replaced by the ba paper to avoid having three papers related to the genesis of verbal suffixes. All the other papers that were presented at the conference but not included in the current monograph were omitted due to the extraordinary length of the papers or because the authors chose not to be included. I apologize for the constraints on the length of the papers as is required by the publisher.