A Dictionary of High Frequency Function Words in Literary Chinese - Hardcover

Tan, Mei Ah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1032388684 ISBN 13: 9781032388687

Publisher: Routledge, 2023

Synopsis

A Dictionary of High Frequency Function Words in Literary Chinese is the first comprehensive work on the subject that constitutes a new approach to teaching and learning by providing both a reference tool and a reader.

This dictionary can serve both as a reference book and as an anthology for teaching and learning literary Chinese (the premodern written language) and both ancient and contemporary Chinese culture. It differs from the traditional design of dictionaries in that it includes detailed explanations, with examples, for different uses of the graphs most often used to represent function words in literary Chinese. To facilitate teaching and learning through association, the early meaning, extended meanings, and borrowed meanings for each graph are provided, along with explanations supported by the various stages of the historical development of the graph and other relevant research. Each word is grouped into the primary word class to which it belongs, based on its lexical or grammatical meanings, its collocations, and its function in a sentence. Modern idioms derived from words and phrases in the sample passages are provided in order to promote cultural knowledge and show the important role literary Chinese continues to play in everyday life. All Chinese words are provided with Putonghua romanization to facilitate learning and recall through sound; special pronunciations are explained.

This book can be used as a textbook, as extended reading, or as a reference work for undergraduate or graduate classes on literary/classical Chinese, Chinese manuscript studies, Chinese language and culture, Putonghua, translation studies, or even linguistics. It can also be used as an anthology from which the teacher can select passages for students to study.

About this title

About the Author

Mei Ah Tan, PhD (2008), University of Wisconsin–Madison, is Associate Professor of Chinese at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. She has published on classical Chinese language and literature as well as on multidisciplinary research at the crossroads of language, literature, and history.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032388684
• ISBN 13: 9781032388687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 370