Hi folks,
I’m looking for a Chinese grammar (in Chinese or English and Chinese). Something technical and fairly complete, up-to-date, and with lots of examples. Ideally it should account for both spoken and written usage (though written only would also be okay if that’s all I can get) and be fairly international, i.e., account for northern and southern differences but generally stick to Mainland standards. Simplified or traditional characters are both fine. Any suggestions?
I think Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar by Charles N. Li, Sandra A. Thompson is very good. Lucky Books used to carry it, and there is Chinese translation floating around.
That’s the red one, right? (Unless Thompson and Li have another grammar floating around that I don’t know of.) I’ve read it, and found it quite useful when I was first trying to figure out resultative verbs and where to stick my locatives; but it’s in pinyin (which is fine but sometimes not as clear as hanzi would be) and based entirely on spoken Mandarin … so not quite what I’m looking for.
But, yeah, I agree. It is a great book. Any idea what the Chinese title is? (I’m sure it’d be in the slip but I’ve not got this book with me in Taiwan.)
Well, “A Grammar of Spoken Chinese” written by Chao, Yuen Ren is considered well as one of the best reference (maybe the most comprehensive one. It provides a picture for modern Chinese computational linguistic processing). It was published firstly in 1968, but recently i found a reprint in Eslite bookstore. Hmm… however, it seems more linguistics oriented.
I’ve been looking for a copy of that! Did you see it at Eslite recently? (Or has anyone else spotted it somewhere?)
I’ve been looking for a copy of that! Did you see it at Eslite recently? (Or has anyone else spotted it somewhere?)[/quote]
Yes. I saw the bible in Taida eslite.
There is a Chinese translation of Chao Yuen Ren (
I went to the Tai-Da Eslite yesterday but found only the Chinese translation of the Y.R. Chao book. I asked about the English original, but the person at the information desk couldn’t find anything in the computer’s records on it. 
Try Lexus (Le4xue2) books:
金山南路2 段138號10樓之一 Tel. 2321-9033
138 10F-1,Jinshan S. Rd. Section 2. Better for academic books than Eslite.