Chinese

Cambridge Language Surveys

by Jerry Norman

This general introduction to the study of Chinese traces the language's history from its beginnings in the second millennium B.C. to the present, and provides a clear picture of the contemporary language and its sociolinguistic status. Chinese, in its numerous dialects, has more speakers than any other language in the modern world, and this vast extension in time and space brings to its study an exceptional complexity. Nevertheless, Norman's crisp organization and lucid elegance make this extraordinary range of material easily accessible even to those with an elementary understanding of linguistics. Chinese includes information on the genetic and typological connections of the language, the writing system, the classical and early vernacular tongues, the modern language and non-standard dialects, and the history of linguistic reform in China.

Genres: Linguistics, China, Language, History

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerry Norman's overview of Chinese, part of the Cambridge Language Surveys series, is an admirably diachronic treatment. Not content to simply speak of features of the major modern dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, Norman places very early an exploration of the historical phonology of Chinese (back to Old Chinese) and of the development of the script. His explanation of tonal development in Chinese, in which he uses the "s-hypothesis", is especially enlightening.

After this very necessary basis of historical linguistics, Norman devotes a chapter each to the literary language and written vernacular, two chapters to the modern standard language (i.e. Putonghua). He examines the dialects of North and Central China in one late chapter, and the dialects of the Southeast (including the difficulty of their classification) in another. The final chapter, "Language and society", discusses how the various languages coexist in daily life and what the future may hold.

As with all Cambridge Language Surveys volumes, readers must have some prior training in linguistics. Some knowledge of Mandarin at the very least will let the reader make good use of the information Norman provides. If you are looking for a general overview of Chinese and its dialects, this is a helpful resource.

[Furio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, first published in 1988, is rather old by the standards of the discipline.
The mere fact that it is still easily available and that it hasn't been replaced by an up-to-date work bears testimony of its value (or possibly of the lack of interest for serious linguistic studies?).

Unfortunately Mr Norman does not share the gift of some linguists of the past:
his writing is desperately dry, making this a reading more suited to the committed student of Chinese than to the educated general reader wishing to learn more about the language(s).

As an amateur linguist - be it specialised in IE languages - I found myself ploughing through some very arid phonetics that become especially tortuous when dealing with the dialectal variation of the many languages we group under the umbrella term of "Chinese". This dryness is not exclusive to this specific author, far from it (IE linguists sure love their charts and endless discussions about sweet nothings) but it certainly requires a familiarity with the languages in question that essentially excludes the general reader in favour of the specialist.

To cut it short, if you are not fluent in Standard Chinese and if you don't have a rather precise idea of Middle Chinese and modern Chinese dialectal variations, this book may simply be too much for you.

Curiously enough, the main problem might lie in its small size.
300 pages, many of which used for notes and bibliography, may be to few to give a comprehensive historical background and all the explanations needed to make the work accessible to everyone.

[TRAN Cao Bang Trinh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The information in this book can mostly be obtained from Wikipedia. I grabbed it for two kinds of citations. First is the "universal truths" that you need when putting in your thesis. Second is the other profound authors' references. I came across many familiar names since I have been working on the topic for a while. However, Norman's style of listing the reference is redundant. He lists the reference at the end of each chapter, in the notes of the book and in the end of the book. He missed some, one of which I noticed as DeFrancis in page 151. His name was not repeated again at the end of the book.

As a book written about the language. There is a huge lack of characters. All the terminologies were Romanized, which made it hard to track down the original names. This method might be efficient for Non- readers. However, since I speak and the ideograms definitely help organize my thoughts, the absence of it makes the book less interesting for me.


Recommended Reding: https://jeenisbooksworming.wordpress....

[Changez Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of outdated information and unorthodox IPA that makes it a laborious read. Decent overview of Chinese as a whole. Again this is not meant to teach you the language(s) so don’t buy with the intention of learning Chinese, not like you would anyway since it’s old and expensive and the internet exists.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can definitely recommend this book as a general overview on "Chinese" as a language/language family! Norman goes into quite some detail describing historical relationships, the development, phonetical features and issues in classifying the dialects, the reconstruction of Middle Chinese and other stages, the way the Chinese language(s) evolved and the strive for a national standard language as well as the development of a good transcription system. He also describes the major principles of the grammars of both modern standard Mandarin and the classical Chinese language. I learned that phonologically Mandarin can be analyzed as having only 2 vowels (/a/ and /ə/), and this seems quite solid to me. I disliked the sometimes somewhat über-detailled description of the tonal features of all the dialects, but they seemed necessary for his view on their classification. But why doesn't he include Chinese characters along with the Chinese words he's using. There's only pinyin, reconstructed Middle Chinese or some other transcription system. As someone literate in Chinese, it would have been quite useful to actually see which words/characters he talks about instead of guessing them from the transcription and English meaning. But still, a really good book. One of the main sources of knowledge for my Chinese oral exam 3 months from now.

[Karen Chung · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you'd like a solid, in-depth scholarly introduction to the Chinese language, start here!

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting linguistic history and analysis of Chinese. Although in all fairness, I was a Chinese major, and most people would probably find it inestimably boring.

[Bolor · Rating 4 out of 5]

写得很好！