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A Linguistic Comparison of Chinese and English
Structural, functional, and typological perspectives
The book examines similarities and differences between Chinese and English from structural, functional, and typological perspectives. The linguistic comparison undertaken covers various aspects of the two languages, including, for example, typological features, the phonological system, the writing system, morphological structure, syntactic structure, and information structure. The book often relates the comparison of the two languages to linguistic typology and language universals. Moreover, the conceptions of some of the linguistic notions (e.g. “word,” “subject,” and “(im)perfective”) touched upon in this work have theoretical implications. This book is intended for researchers, instructors, and students who are interested in language comparison and linguistic typology in general and/or in the comparison of Chinese and English in particular. It can be used both as a reference and as a textbook.
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 239] 2026. xv, 399 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 13 January 2026
Published online on 13 January 2026
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements | pp. ix–x
- List of figures | pp. xi–xii
- List of tables | pp. xiii–xiv
- Abbreviations | pp. xv–xvi
- Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–5
- Chapter 2. Typological features of Chinese and English | pp. 6–36
- Chapter 3. Phonemic inventory, tone, and intonation | pp. 37–62
- Chapter 4. Syllable structure and stress | pp. 63–86
- Chapter 5. Writing system | pp. 87–138
- Chapter 6. Notion of “word” and word classes | pp. 139–172
- Chapter 7. Numeral classifiers and measure words | pp. 173–191
- Chapter 8. Word structure and word formation | pp. 192–235
- Chapter 9. Tense and viewpoint aspect | pp. 236–267
- Chapter 10. Subject, topic, subject prominence, and topic prominence | pp. 268–294
- Chapter 11. Zero anaphora | pp. 295–319
- Chapter 12. Information structure | pp. 320–347
- Chapter 13. Phrase structure and word order | pp. 348–364
- Chapter 14. Conclusions | pp. 365–369
- References | pp. 370–392
- Index | pp. 393–399