Jin Chinese Grammar I

"Through describing the grammar of dialect of seven counties along the Yellow River, this two-volume set synchronically and diachronically studies the Jin dialects in Northern Shaanxi Province in China. The Jin dialects in Northern Shaanxi is one of the most ancient, complicated, and representative dialects along the Yellow River, which figures prominently in the understanding of the Jin dialect and northern Chinese dialects as a whole. The first volume focuses on the pronouns, aspect and appearance, and tense system, while the second volume focuses on aspects including the subjunctive mood, expressions of complex sentence relationship, embedded sentence patterns, complex interrogative sentences, the formation of imperative modal particle "zhe", and the phonetic variation of grammatical constituents. With the substantial size of the corpus and the in-depth investigation, the book gives insight into the peculiarity of the Jin dialect in terms of grammar, the significant role of diachronic comparative studies on dialectal grammar, and the grammaticalization of Chinese. The book will be a useful reference for scholars and students interested in the Jin dialect, Chinese dialects and Chinese linguistics"--