Chinese Culture: The Syntax of the Language

This chapter explores the determinative influence that Chinese culture exerts on the syntax of the Chinese language. Meaning conveyed in Chinese character writing depends as much on context as on syntactic organization. Sentences are constructed as such and follow one another in an order that often lacks grammatical focus. By contrast, in Western languages the grammatical relationships are analytical: Main sentences and subordinate clauses of a sentence are arranged according to syntactical rules. I argue that the uniqueness of Chinese language syntax derives from the Chinese view of the cosmos, that is, spontaneously generated and self-regulating with no creator. In such a universe, the relations between the parts and the whole, and between yin and yang are reciprocal. Applying this concept to the Chinese language, a sentence often has more than one verb (predicate), which builds up a sequence of actions, each related to others of equal importance. Some paragraphs are punctuated solely by commas instead of periods. Chinese linguistic scholars have called this syntactic peculiarity scattered perspectives, noting a parallel in traditional Chinese painting. Parallels can also be seen in traditional architecture and in classical novel structure. Becoming familiar with cultural context helps achieve greater success in language learning.