Chinese Discourse Grammar

This course serves as a core elective for graduate students majoring in International Chinese Language Education, Linguistics, and Applied Linguistics.Grounded in the typological characteristic of Chinese as a topic-prominent language, this course systematically examines the interface between syntax and discourse. It aims to transcend the limitations of traditional structuralist grammar, which typically treats the sentence as the maximum unit of analysis. Adopting a functional linguistics perspective, the course explores the organizational mechanisms, cohesive devices, and patterns of information flow within Chinese discourse, with the objective of cultivating students’ abilities in linguistic analysis and pedagogical research at the discourse level.

This course requires students not only to master the theoretical knowledge of discourse grammar but also to possess the ability to apply relevant theories to the analysis of authentic corpus data. Upon completion of the course, students are expected to re-examine Chinese grammatical phenomena from a discourse perspective, laying a solid theoretical foundation for advanced Chinese language teaching, materials development, and second language acquisition (SLA) research.

The curriculum is primarily structured around the following three modules:

1) Theories of Discourse Cohesion and Coherence

Based on Halliday’s cohesion theory and integrated with the paratactic (meaning-focused) nature of the Chinese language, this module provides an in-depth analysis of reference, substitution and ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion within Chinese discourse.

2) Information Structure and Word Order

This module interprets the pragmatic motivations behind Chinese word order through the lenses of thematic progression patterns and information structure. It analyzes the functional differences of special Chinese sentence patterns within discourse contexts, as well as their contributions to discourse progression.

3) Studies on L2 Discourse Acquisition

Utilizing inter-language corpora, this module analyzes typical errors made by second language learners in discourse construction, such as the overuse of conjunctions, ambiguous referencing, and register mixing. Furthermore, it explores the differences in discourse organization strategies employed by L2 learners and examines the developmental patterns of their discourse competence.