Lu Shuxiang

Lu Shuxiang the Chinese linguist (1904-1998) regarded as a founder of modern Chinese grammatical study, whose careful description of function words, sentence patterns and usage established a distinctively Chinese approach to grammar. Through decades of research, editing and teaching he shaped the standard reference works by which the language is described and studied.

Early Life and Education

Lu Shuxiang was born on 24 December 1904 in Danyang, Jiangsu Province, into a family that valued education. He attended a modern school and then studied at a leading university in Nanjing, where he first specialised in the Chinese language and literature and graduated with distinction.

He went on to postgraduate study, examining the grammar of classical Chinese and the historical development of the language. He was drawn to the study of particles and function words, the small grammatical items whose behaviour determines much of the sense of a Chinese sentence and which had received only impressionistic treatment.

His early concern with the exact description of usage set the direction of his entire career. He resolved to base his account of the language on the actual evidence of texts and speech rather than on inherited prescriptions, and to distinguish rigorously between description and mere opinion.

He was also influenced by the linguistic scholarship then arriving from abroad, and he studied the methods of descriptive and historical linguistics closely. He adapted these methods to the special features of Chinese, which lacks inflection and relies on particles and word order to carry grammatical meaning.

Function Words and Grammar

Lu Shuxiang's masterwork was a comprehensive dictionary of the function words of classical Chinese, in which he examined the usages of particles, prepositions and adverbs through a mass of examples drawn from a wide range of ancient texts. The work collected, classified and explained hundreds of items and became an indispensable tool for the reading of the classics.

He followed it with studies of the grammar of the modern language, developing a descriptive framework that accounted for the structure of Chinese sentences without forcing them into categories borrowed from European grammar. He emphasised the role of word order, of particles and of the flow of information rather than of morphological inflection.

His many essays on particular problems of usage examined the differences between similar constructions and the subtle effects of particles. These short studies, based on careful observation of real examples, are among the most widely read pieces of Chinese linguistic writing of the century.

Editing and Reference Works

Lu Shuxiang was a gifted editor who led or inspired several of the standard reference works of modern Chinese. He directed the compilation of a major dictionary of modern Chinese and guided its principles, insisting that definitions be supported by illustrative examples and that the language described be the language actually used.

He also supervised projects on classical Chinese usage and on the history of the language, bringing together teams of younger scholars and coordinating their work with great care. His editorial judgement and his willingness to revise in the light of evidence set a model for collaborative scholarship.

In addition he wrote extensively on the practical problems of teaching Chinese and of textbook composition, and his comments on the writing and revision of reference materials influenced the way such works were planned in China for decades.

Teaching and Scholarly Networks

Lu Shuxiang held professorships at several universities and at a major institute of linguistics, where he lectured on grammar, on the history of the language and on the reading of the classics. His classes were renowned for their precision and for the demands they placed on students, whom he taught to work from evidence.

He trained many of the leading linguists of the following generation and maintained an extensive correspondence with colleagues at home and abroad. He was generous with his time and his advice, and his network of former students carried his methods into universities across the country.

He took part in scholarly organisations and in the editing of academic journals, using these platforms to encourage exact description and to resist the imposition of political or ideological criteria on linguistic research. His quiet defence of scholarly standards was widely respected.

He was also a generous correspondent and adviser, and many scholars recorded their debt to his suggestions and corrections. His comments on drafts and manuscripts, always precise and often decisive, improved a great deal of work that appeared under other names.

Influence and Legacy

Lu Shuxiang is venerated as one of the founders of modern Chinese grammatical study. His dictionary of function words and his descriptive essays are still in use, and the principle that grammar should be derived from the observation of usage rather than from the imitation of foreign models has become a common starting point for research.

The reference works he edited remain standard, revised over the years by teams of scholars who continue his methods. His insistence on clarity, evidence and intellectual honesty influenced not only linguistics but also the teaching of the language at every level.

He died on 9 January 1998 in Beijing, at the age of ninety-three, having remained productive into his final years. He is remembered as a scholar of gentle authority and immense erudition, whose patient attention to the small words of the language yielded insights into its structure and grace.

See also

• Chinese grammar
• Function words
• Classical Chinese
• Chinese linguistics