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Myths about Mandarin

Bibliography

R. M. W. Dixon, Basic Linguistic Theory, i (Oxford, 2010).

Given that no adequate description of Mandarin Chinese exists and any knowledge gained from a couple of informants is bound to be unreliable, over the years a number of myths have grown up about this language.

  • Dixon (2010: 227), following Sapir, places 'Chinese' squarely in the 'isolating' camp. In reality, both Classical and Mandarin Chinese have words which consist of one or multiple morphemes. They would therefore sit between isolating and agglutinating, with the classical dialect closer to the former and the modern dialect closer to the latter.