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Theoretical framework

Theorists rarely convince each other. The reasons are follows:

  1. Synchronic theories are based on a priori assumptions. When a grammar doesn't serve a practical purpose, competing theories can be equally good.

  2. Even native speakers regularly miss counterexamples which invalidate a generalisation.

  3. Academic promotion doesn't require contributing to the continued refinement of basic linguistic theory.

When it comes to lexicography, however, a grammatical description shouldn't upset the user's intuitions about the language. In practice, this means an understanding of the structure of Mandarin Chinese which is heavily influenced by the grammar of English, the lingua franca.

It's for this reason that we follow Huang–Shih in adopting a CGEL-like framework, whilst (unlike them) remaining oriented towards the general typological theory.

What's 'cross-linguistic'?

Monolingual grammarians sometimes understand the term to mean they should look for a feature in several other languages, and if it's described in the same way there, they feel satisfied that they've reached the correct analysis for Mandarin Chinese. That's merely comparative linguistics(2).