“The formation of modern written language. Writing categories and polysyllabic words”

In his “Wenxue gailiang chuyi” (A tentative proposal for the reform of literature), Hu Shi set forth the necessity to reform both the gist and the form of literature. Thereafter, he recognised the close connection between the reform of literature and that of the Chinese language, advancing the proposals of “Jianshe de wenxue geming lun: guoyu de wenxue, wenxue de guoyu” (The theory of a constructive literary revolution: a literature in the national language, a national literary language). Nevertheless, when looking at the history of the Xixue Dongjian (The transfer of Western knowledge to the East) from the 16th century onwards, the connections between the Chinese language and the presentation of modern knowledge, i.e. the recounting of science, are broader and more thorough than the contents touched upon by “literature”. A question of the uttermost importance was how to employ the Chinese language to narrate science; after Hu Shi, personalities such as Chen Duxiu, Liu Bannong and Fu Sinian discussed the difference between literary and non-literary writings from the perspective of language form. In this article, the author examines the possibility for the Chinese language to convey modern knowledge at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, what transformations the Chinese language required in order to achieve this purpose and the question of whether the national language dictionary Ciyuan prepared the way for it