A practical chinese grammar for foreigners отзывы

I posted this entry into another thread on grammar problems and issues you (we) love to hate, but it seems relevant in this thread, too. So I thought it might be a good idea to append it to this discussion. (If double posting is a no-no, Please let me know.)

My candidate for «Grammar book of the Year» is a publication from about 1993 or 1994. Originally it was a MacIntosh Hyper Book app before there were apps. I don’t know if that version is still available, or even if it would run on any of Apple’s current OSs. The existing hard copy version is a Resource Book/Workbook pair called «Chinese Unmasked,» and it is written by Jing-heng Ma (1994 Cheng & Tsui- ISBN: -Traditional Character Edition 0-88727-190-1, Simplified character Edition 0-88727-198-7)

The Resource Book contains 14 modules as follows:

Numbers (16 pages)

Measures (19 pages)

Locality (14 pages)

Time (12 pages)

The markers Le and Guo (13 pages)

Zhe, Zai, and Ne (22 pages)

Adverbs (11 pages)

Auxiliary Verbs (9 pages) 

Coverbs (5 pages)

Forms and Patterns for Comparison (13 pages)

Ba Constructions (24 pages)

The Bei Construction and Related Jiao, Rang, Gei Constructions (8 pages)

Shi..De Constructions (8 pages)

Resultative Verbs (27 pages)

The workbook matches the modules, and I don’t think you can buy them separately, but I really don’t know.

This book is not a complete grammar book-style overview like the Rimmington or Ross grammar books, it focuses on the specific issues listed above, and gives a pretty detailed explanation with well-thought out illustrative sentences. In some places, it is too detailed for the absolute beginner, but is perfect for the person moving from a beginner to an intermediate level, or for the more advanced student who wants all the background on a particular construction and its pitfalls as a review or reference. I don’t have a way of giving adequate examples, but the sections on Ba constructions, Le and Guo, and Resultative Verbs are especially complete and worth the price of the book by themselves.

I must confess I am a fan of books published by Cheng & Tsui, and I will recommend a number of them in the coming months. They are the developers and publishers of Integrated Chinese, which I have not used and have never even seen. But a fair number of the members of this forum have probably used this series in college and university courses. I have no connection to the company, other than that both of us come from Boston, and I used to shop in their retail store when they still had one.