Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar (Routledge Comprehensive Grammars)

This Chinese grammar book is the best of its kind. It is well organized, features multiple examples of every grammatical concept introduced, and has good explanations that go beyond the oversimplified ones in most grammar books. It was clearly designed and written by a native speaker of Chinese, and should be the go-to volume for all serious students of Chinese grammar. That's not to say that it is perfect. Surprisingly, the editors at Routledge decided not to check the grammar on many of the English translations of the example sentences. In addition to the occasional mistranslation of basic words, there are some English translations that are extremely awkward, or that are simply incorrect. Some attention to detail before publishing would have been nice. It would also have been nice if this book had been arranged according to a more natural Chinese grammatical structure, rather than sticking rigidly with the tired and true "Nouns -> Adjectives -> Verbs -> Adverbs" organization that we see in all Routledge grammars. As is the case with Korean and Japanese, some sentences and concepts that are simple in English do not translate well to the Chinese context. For this reason, the structure of this book leaves a lot to be desired. Some concepts seem to be repeated time and time again, in particular the various passive uses of particles such as 把, 被, and 让. I should also note that this book is heavily focused on mainland Chinese grammar, particularly grammatical structures commonly heard in northern China. Those coming from a Taiwan or Singapore linguistic context will be puzzled at sentences listed here as "incorrect" that are perfectly acceptable in those countries. It would have been nice if the authors had spent more time acknowledging acceptable geographic variations rather than spending dozens of pages on all the possible permutations of Chinese sentence structure. Having said all that, the imperfections of this book do not detract from its usefulness. I highly recommend it.

The text is well laid out and concepts are easy to understand.

I wish it were possible to give this book 6 stars. For those of you who understand linguistic terminology well, this book is truly what it says it is. Comprehensive. It teaches ALL of Chinese grammar not just the basics like other books. The only downside? It uses a lot of specialized terminology you’ll need to be familiar with in order to understand some of it, so get a dictionary while you read it. Despite this downside, the book has excellent examples, fantastic vocabulary tables, and an easy to follow and understand format. I truly can’t praise the authors enough for their work. It’s superb! Don’t bother buying any other grammar book!

This book certainly lives up to its title as "A Comprehensive Grammar". I own several excellent grammar books that I consider to be comprehensive, and Yip and Rimmington often find something more to say about a feature that I'm looking at. For example, every book explains fractions, such as 1/2, but Yip and Rimmington include complex fractions, such as (2/3)/(1/2). They are especially good at explaining why some words are added just for rhythm or balance, and that's why I added this sentence.

I use this book to supplement my Chinese language learning via reading novels. It does a great job of explaining grammatical patterns, both common and uncommon, in a clear and concise manner. With each piece of information the author provides, around 5-10 examples follow it to help you understand. Sometimes the explanations can be very technical but the examples help clear up any doubts. This book acts as both a great learning tool and a great reference book for potentially obscure or uncommon uses.