Late Han Chinese

From the introduction: The present work is a comparative study of the grammar of two stages in the evolution of “Classical Chinese.” More particularly, it is a detailed study of a 3rd Century B.C. text (Late Archaic Chinese) and of a paraphrase of that text in the language of the 2nd Century A.D. (Late Han Literary Chinese). The comparison is made in an attempt to explore the nature of evolutionary change in the language, by comparing samples of two periods which have a common subject-matter. If these two samples prove to be typical, and there is good reason to think that they are, then a fundamental shift occurs in the language between Late Archaic and Late Han. It is the purpose of the present work to describe that shift.