Edward McDonald presents a pioneering analysis in his new book Grammar West to East: The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning in European and Chinese Traditions. In this work the author identifies three significant factors for the development of grammar theory at both ends of Eurasia, namely language type, script type, and metaphors (see ch. 3), and several peripheral factors, for instance, the educational system and other elements of the socio-political context (see ch. 5). Moreover, the development of grammatical theory in ancient China and the Western world are explained coherently in chapters 2, 7 and 9–15, with most parts of the later chapters focusing on the Western world, and offering a comparison of different theories. Complementary information is given in several chapters. The final chapter argues for the writing of the book, in which the analysis of the relationship between “The history of linguistics” and “The study of language” deserves appreciation. The author's insights into Xu Shen, Ma Jianzhong, many ancient Western linguists, and Saussure, shape the depth of discussion.

From the standpoint of a researcher of Chinese traditional grammar, two points in this book deserve special admiration. First, almost every treatise on Chinese traditional grammar focuses on Xunzi, while in ch. 2, the author notes that there is a more complex origin to Xunzi's relevant idea. This inspiring proposal encourages us to pay more attention to the grammatical ideas of the Taoists, Mohists, and other schools in the Warring States Period, especially since we have discovered more excavated documents in recent years. What is more, in ch. 12, the author homes in on the generating of the concept of “word classes”, in which he creatively analyses the differences between European “parts of the sentence” and Ma's zìlèi 字類 “word classes”. Researchers of the history of Chinese linguistics do not usually pay attention to the exact stage at which European grammar stood during Ma's era, thus this brilliant analysis benefits from comprehensive knowledge of contemporary European grammatical theory as well as Chinese.

However, several facets need more consideration. The author's understanding of a few ancient Chinese paragraphs as key evidence seems not to be entirely accurate. For one thing, on p. 52, the exchanging of shuō 說 “explain” and yuè 悅 “please” was used to instantiate that phonographs and/or semanto-phonographs were exchangeable in The Analects/Lùnyŭ 《論語》. But the character “悅” might have been created very late, and not have existed in Shuōwén Jiĕzì 《説文解字》 in the later Han Dynasty, not appearing until the Warring states dynasty in excavated documents. Consequently, they were not exchangeable at the time of The Analects. For another, on p. 106, we do not find any materials to sustain the author's analysis of “鼓天下之動者，存乎辭”. It seems that he knows the “辭” here does not refer to universal “wording”, but the brief explanations under every “trigrams” guà 卦, named yáocí 爻辭, in Classic of Changes/Yìjīng 《易經》. However, he extends it unhesitatingly to universal “words”. Moreover, on p. 128, the author cites “大致造字之始，無所[不]馮依宇宙間，事與形兩大端而已”. Since we do not know why the author inserted a “不” into “無所[不]憑依”, it does not follow the source indicated by the author. The original sentence means “there is not something according to which [someone can create characters at first]”. The falsified one means the opposite. Then, the author might wrongly punctuate the whole sentence, and it should be “大致造字之始，無所馮依，宇宙間事與形兩大端而已”. “empty xū 虛” “full shí 實” “action dòng 動” “state jìng 静”, the first two in particular are highlighted in this book, but the author seems not to investigate their history comprehensively. To divide words into classes of “虛” and “實” was a characteristic of Ma's system, while they have had a very similar meaning no later than Yuán Rénlín's 袁仁林 Treatise on Xūzì《虛字說》composed in the Qing dynasty. The author readily believes Ma's own statement and identifies that Ma gave them a new definition. On the contrary, the author believes that the distinction between “動” and “靜” was “trajectories in the Chinese tradition”, but in an article published in 2008, Tán Dàilóng 譚代龍 reviewed the discussion on the origin of the two terms and indicated that until the late Qing dynasty, these terms were still used to analyse different usage of the same word, not the distinction between verbs and adjectives.

Furthermore, several consensus views are not followed by the author, but no explicit reasons are given. It was Gŭyīnxué 古音學 that was used in analysing the phonetic loan characters in Old Chinese, which had its own origin, and not Yīnyùnxué 音韵學, referred to by the author. The topics discussed in the “grammar reform” are based on many concrete difficulties in grammatical research but the author attributes too much to the ideological context. Neither does the author pick up the main string of Chinese grammatical research in more recent years and attaches extortionate fame to Shēn Xiǎolóng 申小龍, whose idea was nearly not effective (see chapters 12 and 16).

Additionally, the glossing formula (p. 20) is insufficiently clear. The relationship between the snapshots and other chapters should be stated more explicitly. The final chapters lack the necessary comparisons after narrating the development in west and east respectively.

We also want to present some supplements as clues for the audience. The author introduces European etymology and compares it with Xŭ Shèn's 許慎 study on the earliest forms of the characters. While the etymology was also emphasized by Shìmíng 《釋名》(To explain names) composed by Liú Xī 劉熙, later than Xŭ Shèn. In chapter 7, the author intelligently indicates both European and Chinese traditional thought on the changes to languages as a decline from former perfection. Here we propose that in China, the “decline” was not only an ethical evaluation but also a model of understanding the change itself. At least when understanding the sound change, people prior to the Ming dynasty usually took the sound change as showing that some pronunciations of a certain character were lost, not changed. This model had a tight relationship with the “scrip type” indicated by the author. Comparison of the different models at both ends of Eurasia and discussion on the reasons behind them are valuable.