Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Grounding: A Literature Review -- Grammatical Features of Chinese and Previous Grounding Analysis -- At the Verb Phrase Core: Foregrounding Through Bounding -- In Single-Verb Clauses: Constituent Order and Grounding1 -- In Complex Predicates: Grounding of Verb Phrases -- In Complex Sentences: Margins Versus Nucleus1 -- Related Issues -- Concluding Remarks.

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In Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse Wendan Li offers a comprehensive and innovative account of how Mandarin Chinese, as a language without extensive morphological marking, highlights (or foregrounds) major events of a narrative and demotes (or backgrounds) other supporting descriptions. Qualitative and quantitative methods in the analysis and examinations of authentic written text provide extensive evidence to demonstrate that various types of morpho-syntactic devices are used in a wide range of structural units in Chinese to mark the distinction between foregrounding and backgrounding. The analysis paves the way for future studies to systematically approach grounding-related issues. The typological viewpoint adopted in the chapters serves well readers from both the Chinese tradition and other languages in discourse analysis.