Some Observations on De Lingua Sinensi: A Forgotten Work of Chinese Grammar

In these pages, a “forgotten” work of grammar for the Chinese language will be briefly illustrated and described. The work, kept in the National Library in Naples and entitled De lingua Sinensi (henceforth DLS), has not yet been studied by scholars. Therefore, in the following article, an overview of the work will be given in order to reconstruct the story of the manuscript and its main features, also in comparison with other major extant Chinese grammars and especially in relation to the description of the language, the romanization and the explanation of tones and characters.