From Eurocentrism to Sinocentrism: the case of object marking constructions in Sinitic languages Hilary Chappell This article treats the diversity of object marking or ‘disposal’ constructions in Sinitic languages, considering the mismatch between language type and grammar design. These constructions are used to highlight an affected referential object, typically corresponding to accusatively case- marked nouns in inflectional languages. The discussion begins with a brief description of early Spanish grammars of Chinese languages, based on a Greco-Latin model and progresses from the problems of Eurocentrism to those of Sinocentrism, based on the new model of the prestige language, standard Mandarin. The main analysis concentrates on the historical sources and range of syntactic configurations for disposal constructions in seven main Sinitic languages, particularly with respect to an emerging typology. Paradoxically, Standard Mandarin turns out not to be an ideal choice as typologically representative of Sinitic. 1. Introduction 1.1 The issue Although China has a long tradition in the compilation of rhyme dictionaries and lexica, it did not develop its own tradition for writing grammars until relatively late. 1 In fact, the majority of early grammars on Chinese dialects, which begin to appear in the 17 th century, were written by Europeans in collaboration with native speakers. For example, the Arte de la lengua Chiõ Chiu [Grammar of the Chiõ Chiu language] (1620) appears to be one of the earliest grammars of any Sinitic language, representing a koine of urban Southern Min dialects, as spoken at that time (Chappell 2000). 2 It was composed by Melchior de Mançano in Manila to assist the Dominicans’ work of proselytizing to the community of Chinese Sangley traders from southern Fujian. Another major grammar, similarly written by a Dominican scholar, Francisco Varo, is the Arte de le lengua mandarina [Grammar of the Mandarin language], completed in 1682 while he was living in Funing, and later posthumously published in 1703 in Canton. 3 Spanish missionaries, particularly the Dominicans, played a significant role in Chinese linguistic history as the first to record the grammar and lexicon of vernaculars, create romanization systems and promote the use of the demotic or specially created dialect characters. This is discussed in more detail in van der Loon (1966, 1967). The model they used was the (at that time) famous Latin grammar of Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1444–1522), Introductiones Latinae (1481), and possibly the earliest grammar of a Romance language, Grammatica de la