William Ashmore

“ III. Many words are used, as occasion may require, without change of form, as verbs, nouns, and adjectives.
IV. A marked preference is shown for the use of active voice rather than passive voice forms of speech: — He struck me, rather than, I am struck by him.
V. In expressing the action of verbs, stress is often laid on the stage of the process rather than on the time when of the process.
VI. The frequency with which some one important word, — the object of the verb’s action, — is put in the fore part of a sentence to begin with, is a marked feature in Chinese construction. ”

“ XIV. Special idioms are very numerous. They must be learned, each one for itself. It will be found, however, after a time, that even in them there is something of method, and that they are susceptible of no little classification.
XV. Aside from special idioms and such inverted collocations as attend, say, the genitive sense (known by that ubiquitous man of all work in Chinese Syntax, — kâi) the construction of ordinary sentences is really simple. The nouns, verbs, and adjectives which enter into a sentence, follow each other in an order which is both logical and chronological. ”

“ Other expressions, again, are correct enough in themselves, bu used in such a way as to make them no better than cant phrases. Still they help mark off sentences. Thus one man will be constantly interlarding his speech with, hó bõi, good or not? ”