The Reception of the Western European Grammatical Tradition in the History of Slavic-Russian and Chinese Grammatical Thought

The article presents a comparative analysis of the reception of the Western European grammatical tradition in Slavic-Russian and Chinese linguistic thought, focusing on the grammars by Lavrentiy Zizaniy and Meletius Smotrytsky, and the work “Ma Shi Wen Tong” by Ma Jianzhong. Against a broad cultural and historical background, fundamental diff erences in the preconditions, nature, and goals of this process are revealed. It is demonstrated that in the Slavic context (16th–17th centuries), the reception was gradual and served as a tool for protecting religious and cultural identity, while in China (late 19th century), it became one of the directions of the broad process of Westernisation of the state, whose purpose was to save the country’s sovereignty, while the Western European system of describing grammar was perceived as something fundamentally diff erent. Despite the differing contexts, both traditions involved not a mechanical transplantation but a creative adaptation of the Western model, leading to the formation of original grammatical systems that accounted for the specifi cs of the native languages.