E.D. Polivanov on Chinese and Japanese

In 1930 E.D. Polivanov published in co-authorship grammars of Chinese and Japanese. He proposed some original approaches in the both grammars but his approaches were different for these languages. In the Japanese grammar he emphasized the peculiar role of syllables and interpreted all the not independent grammar units as affixes; however he considered the same units as in the “usual languages”: phonemes, morphemes, words, clauses. His approach to Chinese was quite different: Polivanov considered syllables and incorporations the basic units of Chinese instead of phonemes, words and clauses, denied the principal difference of morphology and syntax in his language.