Yuan Renlin styled Zhenqian (振千), was a Qing dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

 linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. He was from Sanyuan

Sanyuan County

Sanyuan County is a county of Xianyang, Shaanxi, China.-Transportation:*China National Highway 210*China National Highway 211...

 county, Shaanxi

Shaanxi

' is a province in the central part of Mainland China, and it includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qinling Mountains across the southern part of this province...

 province, and lived in the early 18th century.

Yuan is best known for his work Xu zi shuo (虚字说), a 68–page study of grammatical particle

Chinese particles

In classical Chinese philology, words are divided into two classes: the shízì and the xūzì . The former include what modern linguists call verbs, nouns, and adjectives, while the latter includes what modern linguists call particles. Opinions differ as to which category pronouns and adverbs belong to...

s. The work is full of careful and original observations on the grammatical functions of both individual grammatical particles and combinations of these. The attention Yuan Renlin paid to combinations of grammatical particles is remarkable for its time. Yuan had a profound influence on the authors of the first proper grammar of Literary Chinese, Ma Jianzhong

Ma Jianzhong

Ma Jianzhong was a Chinese official and scholar during the Qing dynasty.Ma was born in Dantu , Jiangsu province to a prominent Chinese Catholic family. After studies at a French Catholic school in Shanghai, Ma went to France in 1876 to study international law...

 and his brother Ma Xiangbo

Ma Xiangbo

Ma Xiangbo , also known under his style Ma Liang , was a Chinese scholar and educator during the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China.-Biography:Ma was born in Dantu, Jiangsu province to a prominent Catholic family...

.