Abstract
The nature or even the very existence of word classes in Classical Chinese, the main and usually the only representant of pre-modern Chinese taken into account in theoretical surveys, is definitely the most controversial issue in Chinese diachronic linguistics. In spite of it, there seems to be an overall agreement among the leading scholars on the majority of basic points today, and also some new develpoments in the field, following new trends both in general linguistics and theory of word classes in Modern Chinese.
This article aims to map the present state of art.