Edwin G, Pulleyblank Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar UBC PRESS / VANCOUVER© UBC Press 1995 All rights reserved, No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior writen permission of the publisher, Printed in Canad on ad-free paper == ISBN 0-7748.0505-6 ‘Canadian Cataloguing in Publication D Pulleyblank, Edwin G. Edwin George), 1922- (Outline of classical Chinese grammar Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7748.0305.6 1. Chinese language ~ Grammar, Historical. 2. Chinese language ~ to 600. 1. Tile PLUIOLPS4 1995 4951'S _C95.910219-1 ‘This book has been published with the help ofa grant fom the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Financial assistance was alo provided by the Chiang Ching-kvo Found: tional Scholarly Exchange UBC Press also gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support to its publishing program ‘rom the Canada Council, the Province of British Columbia Cultural Services Branch, and the Department of Communications ofthe Government of Canada UBC Press University of British Columbia {6344 Memorial Road Vancouver, BC V6T 122 (604) 822-3259 Fax; (608) 822-6083Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar is a comprehensive introduction to the syntactical analysis of Classical Chinese. Focusing on the language of the high classical period, which ranges from the time of Confucius to the unification of the empire by Qin in-221, the book pays particular attention to the Mencius, the Lainyu, and, toa lesser extent, the Zudzhudn texts ‘Renowned for his work in Classical Chinese, Edwin Pulleyblank opens the book with a brief historical overview and a discussion of the relationship be- tween the writing system and the phonology. This is followed by an outline of. the overall principles of word order and sentence structure, He then deals with the main sentence types — nominal predicates, verbal predicates, and numerical expressions, which constitute a special type of quasiverbal predication. The final section covers topics such as subordinate constituents of sentences, non- declarative sentence types, and complex sentences. Clear and well organized, Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar is an authoritative study and will bean invaluable resource tool for anyone involved in Chinese language studies Edwin G. Pulleyblank is professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Lexicon of Recon- structed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early ‘Mandarin (1991) and Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology (1984).Contents Preface /xiti Abbreviations /xv 1. Introduction /3 1, Historical Outline 3 2. Sound /4 (a) Fangie BR 1s (®) Tones /6 3. Symbol 7 4, Syllable and Word /8 5. Morphology /10 IL. Some Basic Principles of Classical Chinese Syntax /12 1, Word Classes /12 2. Subject and Predicate 13 3. Word Order /14 Ml. Noun Predication 16 1. Verbless Noun Predication /16 (@) Questions /16 (b) Pronouns and Particles with Verbless Noun Predicates /17 (©) Verbless Comparisons with You 4/18 (@) Omission of Ye 4 /18 (©) The Aspect Particle ¥¥ & afier Verbless Noun Predicates /19. (f) Other Meanings of Ye 44, /20 2, The Copula Verb Wei #% 20 3. The Copula Yue Fl 21 4. The Preclassical Copula Wei ME 22 IV. Verbal Predicates /23 Classes of Verbs /23 Adjectives 24 Nouns Used as Verbs 25 Intransitive Verbs /26 ‘Transitive Verbs — Active and Passive /27 Verbs of Motion and Location — Intransitive and Transitive /28,1 8 9. ‘The Verbs You 4 “have; there is/are’ and Wid $ ‘not have; there is/are not’ 30 ‘Transitive Verbs with Two Objects /31 Passive Constructions /35 V. Compound Verbal Predicates 39 1 2. 3. 4, Coordination /39 . Clause Objects — Verb Phrases as Objects of Transitive Verbs /39 Pivot Constructions — The Causative /40 ‘Verb Phrases as Complements to Adjectives /42 (a) Adjectives That Make a Following Verb Passive /42 (b) Other Adjectives That Take Verb Phrases as Complements /44 Verbs in Series /44 (a) The Construction in General — The Particle Er ffi 144 (0) Dé (ér) # (IAT), Shuai (én) (fT), etc. 46 Coverbs /47 (a) Transitive Verbs Corresponding to Prepositions /47 G@ ¥e DA “take, uses with, by means of /47 Gi) Yong Fl ‘uses with’ /50 Gi) Ya BE ‘accompany: give; with; and” /50 (iv) Wei, 4 “for, on behalf of, for the sake of” /51 (y) ZBL, You Hl, Cong $& “follow from’ /52 (©) Coverbs of Place /53 @ Ya T “go: 0, 153 (ii). Ya FS ‘in, at, to, from, than, etc.’ /53 Git) Ha E154 (Gv) Locative complements /54 (v) Omission of the coverb in locative complements /55 (vi) Pronominal substitutes yudn 3% and yan Fy 156 (it) X zhi yi ZH Y 156 (©) Descriptive Complements with Ri 4 andYou 4H 157 (4) Coverbs as Subordinating Conjunetions /57 V1. Numerical Expressions /58 1 2 3, 4, ‘As Predicates /58 As Complements /58 As Modifiers of Nouns /59 You #f ‘and’ 160 VIL. Noun Phrases and Nominalization /61 Coordination and Subordination of Nouns /61(@) Coordination /61 (©) Subordination 61 2. Nominalization 462 (a) Unmarked Nominalization /62 (6) Marked Nominalization by Inserting Zkt % 164 ©) zHe #166 @) Sud FF 168 ‘VIII. Topicalization and Exposure /69 Ix. Exposure of an Element That is Not the Subject /69 Exposure of the Subject /71 2é $i] Marking Exposure 72 XahiyiZ RY Other Particles Marking Topicalization or Contrastive Exposure /73 (a) ve th 73 (by wei ME 174 (© Zhe #174 @ FER 4 (©) Rud fi A 5 Pronouns and Related Words /76 1. Personal Pronouns /76 (a) First Person /76 (b) Second Person /77 (©) Third Person /78 (d) Reflexive Personal Pronoun /83 () Personal Pronouns with Negative Particles 84 2. Demonstratives /85 (@) shi 15 () crt 86 © Bit 186 @ SiM 188 © 7% 88 (0 She, she % 189 (g) she BE 189 hy PUK 199 (i) Er 190 @ Ruo # 190 3. Interrogatives /91 @ @ Shur FEOx1. (Outtine of Classical Chinese Grammar Gi) Sha Kr92 Git) Chu BH 193 & (i HEfT 193 Gi) 7K 95 Git) Ha BA 95 (iy) HEB 195 ) He B95 © @ Yan Ban ¥ 196 Gi) Wand Fw Bw 96 4. Indefinite Pronouns /97 (@) Tuo tt, 197 (b) Mou HE 197 (©) Rén A 197 Adverbs 99 1. Adverbial Use of Nouns /99 2. Adjectives as Adverbs /100 3. Verbs as Adverbs /101 4, Numerical Expressions as Adverbs /101 5. Expressive Adverbs in Rén #8 , Rit $0, ete. N02 Negation 103 1. PIE Negatives /103, (@) Bi F 1103, (b) Fou B 1103 (© Fa H 104 @ Fe 3 106 © Pole 106 (9 He ® nor 2. Miw Negatives /107 @) Wi F wa & and wi F107 (i) We $8. as prohibitive particle /107 Gi) Wa $ ‘not have.’ See Section 1V.7 (b) Wa 7 “do not’ 1108 (©) Wang © 1109 (@) Wang FE) 1109 (©) Mo % 109 (9 Wei F N09 (e) wei HK 110 (hy ati A 110(i) Mie F110 @ mo XII. Aspect, Time, and Mood /112 1. Verbal Aspect — Preverbal Particles /112 Go) ABE ata (b) wei AR Nita (©) Preverbal WE 115 2. Sentential Aspect — Sentence Final Particles /116 @ WK 116 (by ve He 118 (WE Werth B, veyryr th B Rye 3. Time Words /119 (a) Time Expressions in Topic Position /119 Ching 8 tio (©) Céng #119 (0 Jiang #1120 (oie B n21 (Fang 771121 (s) sav HB 121 (h) Cha #0122 4, Modality 122 (aor Ft 23 () Dai 8, Sha jx BEM 128 (©) Gai #1124 (a) Wi, wie, and Wi FI 1124 (Ning ® 125 XIII, Adnominal and Adverbial Words of Inclusion and Restriction /126 1. Words of Inclusion 126 (a) Zhi BE ‘all; members of the class of” /126 (b) Féin AL ‘aur 127 (©) Jie Bsa ME san 127 (@) 4a FE “both, together’ /129 (©) Ge &, ‘each’ /130 (]) Mei % ‘every (time), always; whenever’ M30 (g) Words of Verbal Origin /131 2. Restriction /131 (a) Wei #E ‘only’ 131 () Introducing the subject or an exposed element /131* ‘wuuine oF Ciassical Chinese Grammar Gi) Introducing a noun predicate /132 (Gi) In adverbial position restricting the predicate /132 (b) Di 4B ‘only’ 1133 (6) Other Similar Words 133 (@) Restriction by Final Particles 134 3. Some, None /134 (a) Hud 3K, “some one; some’ /134 (b) Mo KE ‘no one; none’ /136 4, Reflexive and Reciprocal Pronominal Adverbs /136 (@) ZBL ‘oneself’ 136 (b) Xiang 46 ‘each other, mutually’ /136 (©) Shen 4 “body, person, self” 137 (@) Jido K ‘in exchange, mutually’; Hat ‘mutually’/137 XIV. Imperative, Inerrogative and Exclamatory Sentences /138 1. Imperative Sentences /138 (@) Unmarked /138 (b) Qing 3 “I beg of you: please’ /138 (c) Prohibition, See XL2 (6) Modal 07 #£ in Imperative Sentences. See XUL.4a. 2. Interrogative Sentences /139 (a) Simple Questions / (@ The final particle Ha F 1139 Gi) Ye ha tts F, ya HER), ye AB AB) 139 Gil) Zha BE 1140 (iv) Fou © , See XLb. (~) Interrogative pronouns. See IX.3 (b) Rhetorical Questions /140 Negative questions requiring affirmative answers 1140 Gi) OF HE in thetorical questions 1142 Git) OFF a2 (iv) Yong Jif, Ju #E, Ou 3K, Yong ja AEB, eve. 1144 (0) Wi in heosicl questions 148 (vi) FAR “is it nov’ M45; (vii) Rhetorical questions wit interrogative pronouns /145 vii) Kuang 3% “how much the more’ 146 3. Exclamatory Sentences 1146 (@)Zai M1146 (b) Inversion of Subject and Predicate /144Contents XV. Complex Sentences /148 1. Parataxis and Hypotaxis /148 2. Conditional Clauses /149 (a) Parataxis /149 (b) Subordination by a Particle in the If-Clause /150 (i) Rud H, Ra, Er HO N50 Gi) Shr {K., Ling %, ete., ‘supposing’ 1151 Gi) Gou 4 152 (iv) Chéng ti, Xin 18 1153 () se ns (wi Fei 3E 154 (vi Wwei HE 1154 (€) Subordination by a Particle in the Main Clause /154 (i) Zé HY then’ 1154 Gi) St HF then’ 55 Gi) 37 BP then’ 1155 3. Concessive Clauses /156 (a) Sui 8 ‘atthough, even if 156 (b) Sut... ér BE. AE 57 (Fei... érAF A. 57 (A) Zing HE 1158 4. Temporal Clauses /158 (@) Verbs in Series /158 (b) Aspect Particles in the First Clause /158 (0) eK ‘when’ /158 (d) Simuttaneity — Dang % , Fang W , ... shi #E 160 (e) Topic Phrases /161 (0 Er hou 0B, Ren how HK 1161 5. Cause, Reason /161 (a) The Covers 7 YA 1161 (b) Gi HE ‘reason’ /162 (©) Explanatory Noun Predicate after Main Clause. See VIL.2a.ii and XIL.3c) Notes /163 Sources of Examples /169 Bibliography /171 Index of Chinese Vocabulary Items /175 General Index /189This Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar has grown out of notes prepared over the years for teaching Classical Chinese to undergraduates at the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia, as well as at summer schools in Bloomington, Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the 1960s. When I began the study of this language at the end of the Second World War, there were very few textbooks or other learning aids available. There was, in fact, still a widespread belief that Chinese, especially the classical language, had no grammar and that the only way (0 learn it was by a kind of osmosis. By reading texts with a teacher, preferably a native speaker of a modern spoken form of the Tanguage, one was supposed to absorb a facility at guessing at the meanings of passages by piecing together the meanings of successive words as provided in a dictionary. ‘There had, of course, been pioneering works by western sinologists in the nineteenth century, particularly noteworthy being Georg von der Gabelentz, Chinesische Grammatik (1881), but these were held in little regard, Rather more heed was paid to the contributions of Bernhard Karlgren, ‘whose work had fist put the study of Middle and Old Chinese pronunciation ‘on a scientific basis and who had also made many insightful observations on the grammar of the classical language. There were others, like my old teacher, Walter Simon, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or George Kennedy at Yale and Harold Shadick at Comell, who were trying to apply modern linguistic theory to Classical Chinese. Nevertheless, it would be true to say that there was nothing approaching a coherent analysis of the syntax of the language available. I felt this lack even more acutely when, all too soon, I found myself in the position of having to teach the language ‘myself. Along with other contemporaries, like William Dobson and Angus Graham, I found myself pushed into doing research in this area. After publishing two or three papers on grammatical questions, I concentrated my publication more on historical phonology but I continued to think about questions of syntax and to prepare teaching notes for my students. The ‘Outline that 1 offer here is the end result of this process. ‘The world has, of course, changed greatly in the half century since I began to study Chinese, not least in linguistic theory, which has been revolutionized by the theories of Noam Chomsky and his followers. While this has inspired much recent work on Modern Chinese grammar, it has, unfortunately, had comparatively little impact so far on the study of the classical language. We are still at the stage of struggling to work out thebasic patterns of Classical Chinese syntax. Perhaps some students will be inspired by the unsolved problems that they find in this book to apply new theoretical tools and bring the grammar of Classical Chinese into the linguistic mainstream instead of being in a rather esoteric backwater. Meanwhile, I am encouraged by the reactions of those who have seen and used earlier versions both at the University of British Columbia and elsewhere to think that students and teachers will continue to find ita useful introduction to the language. is impossible in a short work of this kind to argue fully for all the positions taken, let alone discuss the views of other scholars who agree or differ from them. I have endeavoured in the endnotes to acknowledge major contributions of my predecessors and contemporaries but I am only too aware that the references I have made are far from complete in this regard. I can only hope that my colleagues will forgive me, bearing in mind my primarily pedagogical aim In preparing this work for publication I have been greatly assisted by a generous grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ‘of Canada, The grant was provided for a Concise Dictionary of Classical Chinese, of which the Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar was to serve as an introduction. In the end it has seemed better to publish the Outline separately. The Dictionary exists in the form of a preliminary draft on ‘computer but will still require much work before it isin publishable form, ‘Among those whom the grant has enabled me to employ, Dr. Gary Arbuckle must be specially mentioned for his help in preparing the ‘computerized text of this book. I should also like to thank Mr. Jingtao Sun and the copy editor of the UBC Press who have proofread the text with great care and caught many errors. Errors that remain are of course my own responsibility. also acknowledge with gratitude the publication grants which the book has received from the Humanities Federation of Canada and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.Avvieviauuus EM Early Mandarin EMC arly Middle Chinese Gong Gongyeing zhuan 2 ¥ {i Guin Guanzt cy Gudyt 3B HE Han Feict 4 3B F LMC LY Meng Mo oc Shi Shijing #3 sha Seeing & Xin Xiinel ZGC — Zhangud ce HK BA SH Zhuang Zhuanget Zw Zudehuan % A1, Introduction 1, Historical Outline ‘Chinese was the principal vehicle of culture and ei for the whole of East Asia for many centuries and today is spoken by more people than ‘any other language. The earliest known examples of written Chinese are the so-called ‘oracle bones,” records of divination from the last capital of the Shang Hf dynasty at Anyang 3 FfF . They date from approximately -1300 to -1050, From the following centuries, after the founding of the Zhou J&] ‘dynasty, come inscriptions on bronze vessels recording royal donations and ‘other such events. The earliest of the Chinese classics — parts of the Book ‘of Changes (Yijing 34 $8), the Book of Documents (Shajing * #8 ), and the Book of Odes (Shijing #¢ #8) — also date from the early centuries of the Zhou dynasty. All these texts are written in an archaic form of Chinese referred to as preclassical. “The classical period proper begins with Confucius ALF (-51 to 479) and continues through the Warting States period to the unification and founding of the empire by Qin 4 in -221. This was the period of the major philosophers and also of the first works of narrative history. Though all the productions of the period are in Classical Chinese, there is considerable linguistic diversity among them. This is, no doubt, partly the result of the geographical disunity and decentralization of the country, which allowed various regional dialects to become the vehicles of literature in their own areas. It is also the result of historical evolution. Exhaustive studies of these differences have yet to be made, but one can distinguish at least the following: (a) a rather archaie form of literary language, showing features in ‘common with the Shijing and probably based on a central dialect, used in historical texts such as the Zudzhuan Ze 1 and Gugya BB; (b) a Lo dialect used in the Confucian Analects (Liinyit 8 $B ; more archaic) and Mencius (Menge! if ~F ; more evolved); (c) a Chis # dialect used in the Li Sao #& EE and other early poems of the Chifct RF ; and (d) a third-century dialect found in texts such as Zhudngat HE F , Xuinet #1 F, and Han Feict 4 4 $F , showing an evolution towards a common literary standard but still with marked differences between different text. With the imperial unification under Qin and Han 3, the movement towards a common literary standard was accelerated, not only by the4 ‘Gutiine oF Ciassical Chinese Grammar centralization of the government, but also by the increasing tendency towards imitation of classical models in preference to the living spoken Janguage. An important influence in this respect was the triumph of Confucianism which made the Confucian classics the basis for education and for advancement in government service. In a comparatively early text like the Records of the Historian (Shiji 2 #2) one can still detect influence from the spoken language, but as time went on Literary Chinese (wén yin X FE) became increasingly a dead language, playing a role like that of Latin in Western Europe, from which the current spoken language increasingly diverged. Literary Chinese was never completely static and uniform. Different styles were fashioned by successive literary movements and for special purposes such as government documents or Buddhist writings. There was no development of a prescriptive grammar and people learned to write by imitating earlier models rather than by obeying explicit rules as in the case of Latin. The spoken language alvways had some influence even in belles letres and poetry, and still more in writings of a more practical nature. The result is that even those well versed in classical texts may have difficulty when they first encounter later material, such as official documents of the Qing J# dynasty. 2. Sound Chinese characters are sometimes referred to as if they directly represent ideas. This is a fallacy. Even though many of them are pictorial or otherwise iconic in origin, in their use as a system of writing they are conventional symbols for particular spoken words. Thus synonyms (words that are the same in meaning but different in sound) are normally written with different characters, while homophones (words that are the same in sound but different in meaning) may be written with the same character. For example, qucn ‘dog’ is written A , based on a pictogram for ‘dog,” but gou, which also means ‘dog,’ is written 44], with a distorted form of A + gu J ‘hook’ to represent the sound. On the other hand, dn ‘how? where?” and dn ‘peace’ are both written 3% Since in Chinese, as in every other language, the spoken form is primary, itis desirable 10 get back, as closely as possible, to the actual sounds that underlie the characters. Unfortunately, since the characters represent whole syllables and give no direct phonetic information, and since the sounds have changed greatly over the centuries, this is only possiblethrough a difficult process of reconstruction. The most widely used system of reconstruction is that of Bernhard Karlgren as published in Grammata Serica Recensa (1957). This gives two reconstructions, one for what he calls Ancient Chinese, based on the Qiéyan YJ #8, a rhyme dictionary of +602, and one for what he calls Archaic Chinese, based on the rhymes of the Skiing, relevant to a period terminating around -600. ‘A revised system of reconstruction for the Qt2yin, called Early Middle Chinese (EMC), together with a reconstruction for Late Middle Chinese (LMC) of the Ting period, which together replace Karlgren's Ancient Chinese, is published in Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (1991), which also contains a new reconstruction of Early Mandarin (EM) ofthe Yuan JC perio. ‘The reconstruction of stages earlier than EMC is a much more difficult problem since the available evidence is more fragmentary. While the rhyme patteras ofthe Shijing, worked out by scholars of the Qing period, and the rhyming of poets at various periods between then and the Qidyin provide evidence for the evolution of the finals, that is the rhyming parts of syllables, comparable systematic evidence for the non-rhyming parts, the tial consonants oF groups of consonants, is lacking. Anything that purports to be a complete reconstruction of Old Chinese (OC), such as Karlgren’s Archaic Chinese, is bound to be somewhat illusory at the present time. In this Outline, reconstructed readings in EMC or LMC will be given from time to time for illustrative purposes. Tentative reconstructions in OC will also sometimes be given, marked with an asterisk * ‘Apart from systems of reconstruction which propose actual phonetic values, there are some traditional methods used by commentators for indicating how characters should be read that readers of classical texts should be aware of. These are the traditional spelling system known as fdngié and the system of indicating the four ancient tones by small circles atthe four comers of characters. (2) Pangie ‘This term, literally ‘turning-cutting,” combines two alternative terms, fin FR turn’ and git 4 “cul,"' for a method invented by commentators of the Later Han period for spelling the sound of one word by means of wo others, one of which had the same initial and the other of which had the same final, For example, dong 3 ‘east’ might be spelled dé #8 ‘virtue’ +6 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ‘gong ‘work.’ In the course of time, such spellings became the basis for rhyme dictionaries which classitied words by rhymes and then, within each rhyme, by homophone groups with the same non-rhyming parts. ‘The earliest of these dictionaries that is (partially) extant is the Qiéyan Y] $i, completed in +601 by Li Fayan ME 3 H. It went through many revisions and enlargements culminating in the Guangyiin 3 #8 of +1008, which is still extant. Though the Qié yiin has not survived in its original form, extensive manuscript fragments have been recovered from Dunhuang and there are also partial or complete manuscripts of some of the intermediate recensions. It is important to realize that, as the language changed, fngié spellings became out of date. Fangi® spellings contained in such dictionaries as the Kangxi zididn HE B °F SR, the Ciyudn HE HR, and Morohashi’s Dai Kanwa jiten K & 4# AF HE are mostly taken from dictionaries of the Téng JB and Song ‘periods and may give erroneous results if interpreted in terms of modern Pekingese. (b) Tones Middle Chinese had a system of four ‘tones’ (si sheng J SE) which, according to tradition, were first recognized and named by Shén Yue Ut, #4) in the +5th century. They are called ping “P ‘tevel,” shang ‘rising," git ‘departing,’ and rit, “entering.” Though they are the same in number as the four tones of Pekingese, they do not correspond one for one, The old “level” tone has split into Pekingese tones 1 and 2, depending on whether the initial consonant was originally voiceless or voiced. Words in the old ‘rising’ tone with voiceless initials or with initial liquids or nasals have Pekingese tone 3. Words inthe old “departing” tone and words in the ‘rising’ tone with originally voiced stops or fricatives have tone 4 in Pekingese. ‘Words in the Middle Chinese ‘entering’ tone originally ended in -p,-t, oF -k, sfill preserved in Cantonese. These endings have been lost in Pekingese and the words in question may have any ofthe four Pekingese tones. ‘Since many characters have more than one reading, often differing in tone, commentators had to indicate which reading was to be followed. One method was to give a fangié spelling. Another was to place a small half circle at one of the four comers of the character in question, starting at the lower left, Usually the most common reading of the character was left unmarked, Thus the word weing =. king. in the “level” tone, isnot marked but the word wang “to be king,’ in “departing* tone, is marked E- in texts using this system.1. Introduction 7 ‘Throughout this book the pronunciation of Chinese characters is indicated in the modem standard language known as patonghua #38 RE “common speech” in the new standard romanization, praytn tt #. Teachers of Classical Chinese have sometimes preferred 10 use a spelling system based on a reconstruction of ancient pronunciation but, while this has the advantage of focusing attention on the fact that the ancient language was pronounced very differently from the modern language and may seem Justified from a purist point of view, in the present uncertainties and absence of agreement about ancient pronunciation it seems to place an artificial and unnecessary burden on the learner. Instead, ancient pronunciation will only be referred to as seems necessary for explanatory purposes. There are stil problems, however. One of the most serious is that in current usage colloguial pronunciations have largely replaced special literary readings that were still regulary followed inthe reading of classical texts as late asthe first half ofthe present century and are still in use among conservative scholars in Téiwan 3 74 and elsewhere. This sometimes has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring important distinctions that were slill transparent when the system of reading pronunciations was in vogue In the present work T have followed the principle adopted in my Lexicon (1991) of adhering to older reading pronunciations in such eases. Words 10 which this decision has been applied include (C. = Colloquial): chi 78 ‘to govern’ (C. zhi), ug 28 “to pass’ (C. gud), ja TR (C. J), gf HACC. gd, tuo {E, (C. ta), wei E (C. wei), wei FE, (C. wed, BC. ya). 3. Symbol Xu Shén BF 1H, who compiled the first etymological dictionary of Chinese characters, the Shudwén jiéci BH XM “F (Explanations of Graphs and Analysis of Characters), around the beginning of the +2nd century, classified Chinese characters into six types: (a) zhi shi 48 “pointing to things,’ that is, graphs that directly symbolize ideas, for example, shang E “up, id PF ‘down’; (b) xiang xing SFP ‘imitating shapes," that is, graphs derived from pictograms, such as ri ‘sun’ and yue Fl ‘moon’; (¢) xing sheng 7% BE “form and sound,’ that is, graphs that combine two simpler graphs, one representing the sound and one referring to the meaning, for example, jidng WL ‘river’ and hé ¥ ‘river’ — in each case the clement on the left, derived from the pictogram for ‘water is combined with another element which has nothing to do with the ‘meaning but stands for a word that was similar in sound to the particular8 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar word that was being written; (J) hui yi & XE ‘combined meanings.” for example ming "B ‘cry,’ composed of ‘mouth’ + *bird’; (c) zhudn zhi GE ‘wansfered notation,’ an uncommon category. apparently meaning cases ‘where words of different sound but similar meaning are written with similar graphs, for example, Ido % ‘old’ and kdo “old”; and (1) jiajie 4. AE “borrowing,” where a character used for another word of the same or similar sound, for example, dn 3 ‘peace," is used to write the interrogative pronoun ai ‘where? how?” Of these six types, (a), (b), (d) and (e) are non-phonetic, that is, the meaning is directly represented in an iconic way without reference to the sound. Types (c) and (f) are based on a phonetic principle and together they account for the great majority of characters. There is no hard and fast line between (c) and ({). With the addition of a semantic determinant (‘signific’ or ‘radical’), a jidjié becomes axing shéng, for which the more usual term is xiésheng #8 AF . The addition of signifies was very fluid before the Hin dynasty. Thus, the graph %X, which originated as a pictogram for nii “woman,” was borrowed (jidjié ) for ra ‘you’ at an early period. Later the graph 3, which has the element ‘water’ as signific and originated as a -xiésheng graph for the name of the Ri River in Héndn, was borrowed as the standard graph for rf “you.” The choice of signifies could also be variable. ‘Thus the graph BH, with the ‘speech’ signific, which was later confined to the readings shud ‘explain; explanation; doctrine, theory: story; (later) say’ and shui ‘persuade,’ is often used for yue “be pleased” in pre-Han texts, for ‘which the standard graph eventually became 4, with the ‘heat’ signitic “The printed forms of the characters that were standard until the recent official script simplification, and that are still standard in Taiwan, are in a style known as kdishu 48 # . This style evolved during the Former Han dynasty out of the earlier ‘clerical style," tisha # # , which, in turn, was based on the ‘Small Seal,’ xido zhuan “I 3, which came into being as a result of Li Si's 4 MF script reform under the First Emperor of Qin. In Han times the obsolete forms of writing of the pre-Qin period were known as gi wén & XC ‘ancient script.’ An earlier form of script, traditionally attributed 10 Zhou 48 , the Grand Scribe of King Xuan ‘& of Zhou (r. -827 to -782), was known as ‘Large Seal” da zhuan A ME 4, Syllable and Word In general the syllable, weitten with a single character, and the word correspond! in Classical Chinese, but there are a few exceptions which may be classified as follows:4. antroauction y (a) Bound compounds, that is, words whose meanings cannot be ‘deduced simply from the separate morphemes of which they are composed, for example junzi # “gentleman, superior man; gentlemanly,” composed of jin % ‘ruler, lord’ + zi F son’; shajr BR HE ‘almost; probably,” composed of shi ‘many’ + j1 few" (compare modern dudshdo 2), In Classical Chinese such bound compounds are not numerous and, in general, when two morphemes are used in combination, the meaning of the whole can be readily deduced from the meanings of the parts. (b) Disyllabic expressions formed by total or partial reduplication of monosyllables, e.g., xiiyii J 92 ‘a moment,’ derived from xii IR ‘wait.’ ‘These often form expressive adjectives or adverbs, e.g. zhu zhud T88 HE ‘glistening’ (describing the plumage of birds), Aui si # AK ‘trembling, frightened.’ Names of insects and small animals are often formed in this way, €.g., ting Iéng #¢ 88 ‘praying mantis,’ xi shuai #6 2 ‘cricket’ (EMC sit wid. (©) Polysyllabic foreign loanwords, e.g., sha mén WY Ff “Buddhist monk,’ from Sanskrit sramana, tué tué 3 BE or lud two SR SE “camel,” borrowed in early Han from an unknown foreign language, probably Xiongné “J HX. Clearly identifiable words of this kind are not found before the Han dynasty. (@) In some cases two monosyllables have contracted into a single syllable written with one character. This is like the modern bié 1 ‘don’t,’ from bit yao 7 % , or English don’t from do not. Among the contractions of this kind in Classical Chinese are: (i) zhu BH = 2ht ha ZF , where zh is the object pronoun and ‘hd is either the final question particle ora variant of the coverb yi FE ‘in, at, to, from’ (see Section IV) (zhi is also a separate word ‘meaning ‘all, the class of ) Gi) zhan BE = zit yan 2% (care) Gi) er FF = er yi HE only’ Gv) hé B = hi pa A “why nor’ (0) yt & (also written SK) = ye hit (vi) yé AB (also writen AB ) = ye aa +h, ¥ , probably a dialect variant of (¥). () In other cases a monosyllabic particle is bimorphemic, that is, it is equivalent in meaning to two mozphemes, even though one of the elements cannot be identified as a separate word. Thus the postverbal particle yan i is equivatent in meaning to an expected *yi zht ® Z ‘in it, to it, ete.”w Outline of Classical Chinese Gramm: which is never found. A similar formation is found in some other wards, like rdn 8 equivalent to ri zhi $8 ZG) i like that, (i i 50," with various specialized grammatical usages, and yiin Z= ‘says (So)' related to yué FA say" (9 IX.tevil below), 5. Morphology In Modern Chinese there is very little morphology, that is, changes in the forms of words to convey differences in meaning, apart from noun suffixes, such as -men 41, which forms plurals of pronouns and is used in certain circumstances with nouns referring to persons treated as collective groups, and -2i F and -r 52, which originally formed diminutives, and verb suffixes such as the aspect markers -le J and -zhe %. There are, however, still words which are clearly related in both sound and meaning. Sometimes it is a case of one character having two different pronunciations, such as, hao # ‘good,’ also pronounced hao in the sense of ‘to like, love,’ or chang Fe long,” also pronounced zing in the sense of “grow; elder.’ In other cases the words are written with different characters which share the same phonetic element, for example, zhdng 3K “stretch,” zhang AK or HK “to ‘well" (originally also writen 3R ) and zhang HE ‘curtain, tent’ (that is, “Something stretched), which are all semantically related to chang "long"; or xing 4£ ‘(inborn) nature’ and xing ¥£ ‘clan name, surname,’ which are ‘elated in sound and sense to sheng 4 *be bora, live, alive’ and have it as the phonetic part oftheir grap. In the classical language there were many more cases of this kind, and also cases in which obviously related words are written with totally unrelated graphs, for example, the frst person pronouns wii and wo (EMC 9 and pa"), oF the second person pronouns ér HH (EMC pid), rt 7K (EMC pi), rud 3 (EMC piak). These have been called word families, AAs our understanding of the phonology of Old Chinese improves, it is becoming possible 1o explain some of this morphology in terms of affixes Of various kinds. The following are some of the most important patterns (a) There are many cases in which a word in departing tone is clearly derived from a word in one of the other three tones. This probably reflects, ‘an Old Chinese suffix *-s, cognate tothe suffix - in Tibetan. In some cases the derived word is a verb, e.g.. wang = “to be king,’ derived from wang E ‘king’; hao HF “to like’ derived from hao 4 ‘good,’ wit & “to hate," derived from é & *bad’ (EMC tak, entering tone). In other cases it is a noun, e.g, sheng ‘vehicle,’ from chéng AR “to ride (in a vehicle)’; 2udAB (EMC dzwa’, rising tone) ‘sit,’ zud HE (EMC dawat, departing tone) ‘seat’; dud JE (EMC dak, entering tone) ‘to measure,’ di BE (EMC dot, JE th twas not [it was the weapon, (Meng 14/3) Frequently the predicate in such a sentence is a verb phrase treated a8 a noiin (unmarked nominalization — see Section VI.2a) or a relative clause with its head replaced by zhé % ‘that which, one who, ete.’ (see Section VIL20) 6. Shi bd wéi yé, fei bi néng ye 3 7 a th > 3E HE HE ‘This is not-doing, itis not not-being.able. (Meng 14/7) 7. wei tian ahe ye BK 4 4, ‘is one who fears Heaven, (Meng 1B/3) Note that zh may be omitted wheu the relative clause contains sud JIT ‘that which’ standing for the object of the verb in the clause (see Section VII.24). 8, Sou zn sud zn ye & ZA HO ty cis what your reverence well knows. (Meng 1A/7) (2) Questions In the early form of Classical Chineée found in the Zudzhuan the interrogative particle hu is added after ye +h to make a question. In later texts, ye ha th, $F is replaced by ya BE (also writen ya BK) or ye AB {also written yé 3), which are probably dialect variants of one another and both phonetic fusions of yé hu 4, F. The Lo # texts, represented by Liinyii, and Méngzi have exclusively yi $€, while yé 4M predominates in other Warring States texts 6 9. Fa fi jin von aha vi ys RAE AE A ZF HR ‘Are we not all the sons of some man? (Meng 7A/36)UI Noun Predication "7 10. Qf zheng sb yé St JE 6, Is tits rue colour? (Zhuang 1/4) In some cases, especially in the Lainyit, we find yé yui 4H, 5 instead of the simple fused form ya $8. This is difficult to explain purely in phonetic terms and may represent partial restoration of the unfused form in the course of oral transmission ofthe text. The final particle fit % ‘is it not?,” which is equivatent in meaning to modern ba "EB, and may be a fusion of bi hu % F (see Section XIV.2b.vi), can also follow a noun predicate with ye 11, Rén ér zhi eh jfzhe, ming ye 6 AR TG Ek RA war That nonetheless Ihave reached this extremity, is fate, is it hot? (Zhuang 6197) (b) Pronouns and Particles with Verbless Noun Predicates As in example 6, the subject of a noun predicate may be resumed bj demonstrative pronoun, such as shi 2 ‘this, that,’ et HL ‘this,’ st “this.” 12. Ci Wén Wang ahi yong ye HL X EZ H th ‘This was King Wén's courage. (Meng 1B/3) 13, Shi yi 26u ye XE HF HE tb, ‘This was also running away. (Meng 1A/3) Note that in Classical Chinese shi 2 is not itself a copula, with the meaning ‘to be,’ as in Modern Chinese. Its frequent occurrence as a resumptive pronoun introducing a noun predicate was no doubt influential in giving it this meaning, which it had acquired in the colloquial language by the Han period, pe subject is plural, it is resumed by jié HF ‘all.’ Compare modern dou 14, Jie ga sheng rénye te EA th They were all sages of old. (Meng 2A/2) ‘The particles nai 77 and ji , both of which also occur with verbal predicates inthe sense of “then, thereupon’ (see Seetion XV), add emphasis to a noun predication, but are not copulas18 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 16. Nai fo a yé, wii kuang a. 7 AF th © BHT 1 was you (and no one else). I will reward you. (Zu Ding 9/5) ‘Jt is comparatively uncommon in this usage in texts of the classical period. In the following example it emphasizes the truth of something previously BL RR SEAR AR > HEE TR mentioned ae HZ {twas indeed that could no bea its embing, ike an innocent person going tothe place of execution, and so changed it Fra Sheep. (eng 1A) Cnher sentence aver that canbe used with verbless noun predicates include 61% “ecessrily” cheng BE uly really, Bl “definitely, cera, d2i 3B almost, robably”y2 TF ‘also, ydu 5X ‘gain, also 18. ... bl ud Jig Zhou ane ye ab BH At A ah will necessarily be one like Jié or Zhou. (Meng 5A/6) 19. Zi chéng Qt rén ye F wh IE A ah, You are truly a man of Qi. (Méng 2A/1) 20. Gi sud yuan ye El i HB ab, Iis certainly what I want. (Meng 2B/10) 17, Hi bi én gf hiish, ud wai zui ér jit si di, pyey (6) Verbless Comparisons with You 3H ‘The particle yéu 7H, which means ‘still, yet” with verbal predicates, has the meaning of “like” when it introduces a verbless noun predicate with yé 21, Jin zhi yub you eG zit yub ye SR AB ey RE th, ‘The music of today is like the music of old (from the point of view of the argument). (Meng 1B/1) Note that yéuis nota verb. I cannot be negated by bit ike the verbs ri 4 and rud 4 , which also mean “like.” It is a sentence adverb that changes the force of the noun predicate, Like ra it can, however, be used to add a dR AB AER ‘The gentleman will say, I now realize that ths is indeed a wild, reckless fellow. (Meng 4B/28) ‘The context is that the ‘gentleman,” that is, the man of cultivated moral sensibilii , who has received outrageous treatment from someone else will first examine his own conduct to see whether he has been at fault, but if in spite of his best efforts, the outrageous behaviour continues, he will come {0 a point at which he will have to conclude that the other person is n0 better than an animal and that his failure to respond casts no reflection on the gentleman himself. In this case (00 the ‘change of state’ marked by yi E.,, indicated in the translation by the phrase ‘I now realize that,” is not a change in the person who is the subject of the noun predication, but in the altitude ofthe speaker.20 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar In this usage y¥ E, appears to be a phonetic fusion of yé yi AH, and must be distinguished from the preverbal particle yt Es ‘already’ (see ‘Section XII.1c) and the phrasal particle ér yt TE, “(then stop =) only” after verbal predicates (See Section XII.24), both derived from the full verb STE, ‘stop finish.’ The enlarged forms yé 1-42, Es and yé yf yt tH, E. may be compared to yé yi tH, SE instead of yi H¥ alone noted above.” (1) Other Meanings of Ye +H, ‘Though its most salient use in Classical Chinese is as a mark of noun predication, yé tH, is not a copula. Some of its other uses seem to be related to its use as a mark of noun predication, Thus we find it after nominalized verb phrases which are the topic of a sentence or the object of a verb or coverb (see Sections VIL.2b, XV.4), and also a marker of proper nouns (see Section VII.3). In other cases, however, it occurs after purely verbal predicates. On its use in contrast to yi %& as a mark of continuing state, see Section XIL.2b below. 2. The Copula Verb Wéi #% Apart from the verbless noun predicate construction, the verb wéi #% “make, do" can be used as a copula in the sense of ‘to be,” Thus, wél is used, like ud {F in modern Chinese, (o indicate a temporary role. 25, Méngzi wéi cing yo Qt a FA MH RIE Mencius was @ minister of state in Qf. (Meng 2B/6) A formal difference between wei #% ‘do, make’ and wei #% ‘be" is that an interrogative pronoun must precede the former as its object by the general rule for such pronouns with transitive verbs (see Section IX.3), while an interrogative pronoun follows the latter as its subjective ‘complement 26, Zi wei shut F % HE sir make who = Who are you? (LY 18/6) One may ask why wéi shut # HE is used here in place of shu yé FE 4, , which also occurs. The answer is probably that the expected answer here is the person's name, that is, identification among persons already known, or possibly known, rather than further descriptive information.® Wéi # is used instead of the verbless construction ifthe aspect particle yt & or certain verbal auxiliaies are requiredIML. Noun Predication 21 27... bi wéi bi duo iF HFS RK not make not many PERFECT = is (already) not not-many. (Meng 1A) Bi duo ‘not many’ is a verb phrase which is the complement of wéi, hence an example of unmarked nominalization (VII.2a). If the perfect aspect marked by yi & were not required, the meaning ‘is not not-many’ would be expressed as fei bit dud ye 3¢ F % 4h, 28. Rén jié ke yi wei Yéo Shin AH UA a 38 HE Men can all be a Yao or Shin, (Meng 6B/2) On the auxiliary ke (yi) “7 (VA } is possible,” which requires a verb as its complement, see Section IV.1, One could also translate this sentence as “Ics possible forall men to become a Yao or Shun.’ That is, there is an element of (potential) change through time involved, not just the timeless equation that is implied by verbless noun predication. This comes from the meaning of ké yf, however, not from anything semantically inherent in wéi, Which, in itself, is quite colourless as far as mood or aspect are concerned The simplest way of accounting for the presence of wéi is by the formal requirement that ké yi must take a verb as its complement, Neither ké nor Ig yi can be followed by a bare noun, AAs with many other problems of Classical Chinese syntax, much more study is needed to determine all the circumstances under which wéi is used inthe sense of ‘to be’ instead ofthe verbless noun predicate construction, 3. The Copula Yue El Yus EL, which, as a verb, means ‘say.’ introducing quoted speech, is used a8 «copula that is, wth a subjective complement rather than an object, in the sense of “be called.” 29. Lio é wi qi yue guan % Ti # 3E EL AK To be old and without a wife is called ‘guan.’ (Méng 1B/S) In this sense yué can also introduce « complement after a main verb of ‘calling.” 3M. Gang yu, sig sheng 98 90 9 ng. Ming bn yu Tong > ESE WOES BL © op 2 ‘The dk sai, “This one in his bie ia he same substance as tne He named him Tong Same’) (Zuo Hun 68)2 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 4, The Preclassical Copula wei" (HE > HE > AB) In the preclassical language the noun predicate construction with yé 4H, does not occur, Instead the particle wéi "EE (also written te or AE, and simply 4 on inscriptions) is used as a copula introducing a noun predicate. fn spite of the coincidence in modern pronunciation, itis totally unrelated to wéi # ‘do, make; be.’ In EMC it was jwi, while the latter was wid. Preclassical wéi ME has other uses as a noun marker that resemble those of ye th, and the two words may be etymologically related. In the classical language it survives with the specialized meaning ‘only,’ while retaining vestiges of its preclassical syntactic behaviour.? 31. Sub tin wei xin if BB ME 48 ‘What they (the spirits) attend is only good faith. (Zud Xiang 9/6) Note the absence of final yé 44 which would otherwise be expected in an cequational sentence of this kind in the Zudzhudn. 32, Wei yi suo zai HE 3 JF E It is only where right behaviour lies (that a great man places his words and conduct) (Méng 4B/11) In Mencius, however, it is more usual to have yé 4H even after wéi ME “only.” ‘The negator of nouns féi_4F is probably a fusion of ba wei 7 HE. Other related words are wei ME ‘yes’ and sui HE ‘although’ (see Section XV.3),IV. Verbal Predicates Unlike nouns, verbs are inherently predicating words and can form predicates without any particle or copula. They take the simple particle of negation ba A, while nouns require fei 4F . They also differ from nouns as predicates in being able to take the perfect aspect particle yr S& and the nonperfective aspect negative wei A. 1. Classes of Verbs Adjectives, e.g., shan gdo Il} #8) ‘the mountain is high,’ form the first major subdivision that needs to be distinguished among naturally predicating words in Chinese. Though, as words that form predicates ‘without the addition ofa particle, they belong with verbs rather than nouns, they differ from verbs proper in their syntactical behaviour in a number of ‘ways. They are sometimes called ‘stative verbs’ but there are objections 0 this, since transitive verbs such as zhi #2 ‘know’ also denote a state rather {han an action. A possible alternative would be “quality verb,” but as a class they correspond closely in meaning to adjectives in other languages and we shall continue to use this traditional term. ‘Among ves proper te main dition ie Btween naive wer, which require a single noun to complete their meaning, eg., wang Idi “the king comes,’ and transitive verbs, e.g, weing ahd rén EBL A. “the king kills a man,’ wang yd 2hi dao $4 7] “the king gives him a knife,’ which require (wo or more nouns. The equational or copula verb wéi % (see Section IIf.2) is transitive in syntactical form, although it takes a suibjective complement rather than an object. One can distinguish these four main classes of verbs on the basis of their behaviour with the verbal auxiliary ke % ‘is possible’ (itself a predicate adjective)". Only transitive verbs may follow k& I ‘possible” directly, in which case they must be understood as passive; that is, the subject of ké is the object (or patient) of the verb — rén ké sha AT ® “the man is possible to kill" = ‘the man may be killed.” A transitive verb in an active sense, or an intransitive verb requires ké yi TVA, rather than ké Sone ng Lyf sha ren EA DUAR Ai is possible for he Ming to kill a man’ or ‘the king can kill a man’; wang ké yi lai EA VA HR “it is possible for the king to come’ or ‘the king can come.” In this24 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar construction yr YA, which as a verb means ‘use’ and as a coverb (or preposition) is used for the instrument, fills the role of passive transitive verb complement to ké. That is, the meaning of instrument is extended to include agency: ‘the king may be used to" -> ‘the king may be the agent to Like nouns (example 28), adjectives requite the copula verb wei #% after k& yi TVA 33... ke yi wei mei ho... TL & RE .- could [Ox Mountain] be (ie. remain) beautiful (when its trees were all cut dowa to supply wood for the nearby city]? (Meng 6A) 2. Adjectives Adjectives mat be closed as verbs in Clusia, as well ax Madera Chinese. since they fom predicates without a copula or final yes ae negated by bi 7, and take the aspect markers yf and wei Neves, a their behaviour nih 7 shows (ee previous sot), they difer fom inane verb in thelr synan and have certain resonances touts vaste adional English name impli, adjectives are pial ound vote tt army fm seen Che — tao shin Bib high mountain’ versus shan goo he moumttn figh? Asa symactea form, however this cn be regarded imply spel eno he general hat es and ve pt cn molly none (be Section VIEIB) eg. I shud JE owing water” Mononlabe Sijectves and monosyllabic verbs uted attibutvely in thir way ae ‘commonly directly followed by the noun they modify, but adjectival phrases of more than one syllable are generally followed by the particle of noun modification, zhi Z 3. Rud fh i an shi. BR AR [As for heroic knights .. (Meng 7A/10) Comparative depress expe by he covet yl BS, which takes on the api meaning an zw wang mins duo yin gus yo BH EZ shea ghee then do not hope that your people will be more than (those of]IV. Verbal Predicates 25 the eigbouring ene, Meng 1A) ‘The copula verb wei # can be used with an adjective to give a superlative sense. 36. Wi jie ran, xin wéi shen 4 HAR > HE ‘Things are all like that and the heart is most so. (Méng 1/7) A general characteristic of adjectives is that they can be made into transitive verbs cither in a causative Sense or in a denominative sense — méi zhi ® Z ‘make it beautiful’ or ‘call it beautiful” — simply by moving the subject into the object position after the verb and supplying another subject as agent. 37. Wang ging ad ain Et XX T beg Your Majesty to make it great. (Meng 1B/3) 238, Sou, ba yuan gian née i Xo > BAK FM TTR You have come, si, not regarding 1,000 I as too far. (Meng 1A/1) (This regular transformational use of ywdin 2 “far’ to mean ‘call far, regard as far’ must be distinguished from the derived verb yudn 38 ‘keep at a distance, avoid,’ with change of tone, See example 287.) Apart from these causative and denominative constructions, which apply to adjectives in general, some predicate adjectives can be followed by ‘nouns which look like objects but which are semantically like oblique eases ina language like Latin or prepositional phrases in English. One of these is an 3€ ‘peaceful, content.” 39. Bai xing an zm HY HE HZ ‘The common people were peaceful under him. (Méng SA/S) Note than dn 3 can also be used transitively in a causative sense in the normal way. 40. ... 26 ba néng an Zia HY A HE HE FB then he could not make Zist content. (Meng 2B/11) 3. Nouns Used as Verbs Like adjectives, nouns can be used as verbs in @ causative sense. AL. Ga Tang 2h yi Yiyin, xué yan ér hou chén xin A Hy Z REP > BH i REZ Thus Téng’s [behaviour] towards Yiyin was to learn from him and afterwards make him his subject, (Meng 2B/2)26 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 42. Br yo Wo Wang wo ha HR ER F Do you want to King-of-Wi me (= treat me in the way the King of ‘Wai was treated)? (Zuo Ding 10/7) Nouns of status are also sometimes used as intransitive verbs in the sense of ‘act the part of.” 43. Jan jon, chén chén, fa fa, aa BH > BE + K Ree Let th ruler set asa ruler should the miner as nse, he father 8 ater, the son a a son, (LY 12/11) 4 een cron wing ene A AEE For one who isa minster to act asa rule... isthe root of perdtion. (ud Xiang 7/7) ‘Apart from such constructions, which, although not very comme rust be regarded as part of the syntactical possibilities of nouns in general, particular nouns have acquired special meanings 26 verbs which must be treated as separate lexical items, for example: 11 “treat with ceremon from Mf ‘ceremony, ritual’; chéng 3 ‘wall a city,’ from chéng *wall’s jan SE encamp,” from jun ‘army.’ The compound word juner # “gentleman” is used inthe Lain as an adjective meaning ‘gentlemanly,’ as in janzt rén HF A “gentlemanly man.’ In such cases there is no morphological change when a vetb is derived from a noun, There ate also, of course, many examples of verbs derived from nouns and nouns from verbs by morphological processes (see Section 1.5 above). 4, Intransitive Verbs With intransitive verbs only one noun is involved in the action and it ‘occupies the subject position. 45. viii BR ‘The physician came. (Meng 28/2) 46. Si ming ér qi... 2he HE TD AG + af He who gets up when the cock crows ... (Meng 7A/25) Intransitive verbs resemble adjectives in that, in general, they can be ‘made transitive in a causative sense by transferring the subject to the object, position and supplying another subject as agent. Unlike adjectives, however, they cannot be used denominatively in this way.IV. Verbal Predicates co 47, Go yun 6,26 xo én dé i om HEA A Boe Wk eR ‘Therefore, if istant people donot submit, culivate evil vine so aso mate them come (YI6I) Many oer verbs bers Id are commonly used ite nransitvely, 0 transitively ina eauatve seme nthe way. ea #feg 41 "go, proceeds put into motion, operat, eary out” qf ise up ise, art” sheng “ves ve if to, bear aud FE “arise, appear case to aise create, ake" de transitive in this way differ from inherently transitive verbs in that they revert to their intransitive meaning when they are used without an expressed object. Inherently transitive verbs either retain their active, transitive meaning with an indefinite or implied object, or ‘become passive (see Section IV.5 below). Like adjectives, some intransitive verbs ean take complements that look on the surface like the objects of transitive verbs but correspond to ‘oblique cases or prepositional phrases in other languages. 48. ... 26 mido b6 ran xing a yi Bl BH 4) HK RAK then the sprouts suddenly spring up in response to it (the rain) (Meng 14/6) 49, Ws you 8.4 h8 sn sh san ga ée min md ana ye EAL ARES TEAM EEL Tiny dec of my offices dio and none ofthe people was wiling tod for them (Mong 1B/2) Hos sab FL Oi ie gone ectily ined otis ny wha cet Shjet meanings person of higher tae forthe sake of whom someone wring to offer itor er Hie 5. Transitive Verbs — Active and Passive Transitive verbs require at least two nouns, an agent and a patient, to complete their meaning. When the agent (if expressed) is in the subject position in front of the verb and the patient (if expressed) is in the object position (normally after the verb but with certain exceptions in the case of pronouns), the verb is active 50. Q shf zhé yi b6 shou t + 4K fi A ‘When seventy year olds wear silk and eat meat ... (Méng 1A/3) If the patient isin the subject position, the verb is passive.28 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar SL. Sti xing ér ling shi 6 47 TH AB ‘The host proceeds and supplies are eaten. (Méng 1B/4) Note that, unlike an intransitive verb used causatively, an inherently transitive verb like sh ‘eat’ can be used actively without an object expressed ‘when the abject is indefinite px he yi min bing geng ér shi BE 2 HER ab A TT ‘The worthy plough and eat together with the common people. (eng 3A/4) ‘The agent of a passive verb may be left unexpressed, as in $1, or may be introduced by the cover’ yt 7 453. Lio xin zhi chi rén, Ido Ni zhé cht yi rén, ei yi rén 2he si tng rénzht si yinén BO HBA BH BR BRAERA + BAERRA tes who labour with their minds (literally: labour their minds] rule others, those who labour with their strength are ruled by others. Those who are ruled by others feed others, those who rule others are fed by others. (Meng 3A/4) Note that # is to be read here as si “feed,” not shi ‘eat.’ The character should also properly be read chi in the transitive meaning “to rule,’ instead of zhi, which is a derived adjective ‘well-governed,” The reading chi is sometimes still recognized as a reading pronunciation but has become obsolete in ordinary usage, which uses zhi for both meanings. They were originally two separate words, however, and must be distinguished in reading classical texts Besides the simple passive by inversion with transitive verbs, there are special devices by which any verb can be marked as passive (see below), 6. Verbs of Motion and Location — Intransitive and Transitive Some verbs of motion are primarily used to refer to a kind of activity without reference to a destination, In such eases if a destination is ‘mentioned it must be expressed as a locaive complement introduced by yi FF (see Section V.6b.ii). Among such verbs are Idi 7K ‘come,’ wang “go xing FF “go, proceed,’ fei A “fy,” ehit AE “stop.” 54, Chai réo zhé wing yan $5 9, 2 42 FeIV. Verbal Predicates 29 “The gatherers of hay and firewood went there (yan = *yf zk) (Meng 1B/2) Other verbs of motion imply a destination as pat of ther meaning and ake it as a direct object. They are thus syntactically transitive, though the 2bject isnot semantically the patent or recipient of the action. Examples of such verbs are zhi Z. *go (to a place)," ji #L ‘go up to.” 55. ...jitng zhi Cho HE Z 3 was going to go to Chi. (Meng 3A/1) $6. Sid 2h ér ba jidn sud wei yan BZ HT AT RB Going up to him, did not see anything to fear (= awesome) in him, (Meng 1A6) ‘There are also verbs, like jf KL ‘reach,’ dé ¥ ‘extend to,’ which can take the destination ether as a direct object oF as a locative complement without any apparent difference in meaning. 57. Ju jing jit ren ér ba jt quin 48 $$ ALD HE BRR To dig a well to a depth of nine rén (seventy-two fect) and not reach te sping » (Meng 74/29) 58, Gait ya nin BBE ‘Therefore he encountered calamities. Zé Min 2/2 — but simply nan in 2u8 Xt 2401) Verbs of location, tke jt JF “dwell 224 2 “be at (a place) similarly express the location ether asa direct objector asa locative complement 59, Xi 2hé TRi Weng j0 Bin. Df rén qin zhi QU zhi QF shin 2h xia joyan HAE BM KARL FZ we 2 Fo eB In former times King Tai dwelt in Bin, The Di invaded it and he left and went to beneath Mount Qf and dwelt there. (Méng 1B/14) In the first sentence jz JB ‘dwelt’ is followed directly by the place name Bin but in the second it is followed, not by zhi Z “it,” but by yan 3 . Since yd H® can be deleted in all its senses, it might be argued that this has ‘occurred before Bin. In other passages where the place is pronominalized, however, we sometimes find ja zhi JB Z instead of ja yan & BH, e.g., ‘Meng 38/9, 3B/10. This shows thatthe verb itself ean be construed in two different ways. Similarly, though neither zai yan 4. 5 nor zai zh HEX is common, examples of both can be found in the sense of “be there.”30 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 7. The Verbs You 4 *have; there is/are’ and Wi # ‘not have; there is/are not” ‘When these verbs have personal subjects, they are ordinary transitive verbs ‘meaning ‘have" and ‘not have.” 60. Yi you rén yi ér yi A ERM AR (D surely have only benevolence and righteousness {to offer you), (Meng 1AN1) 61. Rén che wi dt 12 4 HR AL ‘The man of benevolence has no match. (Meng 1A/5) ‘The same verbs are also commonly used impersonally to predicate ‘existence, like ily ain French. 6 ei you ya jon meytk AAA RHE S ‘There has never been one who was righteous and put his ruler last (Meng 1A) 63, W jaa, eh ye, x én, 0 yng jag FBT RY Bae Ree If there were no gentlemen, there would be no one to rule the rust thre were no rusts there would be noone to support the gentlemen, (Méng 3A/3) As impersonal exstenal verbs, you AF and wi $8 have no subjects but teres often a noun or oun pas in oat proving aking of pew. subjet In one common type, which i parallel in Moder Chines, tis Toctve pres tat a hs oe 64, Té you ® pito # A Hh # (On the roads there are people dying of hunger. (Méng 1A/3) This is equivalent to: you 2 pido yi ai 7 HR F KH. The cover yi 2 is omited when the phrase is placed in front as a pseudo-subject. This is different from exposure of such a phrase for contrast or emphasis, in which yi # may be retained and the phrase is recapitulated after the verb by yn 65, Yoi w0 xin you gi qi yan BS HR AT In my heart there was a responsive feeling. (Meng 1A/7) Compare also example 229 in Section VII.1, where the exposed phrase omits yi H but is still recapitulated by yanIV. Verbal Predicates 31 In another common type the position of pseudo-subject is taken by the subject of a relative clause with zhé as head. (On this construction, see Section VII.2c below.) 66, Wang 2 cn yf 2 yf yu oa Ci you st ELE HEH SRK Me Be [Suppose that] there was one of Your Majesty's ministers who casts his wife and eile os end and evel o Cho (Meng 1B/6) Ths is equiv os yOu wing oh ch 2h a a yu do Chyaneh ESB SRNR ER HS F_ Since this constaction has no parallel in the modern language, the peeidoaubject is oflgn misinterpreted as a lovave passe. The pave implication of you 7A is like that of the cognate particle hud 3% ‘some one, some (Se Secon XI) ince folowing example» medying phase ater han the head i move othe front if it were the sje of he exit ver, 67. Fido lin gud you dao ha 3 #8 Hl 7 3 Is there a way for dealing with neighbouring countries? (Meng 1B) ‘This is equivalent to: you jo lin gus zhi dao ha A 3 H8 BZ sk F ‘On the expressions you yt # VA ‘have whereby to. ..; have the means to... and wii yt #& VA ‘not have whereby to ...; not have the means (0 ..” see Section V6 below. ‘On you 7 used adverbially in the sense of ‘some’ see Section XIIL3. 8, Transitive Verbs with Two Objects (a) Verbs of giving, telling, teaching and the like take two objects. The first, usually personal, corresponds to the indirect object in English and the second corresponds to the direct object. 68, ... néng yd rén gui ju AE SEA AL HE can give a man a compass or a square ... (Méng 7B/5) 69. ... shou Mengai shi i TE 10 give Mencius a house ... (Meng 2B/10) 70, Hu Ji jido rén jin sd Jes BE AK A AR AB Hou Di taught the people sowing and reaping. (Meng 3A/4)32 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar In English one can, in general, replace an indirect object by a prepositional phrase introduced by ‘to’ — “give a house to Mencius,” etc. In Chinese itis more usual to replace the direct object by a phrase introduced by yr LA swith, by means of.’ Compare this with English ‘to present someone with something.” 71. Yéo yi tidnxia yu Shin UL KF HH ‘Yo with the world gave Shin = Yéo gave the world to Shin (Meng SAIS) ‘The phrase introduced by yt YA can either precede the mai follow it. 72... ido én yi shin BA VA teaching others goodness ... (Méng 3A/4) As always, the object pronoun zhi Z is omitted after yr VA (see Section V.6a), which, inthis case, must precede the main verb, 73, Yi gio Menga UL i He told it to Mencius, (Méng 6/5) Ie is also possible with some of these_yerbs to replace the indirect, object by a locaive phase introduced by yu HS 74, ... ba gio ya Wing F & HK E without reporting it to the king ... (Méng 2B/8) Both objects may also be replaced by prepositional phrases, 75. Nén Shi sheng nén, 2é yi gho yi jan yi da fa ér Nahi BBY Ey WDE HE SCK Re IF Lady Nin shuld pve bith toa male cil would announce it to the ruler and the great officers and establish him {as heir]. (Zud aie) (0) The verb dud ob, deprive" takes wo objets the fst, oF inde, objet being the person deprived andthe secondo dest. objet being the thing hats aken ava. 76, ... du6 zhi shi EZ by robbing him of his food" (Meng 6B/1) With this verb neither object can be replaced by a coverbal phrase (c) The vert wen Bll hear’ takes what is heard as the direct object and the source asa locative phrase after the direct object. verb orIV. Verbal Predicates 33 BEMABRA once heard about great courage from the master. (Méng 2A/2) ‘As with other locative phrases, the coverb may be omitted, 78. Chén wen zhi Hahé yue ... HE Bl 2 8 WE EL +> heard it from Habé that. Méng 1A). ‘The elated verb wen fl “ask” may take the same construction oF may take the person asked a it first object, like verbs of telling 79. Hud wen ha Zé ng Xi yue ... 2 Bl OW ‘Someone asked Zeng X1... (Méng 2A/1 — here hu Fis a variant of yi TE, see Section V.6b.iii.) 80. Hud wen ain yu... BY 2 Blo Someone asked him ... (Méng 2B/8 — note the use of zh rather than yan.) (@) The verb wei #) ‘do, make" can take a personal indirect object as well as a direct object. 71. Wa ching wén da yong yé faz yi FR 81. Zhong wei zhi h ér gui zhi HZ HT BZ He treated him with great ceremony and sent him home. (Zud Chéng 4/fa 1 — literally: ‘greatly made for him ceremony’) Inthe sense of ‘act as, be,” wei can also take an indirect object. 82. Qis yt wei n Shi ai Rh HK F Qid was steward forthe J clan. (Meng 4A/15) ‘As will be shown below, this construction isthe source of one type of passive formation (©) The so-called ‘pivot construction’ after verbs such as sht {48 ‘send; rake, cause,’ ling 4 ‘order; make, cause," and zhi BY ‘help’ is a double object construction in which the first object, usually personal, is, at the same time, the subject of an embedded clause which constitutes the Second object (see Section V.3). (8) The verb wai #ff ‘say, tel, call’ can similarly be used in a pivot construction in the sense of ‘tell someone to do something.” 83, Rén jié wai wo hut ming ting AH 2% SW People all tell me to destroy the Hall of Light. (Méng 1B/5) In its more common meaning ‘call,” wi PH takes as its second object ‘an embedded noun predicate, of which the first object is the subject: ‘one34 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar calls A {A is BY’ —» ‘one calls A B.’ In this sense, the second object is optionally introduced by ué El say. 84, Wei gf ti yue ling si BH SE aE EL They called his tower the sprit tower. (Meng 1A/2) A still more common use of wei BH is in the sense of ‘say,’ with the person spoken 10 as the firs, indirect, object, and followed by what is said introduced by yu 85 Manga wi Qt Xetn Wig. sue. BFE + “Mencius said to King Xuan of QF... (Meng 1B/6) (g) The verbs rué # and ri M1, which both mean “like,” have an idiomatic double object construction in which the second object is the interrogative pronoun hé 47 “what.” Rud # X hé £7 and ri HX ne *T mean, roughly, ‘what is one to do about X? how is one to deal with X?" Syntactically rud A and ri $0 are like wei #4 “cal.” That is, they have 10 be interpreted causatively: “make X (X is like what)" > ‘make X like what.” ‘The choice between ri and rud seems to be a matter of dialect. In the Zudzhudn and Gudyit one finds exclusively rud 4 . In the Shijing, Lainyit and MéngzI one finds ri 307. In Mozt, Zhudngzt and Xiinck rd 3 is rare, uo # occurs occasionally, but more often one finds nai 4, which may be a fusion of rud zt FZ In the Zudzhudn X in the formula is often a noun or noun phrase which may be quite long 86. Zi rud gus ne FH H AT What are you, sir, going to do about the country? (Zud Xi 23/3) 87. Wi ud zho hou 2h sha rd 2Ai gua jan zhé he $A BE AR ZRERB HAT We have no way of providing for the retinues of feudal lords who condescend to visit us. (Zud Xiang 31/3) X may also be replaced by the pronoun zhi , in which case the noun phrase to which it refers is either understood from the context or placed after the whole phrase, in apposition 88. Rud zhi hé a zit ba yan ye HZ AT FLAS th ‘What is to be done about your not seehe (Zuo Ai Wife 2) In later texts, such as Menget, ni zhi hé we $F or rud hi he AIV. Verbal Predicates 35 © His nomal and igs comparatively ae find» noun or ooun phase between rf 3 oro 4 and he PL 89. Ru zhi he gi sti si min jiérsi ye OZ fT SEE HR OL it FE te, ‘What would he have said about their causing these people to die of hhunger? (Meng 1A/4— translated as ‘said” here because the context is Confucius’ condemnation of the person who had merely started the custom of burying human effigies in graves.) 9. Passive Constructions ‘The unmarked passive construction by which an intrinsically transitive verb becomes passive when its object is placed in the subject position has been illustrated above. There are also special devices for marking a verb as passive.!! ji The verb jian Jk ‘see," can serve as a marker of the passive when it stands in front of another verb. It seems likely that this usage is a specialized extension of jidn J4, ‘see" in the sense of ‘meet, encounter,” but the use as a passive marker has been grammaticalized and a literal rendering in this way would be inappropriate 90. Buixing 2h ba jin bio, wei ba yong én yan FF HE 7% Rk? AFAR ‘The people’s not being protected is because of not using benevolence towards them. (Meng 1A/7) ‘The marking of the pasive inthis ease is probably because the subject, baixing TH #£ ‘people,’ being human, could be misinterpreted as agent for the verb bao #R ‘protect.’ Earlier in the same passage we find two examples of am unmarked passive: ypu ht bi j= Bt Eon euer’s not being lifted” and pid xin zhi ba jian BL #f Z A HA, ‘a cartload of fire- Wood's not being seen.’ In these eases the subjects, being inanimate, are unlikely o be interpreted as agents forthe verbs jit and jin see.” The insertion of jidn a8 a passive marker before bdo removes any possible ambiguity The only other example in Méngz isthe following: 91. Pénchéng Kud jian sha ft HR 48 JR, a Pénchéng Kuo was killed, (Méng 7B/29) Here again the subject is human,36 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ‘As with the unmarked passive, agency can be expressed by the coverb ya 2 Ws gh tn xito yi da fang zhi jia HHL R WA | would forever have been laughed at by masters of great accomplishment. (Zhuang 17/5) Not only inherently transitive verbs but also intransitive verbs and adjectives used transitively, and even nouns used as verbs, can be marked as passive by jidn 3, 93... ey au fn sy Ec ud a A ze A bian ye 7 UL BT TL BE eR ZR and the fact that he later received condemnation for that for which he had earlier been regarded as worthy, was [because of] the change of love to hate, (HF12, p.65, xidn ‘regard as worthy” is derived from the adjective xidin ‘worthy,' see Section LV.2.) 94. Fi po rén zhi yd po yd sn y8, chén rén zhi yd jidn chén yi én yé, gi ké tong n ér lin zai KBR A Z RB A, - BAZREE RA > 2 Fl Bit oe How cai overthrowing others and being overthrown by others, ‘making others one’s subject and being made subject by others be discussed at the same time? (Shiji 69.2248) In Han and post-Han Chinese jin Jt, sometimes indicates the speaker rather than the subject of the verb as patient. The verb has its agent in the ‘normal subject position. 95. She ng héi lid yud, cf fa jan bei AE BEAN A ER ‘Six months after he gave me birth, I was deserted by {the death of] iy loving father.” (Li Mi 3 9 , “Chén ging shi bido BR {Hh AK” Quan Jin wén 7011865) It should be noted that bai #£ , used somewhat like jin 58, as a marker of the passive in Modern Chinese, is a full verb, meaning ‘receive, undergo, suffes’ inthe classical language. (b) wei & ‘The copula verb wei pis used to form a kind of passive constructionIV. Verbal Predicates 37 96. Zit, jiang wéi san jon hud Jb > Af % = ER If you stop, you will be captured by the Three Armies. (Zué Xiang 18/4) 97. ZAi shang wéi wa yuan shi, zai xid wéi lou yi shi ZE BRR ET ARR ‘Above I'll be eaten by crows and kites, below I'll be eaten by mole crickets and ants, (Zhuang 32/49-50) ‘This should not be interpreted as if the complement after wéi #% were a noun phrase with the first noun to be construed as possessive — ‘will be the capture ofthe three armies.” It would imply that the complement was 3 nominalized verb phrase, which would require zhi Z as a marker of nominalization between the subject and the verb (VIL.2b), but this is never found, Moreover, we should expect gi 3 as the pronoun substitute for such a subject. Instead we find the object pronoun zit 2 98. Ming 2hé wei wei zn shi BA tHE HZ HE ‘The bright-eyed are only ordered about by them. (Zhuang 32/51) “The wei # passive is best understood as a kind of pivot construction (see Section V.3), in which the first object is not the direct object of the governing verb, as it is with verbs of causing, ordering, etc., but an indirect, or dative, object. The embedded verb which constitutes the second ‘object has the subject of the main verb as its patient and the indirect object as its agent — "You will be for the Three Armies the Three Armies} capture {you}. In later Literary Chinese, from about the beginning of the Han dynasty, this construction takes on a new form, in which sud i is inserted in front of the embedded verb, That is, 24 san jun hu #% = HY would become wéi san jiin sud hud % = "BE As we shall see, sud Fis the regular substitute forthe object on verb in a relative clause when this is coreferent with the head of the clause. The noun after wéi # continues to be its indirect object, not the subject ofthe relative clause, since it is never followed by zhi Z as a mark of nominalization and since it takes the object pronoun zhi Z rather than the possessive pronoun gi 3 as its pronoun substitute, 99, .. zhong wéi 2h sub gin yi +> Ma ZH HR sin the end you will be captured by him. (Shiji 92.2622) In its new form we must therefore construe our sample sentence as *You will be for the Three Armies what [the Three Armies] capture.”38 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar With both wei A and wei sus #% FA the agency may be left unexpressed, we. Hou 2he wai ti, bo zhe jitn yt JE a A BR > MA In the worst case (the man} was executed, and even in the lesser ‘case he was suspected. (HF 12, p.65) 101. Fou zhé rud sha jié git wei sud 1a FH a ME EL A ite If not, you fellows will all be captured (by him). (Shiji 7.313) In modern works on Classical Chinese grammar we usually find wéi asa passive marker interpreted as a preposition or coverb (jiéai IPF), like modern bei BL, which is used to gloss it. This is based on a false analogy with the modern language and is not a valid interpretation of the syntax of Classical Chinese itself. The graph is sometimes even read wei in this'sense,like the coverb meaning “for, on behalf of," but this is certainly ristaken. The best authorities retain the old level tone reading.V. Compound Verbal Predicates 1, Coordination ‘Two verbs used together may be coordinate: 102. Ban bai 2hé ba f0 dai yo dao la yi A EL A A HH BHR ‘Those whose hair is streaked with white will not carry loads on their heads or on their backs on the ways and roads. (Meng 1/3) ‘The verbs fi A and dai HE have the same status in the sentence and neither is subordinate to the other. Their order could be reversed without changing the meaning, (The same is true of the nouns dao 38h and a 58) “The particle gi Fl ‘and, moreover’ may be used between coordinate verbs, especially adjectives. 103. Bang ydu dao, pfn gié jian yan chi y’; bang wa dao, fd qié ine hee RARER Eo BE geet eRe eect tas ay, ob por i ooty Shameful ten county docs not hve he Way ob deh and nob in iti shame (LY 813) 2. Clause Objects — Verb Phrases as Objects of Transitive Verbs!? Very often, however, there isa relation of dependency between two verbs in succession, Thus, a verb phrase may be the object of a preceding transitive ‘verb: weing yit sha rén © AK AL A “the king wishes to kill a man.’ The verb phrase sha rén & A, which has wang -E as its underlying subject, is the object of the verb ya #K ‘wish.’ It can be replaced by a pronoun just like a noun object: wing yi zht F #K Z ‘the king wishes it,’ wang sud ya E fit 8K ‘what the king wishes.” When the subject of such an object clause is the same as that of the main verb, it is deleted as in weing yi sha rén © AL A. When it is not the same, the clause is marked as nominalized by the insertion of the subordinating particle zhi 2 between the subject and the verb or replacing the subject by the possessive pronoun qi $E (see Section VII.2b below).40 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 104... 26 wi wang min 2m duo yi tin gus ye BU SZ SHH Ob «then do not hope that your people willbe more numerous than [those of] neighbouring countries. (Mang 1A/3) Verbs ike yi Ak “wish and wing '2 “look at (inthe distance) hope, are readily translated as transitive verbs in English and readily lake a theit objects clauses with a different subject. The class of verbs which take clause objects also includes verbs like néng fif “can, be capable of,’ ken BF “be willing to and gan 3K “dare,” whose object clauses almost always have the same subject and which correspond semantically to auxiliary verbs in English 105, Wi ha, ba nén ji RR Tam stupid and cannot advance to this. (Meng 14/7) 106. bi wa gin dang w0 zai KS HAW RR ‘How does that one dare to face me? (Meng 1B/3) Note that, although néng is usu followed by a verb in this way, it ean also take a noun or pronoun object. 107. .. bi néng stn niin 2h sang a = AE 2H Tobe incapable of three years’ mourning .. (Meng TA/46) 108. Ba xién é+ néng zn yu 7 HE HE & SL Could he have done it fhe had not been a man of superior alent? (ateng SA) yoshi yi i > 7 fe HB 3. Pivot Constructions — The Causative Certain verbs can take (wo objects, the first of which is a noun or pronoun and the second of which is a clause object with the first object as its ‘subject. This has been called a ‘pivot construction’ because, in its surface structure, a noun or pronoun stands between Ovo verbs and acts as a ‘pivot’ between them, functioning as the object of the first and the subject of the second, 109. Wang sti rén Iai yue ... Ff AR A “The king sent someone to come and Say .. (Meng 2B/2) 110. Ling g6u you yuan yi firén zhé bao zhi & 45 AE A HE RABRZ‘V. Compound Verbal Predicates 4a He ordered all who had any grudge against the lady to repay it. (Zué Ki 26/fa 1) ILL. Ya zhi mido zhang yi F Bh Bi fe Thave been helping the sprouts to grow. (Meng 2A/2) 112, Quan QF £8 Yan, you zha Si HE AR A AE Ist true that you urged QF to atack Yan? (Meng 24/9) The verbs sht { ‘employ; send’ and ling ‘order’ are used in a weakened sense as auxiliary verbs to make a causative construction. 113. Shi shi_ min yang sheng sang si wai han ye 2S 48 RA th This is to let the people nourish the living and mourn the dead ‘without regrets. (Meng 14/3) 114, ... wii ling shut Io néng ra HF & AC HE fle A ‘80 as not to let the flood waters be able to enter. (M0 61/1) Note that the object pronoun zit Z is used as the substitute for the ‘pivot’ noun in the pivot construction. 118. Zhi. zh zhang zhe ... BY & Fe a ‘One who helps them to grow ... (Méng 2A/2) This is in contrast to the use of the possessive pronoun qi £ for the subject ofa clause object (see above). Inthe pivot construction the pronoun zhi Z is directly governed as object by the main verb. A repetition of the pronominal reference by af 3€ as subject of the subordinate verb is therefore avoided. This is true even if zhi Z is deleted (that is, does not appear on the surface), as frequently happens in the elliptical style of the Zudzhuan. A rare example of a clause object without a pivot after a verb of this kind is the following: chi ti 116. Qe gb xing tana nid 2 hog gia gs 205 2 eh Bh Em Eee es RF REEES EERA SR ELHE ripeeritacsoes peck ten oon he se tha by deliberately producing wha sential othe world and teting rid of whats hamful one bas case the tat andthe people to be not well governed. (Md 25/16)2 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar In this example, the subject of the embedded clause, gudjid baixing Hl HE, cannot be the agent of its own state of being well or badly ‘governed and cannot be ‘ordered’ even in a figurative sense to bring about such a sate. It therefore cannot be the object of ting @ and, as a result, is not deleted in what would normally be its second occurrence, as the subject ‘of the embedded clause ‘On pivot constructions with wei ¥H ‘call, say’ see Section IV.8f above. 4. Verb Phrases as Complements to Adjectives (a) Adjectives That Make a Following Verb Passive"? Some predicate adjectives can take verb phrases as complements. An important set of these consists of the four words ke * ‘possible; permissible,’ zi E ‘sufficient, worth,’ ndn XE ‘difficutt,” and yi “easy.” These are followed by transitive verbs which have to be understood as passive. That is, the subject ofthe predicate adjective is the patient of the complement verb: wing ke sha % BL “the king is possible to kill’ “the king may be killed.’ It is imeresting to note that the corresponding English adjectives take a similar construction, 117. ... tianxid ke yn yi zhang KF A i HS HE . the world may be revolved in the palm of your hand. (Meng 17) 118. Z6 wen wang ba zi fi yd HH KR Hk HL ‘Then is King Wén not worthy of being taken as a model? (Meng 2a) 119. Sid 26 nin biam ye A Sl RE HE ah Having lasted a long time, it was difficult to change. (Meng 2A/1) 120, San nin xué, ba zhi ya go, bd yl dé ys = 4 AR» ERR? EHH To study for three years and not arrive at goodness is not easy 10 achieve. (LY 8/12) As noted in IV.1 above, when an active verb, transitive or intransitive, is used as a complement to one of these adjectives, itis necessary to insert yt VA: wang ke yt sha rén = VA BE A ‘the king can kill a man,” wwding ke yt lai EAT VA 2K “the king can come.”‘V. Compound Verbal Predicates 8 121, Wa sht zhe ke yi i bo i BE APT RR The fifty year olds willbe able to wear silk. (Méng 1A/3) 122, Wa Ti ai yi ja bai jon ér ba as yi ja yi yo B AB VA ME aM FRU RB My strength is sufficient to lift 3000 catties but is not sufficient to lift ome feather. (Meng 1A/7) v1 TA, which as a full verb means ‘take, use,” is to be understood in this construction as a transitive verb made passive by the governing adjective. This is readily translatable into English if the subject is not personal, that i, if tis an instrument rather than an agent: do ké yt sha rén 1 VA #® A ‘a knife is possible to use to kill a man’ = ‘a knife may be used to kill a man’ = ‘a knife can kill a man.’ In Chinese, a personal agent is treated in the same way: ‘the king is possible to use to Kill a man’ = ‘the king can kill a man.’ This is a grammatical device which is impossible in English. Instead English uses an impersonal construction ‘That is, when the verb is active it treats the complement phrase of an adjective as the real subject, replacing it by the dummy it in the subject position: ‘itis possible to kill a man,’ ‘it is possible to come.” In such ‘cases the subject of the complement verb is expressed by a prepositional phrase: ‘it is possible for she king to kill aman,’ ete. A similar impersonal active construction is occasionally found in Classical Chinese where ké ® is followed by an active verb with the object pronoun zht referring back to something earlier in the discourse 123, 6 os 9k WB nah a SOME TA eR ‘Whar mus one ike before is poset el him one of he gentry? (LY 13/20) 124, Yi bi rén rén zhi xin, xing bd rén rén zhi zhéng, ché tian xid Ke yan ah shdngahang DRA 9 EN ZR BR PAZ EE With mere eart practising meri government, raling the ‘world was {as if] it was possible to turn it in the palm of one’s. hand. (Méng 2B/6) Ver ke wi and sr that take wo objects can aso be found in he normal way withthe subjest made passive by ke 7 sing yi TB 128, Ké stit zhi mp 18. Qin Cha 2 jan ji HRU MAR ZEPAR44 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar They may be made to fashion clubs with which to strike the hard armour and sharp weapons of Qin and Chi. (Méng LA/S) 126, ... ke wei xiao yi TBH EK it may be called filial. (Meng 34/2) It should be noted that ké *T can also occur in front of active verbs meaning ‘should, ought’ in a hortatory or injunctive sense. This usage is rare in texts of the classical period but is found in the preclassical period in the Shajing and re-emerges in Han, 127, Wo ba ke bi jitn yd You xin KA FE TR ‘We must not fail to take Xi as our mirror. (Shu 32:460 Shaogdo) BS. Cine ml, wing Ke gn EHH EWE ‘The woman of Qin is extremely beautiful, Your Majesty should take her for yourself. (Shiji 66.2171) (6) Other Adjectives That Take Verb Phrases as Complements There are also adjectives that take verbs or verb phrases as complements without making the verb passive. Among them are yi. “fting, proper, Fight and shan # “good (a) 129, Shi yh, wei rénzhe yi gno wei EL 9 HEE AE em ‘Therefore only one who is benevolent i it to be ina high position. (feng 44/1) 130. Wo shan yang wi hdorén a i a AE BB A Tam good at nourishing my overflowing bret. (Meng 34/1) 5. Verbs in Series (a) The Construction in General — The Particle br Two or more verbs or verb phrases may occur in a series in which they form a narrative or logical sequence. 131. Téng Wen Gong wéi shi a.pine zhi Chi gud PE & ian Meng aC 8 WP AE Ba WhatV. Compound Verbal Predicates 45 ‘When Duke Wén of Téng was Crown Prince, he passed through ‘Song on his way to Chii and saw Mencius. (Méng 3A/1 — More literally: Duke Wén of Téng was Crown Prince, was going to go to Chi, passed through Song and saw Mencius.) Such constructions (in English as well as Chinese) differ from true coordinate constructions in that the order cannot be changed without changing the meaning. ‘I opened the door and walked in’ does not mean the ‘same thing as ‘I walked in and opened the door.’ In spite of the conjunc “and,” which is also used in English for coordination, there is an impli of temporal sequence corresponding to the order of the verbs in the (wo sentences, In Chinese, such serial verb constructions are very common even, where English uses various kinds of more explicit subordination, as in the idiomatic translation of 131. The particle ér Tf is used as a connective between verbs in such constructions, usually being omitted except between the last two verbs in the series, where it serves to mark the end of the sequence. It may be translated as ‘and,” but it must be noted that it cannot ‘occur hetween nouns. Etymologically it appears to be an unstressed form of nai 74 “then.” It is often convenient to show the relationship between verbs in series in translation by using English participles in -ing: ‘Duke Wén of Téng, ‘being the Crown Prince and about to go to Chu, and passing through Song, ‘saw Mencius.” ‘Though itis usual to find ér before the last verb in a series, this is not obligatory. Compare the two successive sentences: 132, You yuén mi ér gid yi y8... Yun md gid ys, su bd dé yo, inva AE AKT RB RR BHR? BAK It is like climbing a tree to hunt for fish ... If one climbs a tree to hunt for fish eventhough one does not get fish, there is no disaster afterwards. (Méng 1A/7) In the second case, ér TH is omitted without any alteration in the meaning. ‘The semantic relationships between verbs in a series can be quite varied. Apart from a simple narrative sequence, as in 131, there can be an implication of purpose, asin 132. In other cases, the ation ofa preceding verb or verbs is considered to be simultaneous with that of the final verb, which they serve to describe.46 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 133. Qi jia yi bing ér cou REP MK TA se Throwing down their armour and dragging their weapons, they run away. (Meng 1A) Besides its use in the serial verb construction, ér Tf is used as a conjunction after concessive clauses (see Section XV.3) and between sentences in the sense of ‘but.’ The graph is also_used to write two homophonous words, the second person pronoun ér Fi] ‘you, your’ (see Section IX.1b), and ér Tf as a variant form of ri #5 “if! (see Section XV.2a.i). On the final particle ér yi TH] E, ‘only’ see Section XUIL2d. (by DE (6) #E (TE), Shuai (6) F CH), ec The verb dé 4 “get” is used as an auxiliary verb in the sense of “get t0, manage to, be able to, can,” but instead of taking a object clause construction like néng fE ‘be capable of, can,” it has a serial verb construction: ‘get and do (something).” This is shown both by the fact that ‘one can optionally insert ér Tf between the two verbs and by the fact that, afier k& *T , both dé # and its following verb are made passive, 134, Sheng dé zhi shi, jan bi dé ér chén, fa ba dé ér zi BE PoE RAM ED REAM TE A scholar of complete virtue, the rulers ot ale to wea as * subject and the father is not able to treat as son. (Meng SA/4) 135, J0 aia. wi b shud ys sng, no ke cht yo BE Pam RRR ET Re Hm 8 W one oecupcs lower positon and doesnt obtain the onfdence of the ruler, the people cannot be ruled. (Méng 44/13) 136. Ke dé wen ha 7 4 Bel May I hear about it? (Meng 1A/7 — Literally: May it be got and bear?) From the point of view of their English translations, verbs such as shuai 4% ‘lead’ and qui H® ‘drive’ might be expected to take a pivot construction, like shi {, but they t00 take a serial verb construction, as shown by the insertion of ér Tin examples like the following 137. Ci shuai shou ér sh rén ye HL 48 BR iD PE A 4 This is leading animals to eat people. (Meng 1/4)‘V. Compound Verbal Predicates 47 138. Rén hdu qa ér zin shan #E HED ZH ‘Afterwards you may drive {the people] to go towards goodness. (Meng 1477) In both examples, the subject of the verb following ér fff is the object of the verb which precedes it. Instead of pivot constructions, however, they ‘must be interpreted as serial verb constructions in which there is a change of subject for the second verb: ‘lead animals and they eat people,” ‘drive {the people] and they go towards goodness.” 6. Coverbs (a) Transitive Verbs Corresponding to Prepositions ‘The free serial verb construction, in which any and all verbs may be found, gives rise to various special constructions, in which particular verbs lose their independent status and serve as markers of grammatical functions, such as showing case relationships of nouns to the main verb. Coverb is term that has been applied to such verbs in Chinese. Most coverbs ean also occur as independent verbs but they have special grammaticalized meanings as coverbs, They are not normally joined to the main verb by ér ff. The following are the most important transitive verbs that correspond to prepositions in English (i YF ake, use; with, by means of Inan example like the following y# DL i a main verb: 139, Wo cf iyi, bi 2é yi zin He RF AER > HEM Teclined the ritual; they used it, (Zud Xiang 10/2) The coverbal meanings of yi LA are quite varied. A simple extension of the full verb meaning is its use to indicate the instrument of an action, 140. Xing, yi gé zha Zifan ME > VA & 3K FAR ‘When he revived, he chased Zifan with a halberd. (Zud Xi 23/ft 2) 141, Sha rén ying. BEA. DL HE To kill aman with club... (Meng 14/8) Note thatthe phrase introduced by yf Dk ean either precede or ome ater the main ver. Ths is a predictable consequence ofthe interpretation of coverbs asa specialized ie of verbs in serie. Thus ‘use halberd pursue48 Oualine of Classical Chinese Grammar petson’ and ‘kill person use club’ (i.e. ‘in killing a person use a club’) differ only in the main focus of atention, which falls on the last verb in the series. In Modern Chinese, however, such freedom of word order has been lost and, except for special eases, where they are treated as complements of the main verb, coverb phrases are confined to preverbal position, like ‘modifies in general Besides indicating the means or instrument by which an action is performed, yi YA can be used to indicate such things as the reason for an action, the time of an action, the basis for a judgement, etc. 142. Yi wii shi bis aldo bai ba 26 he ri VA Hob RH 5 fa oo If because of only running] fifty paces they laughed at {those who ran} one hundred paces, how would it be? (Meng LA/3) 143, Fa jin yi shi ra sham tin 9 AP VA BE A al Af If axes enter the hills and woods at the proper season ... (Meng 143) 144, Vi wei, 26 A jan ye, wo chén ye BL AE + BY EE te REE th On the bass of rank, you are the ruler and Tam the subject. (Meng sR) ‘An important characteristic of yi DL as @ coverb is that itis almost never followed by the object pronoun zhi Instead y7 Uk alone is used anaphorically with the meaning “wit it, therewith” as if it inchuded the pronoun, 14, Ry st gf sing, choy sh gf ahtngshing XL 3 ICE Going in thy wil therewith serve tee fahers and elder brokers foing out hey wil herewith sere heir elder nd supeios. (ing LA) Anaphoric yi UA is often used to express purpose: ‘and thereby’ ender to" 146, Ke 2h ing 8 On Cha tin in og oT AR MAU M ASP AJR ‘They may be made to fashion clubs in order to strike the hard armour and sharp weapons of Qinand Ch. (eng 1A)V. Compound Verbal Predicates 49 In such cases yf BL must not be construed as governing the following verb 2s its object. For the omission of zt & when it would be expected in front of yt DL_recapitulaing a preposed object, see Section VIIL.1, example 236 ‘Anaphorie 91 DL marks the point of departure for spatial and temporal phrases like yi Idi LA JR (therewith come =) ‘and afterwards, since,” yf xia LAF (therewith down =) ‘and downwards.” 147. Fou, 21 sheng min yi Iéi, wei you Kongai ye @ + AE RUR? AALS No, since the birth of mankind, there has never been (another like ‘our Confucius. (Meng 24/2) 148, Qing yi xia bi you gun tién $F LAF 9 AT ETE From the high ministers downward, they had to have their sacrificial land. (Meng 34/3) Note the phrases you yt 7A UA and wii yt 8 LA in the sense of you sus yt Fit VA ‘have that by which; have whereby,’ and wii sud yt # Fit UX ‘not have that by which; not have whereby.’ The omission of sud Jf in these expressions is comparable to the regular omission of the object pronoun zhi Z after yt Uh. 149. Yi jitng you yi Nl wa gué ho WF A$ HUA AS BF Surely you are going to have whereby to benefit my country. (Meng 1A) ‘An important use of yt BL is to introduce what is semantically the direct object of verbs of ‘giving, tellin, teaching, et.” (see Section 1V.8, examples 71-73). With wei 4% be," yr DA forms a special idiom: yi VA X wei AY ‘take X to be ¥," ‘regard X as ¥." 150. Baixing jit yi wang wei ai ys HE ULE AH th ‘The common people all took Your Majesty to be stingy. (Meng 17) When the object pronoun is omited after yr Bb, yr Uk and wei # come together, giving rise to what eventually became a compound word, yiwéi DA # ‘think.’ In the classical language, however, the two words must still be construed separately. 151. Min you yi wei xido yt Fe 4B UA a ls 4, ‘The people still considered it to be small, (Méng 11/2)50 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar “The phrase sud yt Bf DA “that by which? must always be ven its full value in Classical Chinese. It does not have the meaning ‘therefore’ which ithas acquired in the modern language. ‘The expression shi yi 3 VA “because of that, therefore,” used as a sentence connective, in contrast to yi shi PE ‘with this, ete,” used as part of a predicate phrase, gets its word order from contrastive exposure (see Section VIM, below). ‘When followed by a clause nominalized by zkt Z or gf 3 and closed by yé 4, yt LA acts as a subordinating conjunction meaning “because” (see Seation XV.5). Gi) Yong FAL suse; with’ In the preclassical language, yong JH is used as an instrumental coverb, like yi PL. In the classical language, however, it is only found as a full verb, ‘to use.” (iii) Ya FE “accompany; gives with; and” ‘Asa full verb, yi $& has the primary meaning of “accompany, be with” 152. Zheng zhi shi yo TE WR ‘Associate with the correct and straight (Sh 207/8, Karlgren 19503, For recapitulating a preposed object, see Section VIIL.t betow.) 153. Wii zhong ér hou fé zh, yo yd wo shut yo $8 iA eee eres If we attack him after he has lost the masses, though he should sesh eit, wil be wih im? (ad Znng 271) ‘The meaning sive’ which fe more common then “accompany oe yi BE as a full verb in the classical language, is probably to be understood as a ‘causative usage, There is also a derivative, yd $4, writen with the same chorctr mesning purivipatein be pent at’ (The charactor sab ed forthe quarion pail yd BL soe Seton IL a) ‘The coverbal use of yu HE in the sense of ‘accompanying, with’ is found sendy i the prt lngunge and remains common troghot the lense pri 154. Ga zm rén yo min xie eo ZA SER, fie ‘The men of old shared their pleasures with the people. (Meng 1a)V. Compound Verbal Predicates 31 155. Bo ya rén yan F HEA BH He would not speak with an evil man. (Méng 2A/9) Ya $ is common in comparisons. 156. Hud wen hd Zeng Xi yue, we zi ya Zi10 shd xién 3 PA FERS SLREBRR Some one asked Zeng X1, "You and Ziti, which is superior?” (Meng 2A/1) 1g gg 2 av io cons ota ASHARE DS Which does Your Majesty consider more virtuous and wise, yourself or the Duke of Zhou? (Meng 28/9) By a further extension of meaning, yi & is used as a coordinating conjunction, ‘and,’ between nouns. Though the derivation from the subordinating coverb * is clear, it is equally clear that when the conjoined nouns are on the same syntactic level and can be interchanged without altering the meaning, the role of yu SE has become one of marking coordination (see Section VIL) 158. Hul bi xio xing, wéi shen yu mao "HK /) B > HE BRE ‘Tiny are those little stars, they are Shen and Mio, (Shi 21/2) BRAG ET ie 159. Gi ya yd bie bi ke sheng st & I the grain and the fish and turtles are more than can be eaten .. (Meng 14/3) (iv) Wei # “for, on behalf of, for the sake of wei ais no doubt a derivative of wéi # ‘make; be,’ although the is not entirely clear. As.a full verb, it means ‘be on the side of, support.” 160. Fazi wai Wai jon ha KF # HH HF 1s the master for the Lord of Wei? (LY 7/15) More commonly it isa coverb. AGL. Wei zhang 2hé zhé zhi... 4 Fe & Hf AK IF itis @ matter of breaking a branch for: rubbing the knuckles] for an older person ... (Meng LAT)2 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Most cases in which wat 3 appears to occupy the position of the rain verb aren fae, best interpreted as coverbal, with another main verb understood. 162... ér wing oh wdi si 2 OEE aK .- yet can it be that Your Majesty [goes to war] for this? (Mang 147) With a nominaized verbal expression as its object and followed by yé 44, wai AF is used to introduce an explanatory noun predicate, 463, Wei a itng ren eryong at yt A HER A AZ Twas because he made representations of human beings and sacrificed them. (Meng 1A/4) () ZBL, You HH, Cong ‘fottow; from’ These three words, all of which mean ‘go along, follow’ as full verbs, are used as coverbs in the sense of ‘from.’ Zi E] (1o,be distinguished from the homophonous reflexive pronominal adverb zi El ‘self,’ written with the same graph, is seldom found asa full verb, but occasional examples can be found 164. Wei gai fh ér you qian zhi, qin chén ju si bu gan 2a ye A TC AER FHA 1, without changing the code of ritual, you stil alter the practice, your many subjects in fear of death, dare not follow. (Zud Zhao sn) Examples of zi EI as coverb ‘from’ in a temporal sense are found in 116 and 147 above. Its also common in a spatial sense. 168. ... 21 Chi zhi Téng... At Z HR ‘went to Téng from Chi... (Méng 3A/4) Asa fall verb yu meats to ello along road fen aa ‘metaphorical sense. 166. ... shé zhéng Ih ér bu you... & JE HG HT F a to abandon the correct path and not follow it... (Méng 44/11) ‘Asa cover, ‘from,’ it is used in spatial, temporal, and logical senses 167. Tud A, you Zou zhi Rén, jidn a fe Bo» By PZ feo LFF‘V. Compound Verbal Predicates 3 On another day, going from Zou to Rén, he visited Nzi. (Méng BIS) 168. You Tang zhi yé Wa Ding HY Hy % HK RT From Tang down to Wa Ding ... (Meng 2A/1) 169. Hé you 2m wo ke AT $B From what do you know I can? (Meng 14/7) Céng $€ is common as a main verb meaning ‘to follow; pursue’ and. less frequent than zi FI and yéu FH in the sense of ‘from,’ but it does ‘occur. ye Lidng rén .. shisht cong wai Iai RA +> Hie 36 $8 Sb ‘The husband .. jauntity came in from outside, (Meng 4B/33) (b) Coverbs of Place: Ys T, Yo H, and Ha F — Locative Complements () ¥a F “go; 0, at” Ya T (EMC wus) is etymologically related to wang 4, EMC wuay’, ‘go.’ It is common in the preclassical language, both as a coverb, which always follows the main verb, and asa verbal auxiliary before other verbs of motion, indicating inceptive or continuative aspect, as in: huding nido yi fei FS T FE “The yellow birds go-flying’ (Shi 2). As a coverb in the ‘Shijing, itis mainly used (0 indicate destination after verbs of motion or, Jess commonly, location where motion is not jnvolved. It is occasionally found in time expressions, such as yui jin T 4 ‘tll now," or to indicate the recipient of an action. In this text it is clearly distinct from yd 2% “in, at, from, than” (see (ii) below), It survives in the Zudzhudin and Gudyai but already there is a tendency for yé #® to take over its functions. In Mencius and other texts of the Warring States period it is rare, except in quotations from earlier works (see 175 below). Its ironic that it has now been revived as the standard abbreviated form of yxi #, with which it did not become hhomophonous before modern times. i) ¥a HR “in, at, to, from, than, ete. ‘This word, EMC tia, was quite distinct from yd T , EMC wua, with a different initial and an unrounded main vowel. Even in Early Mandarin of the Yusin period, as recorded in the Zhangyudn ylayiin the two words were54 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar distinct, the former being in upper level tone and the latter in lower level tone. The primary verbal meaning of yi His “to be in, at” without any implication of motion, Although itis seldom used as an independent verb, ‘occasional examples can be found. 171 Bian i.e shy, pda 2 eg ejgree gm ia RAs 5 HA Me ’ me Wier the borders and outlying regions are in ruins, the capital is Closely invested, the sound of drums and clappers isin your ears, then it will be 100 late to use the plans of your servant Si. (HF 2 p. 13) Its verbal characteris also clearly shown by the fact that it can take a subject and be nominalized by the insertion of zhi (on this idiom see (ii) below. Git) Ha F Asacoverb, hd, EMC ya, is found as a variant of yxt 7 ‘in at? from the Shijing onwards (example 174 below), I never occurs in phrase initial position and is probably an unstressed form which lost its glottal stop initial through being attached enclitially to the preceding word.'® The fusion word zha Ff (see Section L4 above) is equivalent to zhi ha in both senses of hu “F, as a final question particle and as a variant of yui (iv) Locative complements In the classical language, coverbal phrases introduced by yxi #8 mostly follow the main verb, providing a locative complement that defines the destination or locus of an action. ‘The coverb is thus equivalent 10 an English preposition such as ‘in, at, to" or even “from,” depending on the main verb which it follows. 172, Wang ti yo zhao shang E 2 KBE The king was standing above his pond. (Meng 1A/2) p Laer @ # x si inp Heong. yf aah yt Henk a Pa > Stl SR A there is a crop ‘ae in wh Tmove the people 10 Hédong and move the grain to Héndi, (Méng 1/3)‘V. Compound Verbal Predicates 55 1s: Cha her oben ha aa ye SRERPAS What goes out from you will be what returns to you. (Meng 1B/2) 175. Wii wén cha ys you gi, qian yi qido mi zhe & Bal Hh WET RAE have heard of (birds that ‘came out of dark valleys and moved to Toy es! Mon 34M ‘quoting Shi 165/1, which, however, has ai B instead of ya) Note that a locative phrase after chi HH can also mean ‘(go out) 0," depending on the context. 176, ... jié yo cha yii wang zn ea HK HH A EZ will all wish to go out on Your Majesty's roads. (Meng 1A/7) Locative phrases introduced by yi 7% or hit are used to express comparison after adjectives (examples 35 and 104 above) and agency after passive verbs (examples 53 and 92 above). Apparent exceptions to the rule that locative complements follow the verb occur when such phrases are moved to the front of the sentence for topicalization, contrast or emphasis. 177. ¥6 wo xan you qigh yan HE Bo A In my heart there was a responsive feeling. (Meng LA/7. Here the pronominal substitute yan ¥ ‘ini’ recapitulates the exposed phrase in its normal position after the verb.) ‘The common introductory phrase ii shi # 2 ‘thereupon’ may be regarded asa special case ofthis exposure of a locative phrase. (¥) Omission of the coverb in locative complements is possible to omit the coverb in locative complements. 278 Zit of ew Mi oo of zu BEAL HAH KAERAR AES Hae ‘There was a man of Zhéng who wished to buy shoes. He first ‘measured his fect himself and placed it (the measure) on his seat (HF 32, p. 209) ‘See 78 above for another example. In such cases two bare nouns56 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar following a verb have the order (1) direct (accusative) object, (2) locative complement, rather than (1) indirect (dative) object, (2) direct (accusative) object (see Section IV.8a above). Conditions under which this construction is possible need to be worked out in detail (si) The pronominal suttttes ian 3 and yan Neither yd T an be falowed by the object pronaun zh Instead we find the particles yan 3, EMC wuan, from yd and yin 5, EMC ian, from yxi 3. The former is found mostly in the Shijing, were it may be glossed as “there then, thereupon.” The latter is normal in classical texts ffom the Shijing onward and can have all the possible meanings of yi #8 + taht Z s “in itt it from iby it than it, ete” For examples, see 54, $6, 59, 90, 103. (it) X tt yi Z RY ee ee FE eon ee el noite by ier zhi Z are commonly used to introduce atopic. 179, Gud rén zhi yd gué ye, in xin yan &r yi BA ZH BD we RUERR {As for my [behaviour] towards my country, I exhaust my mind in itand thats all. (Meng 1AJ3. Yi gud in the topic phrase is recapitulate by yan in the predicate.) Note that some such word as ‘behaviour’ has to be introduced English translation because English cannot gominalize a preposition. In suchcases ht ig nver stated foryd Be and zh) His acer contracted to zhit Fé. In the following example from the Liinyi, wi BI, my’ precedes yii # directly without zh Z but this is normal for personal ‘pronouns used in the genitive, whether before nouns or as the subjects of nominalized verbs 180, Shi wa yd rén yé, ting qi yan ér xin qf xing. jin wi yd rén vesugeatyinceevengtage HE A SES WS ao SE AG MIE WLI Fermery my (aide) owards men wast listen o tee words and inher conduct Now my fate] wana men a fiten tothe wordy and observe teicondut (LY S10) For aitional exampes of this constuction sce 41 and 94 shove'V. Compound Verbal Predicates 7 (©) Descriptive Complements with Ri 1? and’ You 48h Phrases introduced by ri 8! “like* may be placed ater @ verb to add a descriptive complement in much the same way that phrases introduced by ytt BY add locative complements.!? ws EA 181. Shang rén chi tianxia, shi you shi sii shut BAP > ARR wk K When a sage rules the world, he causes it (0 have beans and grain like water and fire. (Méng 7A/23) 12 ni ing ee yg avian ng zh See ER we ELwWR? z 2 EE ‘go ruler wil eward good and punish icenousess, nurture the pop ik hen, cover he ike Heaven make space fr them like the Earth. (Zwé Xiang 14/fit 3) ‘Though 61M inthe sense of “like” (for wbich the graph tH is sometimes subuitted isnot ave tall and has quite a diferent origin from rH, ican also be used to introduce descriptive complements 183. ... min gui zm you shui zi jin xia BZ By AZ ae the people will turn to him like water going downwards. (Meng 1A16) Note the omission of final ye" 44, which is required when you 4H introduces an independent predicate. (A) Coverbs as Subordinating Conjunctions Certain transitive verbs are used impersonally to introduce what correspond (© subordinate clauses of time, supposition, cause, etc. 184. Ji gi shi rén y8, qi 2m K HE EA > BA ‘When he (the superior man) employs aters, he uses them according to their capacities. (LY 13225) {As a fall verb j FE means ‘eacin’ Its used heveimpersonally in a temporal sense with a nominalized clause object, marked as embeded by 24, literally, “Coming this employing men.” Other coverbs used in this way include zhi yd % HE artve at, coming to, when’; bi EL, “bese; by the time that” (example 218); shi ‘make, cause: supposing’; yi Pk “ose; using, by means of; because,” ec, See Section XY belowVI. Numerical Expressions 1. As Predicates Like adjectives, numbers and expressions of quantity form predicates without any copula or final particle. 185. Mie gud rhe wa shi 3h Bl at Bp His extinctions of countries were fifty. (Méng 3B/9) 186. Wen Wing 2 you fang ihn ELM ete ‘Wen Wings pork was 10 squire. (eng 182) ‘The panicle of verbal nation ba js ust and other adjuncts of verbal predicates, such as the adverb yi & ‘already’ and the marker of perfect aspect yi & , are also found. 187. Zhi bi bai bu er HB It was only not 100 paces. (Meng 14/3) 188. Nién yi qishi i FE ER His years were already 70. (Meng SA/9) Note the use of jidng #f with numerical expressions in the sense of “approximately.” 189, Jin Téng jué ching ba duan, jiang wa shi jt ye 4 BR AE, RRM ETE Now if you cut off the long to supplement the short, Téng would, bbe roughly 50 fi [square]. (Méng 3A/1) 2. As Complements An expression of quantity may be added after another predicate as a ‘complement 190. Xi sang di yi Qin qh shi bain HW RIL RAAB On the west we lost land 10 Qin, 700 li [= we lost 700 If of tand to Qin}. (Méng 10/5) ‘The syntax may be compared to that of a locative complement (see Section V.6b.v above)VI. Numerical Expressions 99 3. As Modifiers of Nouns Most commonly numerals are placed directly in front of nouns in Classical Chinese without the need for a classifier. 191, Wa hé ai yi nia BAT — Why should I begrudge one ox? (Meng 1A/7) Measure words, with or without @ preceding numeral, may similarly modify nouns directly 192. ¥6 sn 2 bin, wb yng mig yn BEF ZR Ro ae AS “haa cana of frevoud is oso cus of mot sing da sepei ons aig ta 193. DE ba an jn a,j ng 9 cho zoho, you tang HE ZORA > MAE DL RE AR eR ITty had go 1001 of tetory and ruled overt, they the ancient sages} could all have thereby brought the feudal lords to their coun and obtained the leap of Allunder Heaven, (Meng 2/2) Less commonly, numerals and measures follow a noun in apposition 194. QF wai Wei gh, fA Jin Guan Shi, sing che wa bai HF % fH KoRPRKR REED ‘On behalf of Wei, Qf attacked the Guan Clan of Sin and lost 500 chariots. (Zué Ai 15/7) 195 sec wane asm HE BE He gave them each five pairs of jades and three horses. (Zud Zhuang 18/0 1) As in the last case, apart from measure words, special numeral adjuncts are used for counting certain nouns in this construction. These include pi © for ‘horses,’ shéng FE and lidng ¥H for ‘carriages,’ and g2 4S for ‘arrows.’ This is no doubt the forerunner of the more general use of classifiers, which begins to appear in Han times."* It is noteworthy that the nouns in question are all ones that are frequent in a military context, In most cases the noun so quantified is the object ofa verb, and the expression60 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar of quantity can be regarded as a complement, as in Section V1.2 above, Note, however: 196. Dang Qin ta ng, pwn 9 wl yng HE fo veiuan en Atte time of Qin's prosperity, ten thousand yi of yellow gold were used. (ZGC, Qin cé 40/14/13) 4. You Hi ‘ana Note the use of you 7 (departing tone) in the sense of “and” expressions, 197, Y6u Yoo Sh phi Tong, wis ba you yo out BBB ERE EE AER From YS ad Shino Tang was ive hundred and more eas (Meng 78/38)VII. Noun Phrases and Nominalization * 1. Coordination and Subordination of Nouns (@) Coordination Simple juxtaposition is sufficient to indicate coordination: fama X 4 “father and mother.’ “And” between nouns may be expressed by the cover’ yu BH (sce V Gai). 198. Zi han yan Wi ya ming yi én FFB A] HE Hr HE AE ‘The master seldom spoke of profit, fate, and goodness. (LY 9/1) Another coverb used for ‘and’ in the preclassical language and also in the Zudzhuan is jt ‘reach, arrive at” 199. Yo jf jie wing F BH and you will perish together. (Meng 1/2, quoting Shui 10:97 Tangsti) 200. Song jf Zheng ping R BH HF Song and Zheng made peace. (Zud Yin 7/5) This usage re-emerges in postelassical texts like the Shi (6) Subordination Subordination between nouns is expressed by the formula: Np zhi Ni. in which Nis the head ofthe phrase, Nps the modifier and zhi, which is etymologically the same word as modern de ff, is the marker of subordination, 201. Wang zhi zha chén E & 3 Your Majesty's various ministers. (Méng 1A/7) Zhi Z may be omitted, especially between monosyllables. 202. Lao yui wing shi 3 HS EH ‘They labour in the king's business ... (Méng SA/4) “The relation between the two nouns need not be that of possession ‘Thus in 4 AE FE +King Hui of Lidng,’ Lidng, the name of the country, is ‘a modifier specifying which King Hui is meant.e Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 07 His the general pronoun substitute for N + Z: gf shou 3 F ‘his hand." After personal pronouns zh Zs normally omitted: wii shu B F my hand. ‘Nouns may also be modified by verb phrases or adjectives (which in Chinese are lke verbs in ther syntax) 203. Ba rén én zhi xin FA Zw the heart that cannot bear the afflictions of others. (Méng 2A/6) 204. Wa do rén at jun 4 HA ZB ‘A raler who insults and obs people (Meng 44/17) Since adjectives area kind of verb, modification of nouns by adjectives isa Special ease ofthis more general construction, It is of course, very frequent ype, Zhi. is usually omited after a monosyllabic adjective, but inser in other cases 205. ... xién sheng zit jon EE XE worthy and sage rules, (Meng 2A/1) Compare the following example where 2ht Z. is omitted after one of these adjectives used by itself: 206. Téng jun zé chéng xian jon ye RE BY a HB th ‘The ruler of Téng is truly a worthy ruler. (Méng 3/4) ‘The use of a verbal phrase (0 modify a noun can be considered a special ‘case of the more general construction, called nominalization, that is discussed in the next section. Thus, the modifying phrases in 203, 204, and 205 are derived from the sentences: xin bit rin rén WS A ZA “the heart cannot bear the afflictions of others’; jiin wii dio rén fi 3 A “the ruler insults and robs people’; jin xidn sheng HH ‘rulers are worthy and sage." The subjects are omitted in the modifying phrases since they are identical with the head nouns that the phrases modify. Aa alternative constru which the head noun is replaced by the pronominal substitute zhé f and the subject of the modifying sentence is retained is discussed in Section VII.2¢ below. 2, Nominalization (a) Unmarked Nominalization Verbal phrases may be treated as nouns simply by being placed in the noun predicate construction, This is used mainly:VII Noun Phrases and Nominalization 3 (i) in order to contrast wo predicates fe, fei bi néng ye FE a th, , AE He 207. Shi bi wéi ‘This is not-doing, itis not not-being-able, (Méng 1A/7) (ii) to add an explanation of conclusion after another predicate 208. ... shi yi zou ye 3 JP He - this is also running away. (Meng 1A/3) In this construction the subject, if expressed, is not separated from the arb by zht Z , as it would be in the case of marked nominalization (see (b) low). boii xing an 2h, shi.min show zhi gees Fae er GRRL» RRS e put him in charge of affairs and the affairs were well administered and the people were peaceful under him. This was the people's accepting him (ie. this showed that the people accepted him), (Meng 5A/5) 210, Yayue Yi MO zhi Zi as tong sheng, “hinge yi fa prope tet 2F4 0A RE > That the children of ue and the Yi and MO make the same sounds when they are born but have different customs when they row up is because teaching makes them so. (Kiin 1/4-5) 1k should also be distinguished from the case of nouns derived from ‘verbs, which cannot take verbal adjuncts like objects or adverbial modifiers, ‘Thus, in the following example shi #8, which is primarily an intransitive verb, “begin,” (with, of course, the inherent capability of being used transitively in a causative sense [IV.4]), is equivalent to the derived noun ‘beginning’ in English, aot the homophonous verbal noun (gerund) “beginning.” 211, Wang dio tsi ye EH Ae Is the beginning of the kingly way. (Meng 14/3) I instead we had: wang dao sht ye i $8 4H, , one may suppose thatthe meaning would be: ‘itis that the kingly way is beginning.’ That it would have a more active, dynamie meaning instead of merely equating a certain stat of affairs with the potentiality of achieving true kingship. On6 ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar the other hand, as we shall see hslow, wang da oh sh ye ath 2H «used a8 atopic phrase rather than a a predate, would have this ative, dynamic meaning: when the kingly way was beginning.’ This is one ofthe subilties of Classical Chinese syntax that needs more study. A futher point that nceds investigation is whether any verb can give rise toa derived oun like sh 38 “beginning” in the same way tha any verb can appent in a nominalized verbal phrase or wheter, as one suspects, such derived verbs are separate excl items, wit their individual eccentrics, Modification of a noun by a verb or verb phrase asin 203, 204, and 20S above appears tobe a form of uninarked nominaization but, as we shall see below here isan alternative constuction withthe same meaning in which the head noun is replaced by zhe and the subject of the modifying phrase appears on he surface linked 10 the verb by 2. Both cnsritons canbe derived from ihe same base form which equires marked nominalization, with deletion of either one of the two occurrences of Nj. (b) Marked Nominalizaion by Inserting Zin %."? A verb phrase is formally nominalized by inserting zit Z between the subject, if present, and the verb: wing Idi +E 2K ‘king comes’ —> weing zhi tai EX HR ‘king’s coming.’ This may be compared to the English gerund construction, except, of course, that there is no morphological change in the verb itself in Chinese. Qf F€ is used as a substitute for N+ before verbs, just as before nouns: gf lai coming’ and after personal pronouns zhi is normally omitted: wii di 2 ‘my ‘coming.’ (In addition, the particles zhé @ and sud Jf can serve as marks ‘of nominalization — see (c) and (4) below.) This kind of nominalization can be used in a variety of constructions, ee, (i) As subject of a sentence: 212. Gi wang zhi bir wing, bi, wéi yé, fei bd néng ye BK EZ BE ® dy th SbF fe th ‘Therefore Your Majesty's not becoming a true king is (a matter of] not-doing, itis not not-being-able. (Meng 1A/T. The predicate in this sentence consists of two coordinate unmarked nominalized ‘verbal phrases embedded in the noun predicate construction.) Gi) As object of a ver:VI. Noun Phrases and Nominalization 6s 418, Weg 0 yn fw 8 699.0. 26 id vng bh yo PEeLe RAH ME PERE I You May was pledy i guna without pn te ple sfeasouton ea wis as tea dnote ove tnoneee Shea utong " oe experi the seage ar ve of ening fing, hoping, 10 xpress what is ‘known, feared, hoped for, ee.” 214, HE you ahi wo ke ye fT a Se BT From what do you know that I can? (Méng 1A/7. Literally: know iy being possible) rn such cases, as here, one frequently finds the particle yé 4H, at the end of he nominalized phrase. (iii) As object of a covert: 215. Bi gf fan ye... HE FEL By his returning =) When he returned ... (Méng 1B/7) Note that here too, where the phrase i translatable as a clause, we find final vets, (Gv) Absolutely, atthe beginning of a sentence, as a topic phrase or one that sets the time or occasion for what follows; usually followed by yé 4H, (ee XV.Ae): 216. Chéng Ni zhi jing sheng yé, Hudn Gong shi ba A ees ea bh ‘When Chéng i was going to be born, Duke Hun had divination made about it). (Zé Min 21) ‘The circumstances under which yé 4H is inserted to mark the end of a subordinate noun clause require further investigation. In the case of 213 and 214 the difference seems to be between a preceding if-clause, without yé 44, , and the main predicate, with y@ 1W,. In cases like 215 and 216 where the initial modifying clauses have final yé 44, the modifying clause is temporal rather than conditional. Unlike the English gerund construction, a noun linked to a following verb by nominalizing zhi Z in Chinese can only be the subject or another preverbal element. There is no ‘objective genitive’ in Chinese. On the other hhand, in the absence of an overt subject, nominalizing zhi 2 may be inserted after another preverbal clement such as time word.$$, 66 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 217. Gai zhi wéi guin 8 jitng i ya bdo WF a OA > HEA BER The establishment of fromterbariers in ancient times was to prevent violence. (Meng 7B/8) 218. Wai chdng gi ér wang yi, bin déng gio zh bd jidn yé ERMZA FHRHZH once stood on tip toe and looked into the distance. It was (not like the Seeing all around of climbing up high =) not as good as climbing up high and seeing all around. (Xiin 1/7) In this example, the noun clause 4& #] X tH 5, can be derived from the sentence (B) 8 FH HH 4 JL °C) climb up high and see all around.” The fact that, in the absence of an explicit subject (II.2), the particle ér Tis replaced by zhi Z in order to mark the clause as nominalized, shows that the first of two verbs in series functions grammatically, as well as semantically, as a modifier ofthe following, main, verb. 219. Bi jian Isi zhi bing qin BH JL KZ FH BH When he sees that, if they come, they will both be seized ... (Shiji 66.2172) Here Idi JR ‘come’ is functioning as an if-clause: dai, bing qin > F# “If we come, we will both be seized.” Yet for the sake of nominalization it is treated as an adjunct of the verb gin @F ‘be seized.” AA verbless noun predicate can also be ‘nominalized by qi 3% when it is embedded as an object clause. 220. Yi shi in gf ttn ye BL JE $0 HER th By this I know that it was Heaven (that did it). (Zhuding 3/13) Ii should be noted that the nominalizaion by insertion of 2 zh, which is quite foreign to Modem Chinese, was already becoming absolescent inthe Hin period and clause objects often omit this marker in texts such as the Shiji. (©) ze ‘The particle zhé 4 is the pronoun substitute for the head, Ny, in the noun phrase construction Ny zhi Z Nj. It is etymologically related to zhi Z ‘and {0 colloquial de , which has, parallel function in the modern language. Though Nz modifying zhé 4 is most commonly a nominalized verb phrase, this is not necessarily the case, as in the following:VIL Noun Phrases and Nominalization 67 221, San jia che yi Yong che = RK A VA FE Aik ‘Those of the Three Families use the Yong ode while clearing away the sacrificial vessels. (LY 3/2; equivalent to san fia zhi rén = RZ) When, as is more commonly the case, Np is a verb or verb phrase, 2h€ A also serves as a mark of nominalization: géng zhe Ht 2% ‘a plowing cone, a ploughman," shd rén zhé A AF ‘one who kills people.” Note that zhé #% in these cases stands for the subject of the verb, which is to be understood as either indefinite (as inthe translations supplied) or anaphy if a definite subject can be supplied from the preceding context, ‘the one who was ploughing,’ ‘the one who killed people,’ etc. IF a noun subject is expressed, then No is derived from a sentence in which the subject if Nj and the formula can be expanded to: [Ny + VP] & Ny, where VP stands for “verb phrase’ and subscript ji aller the bracket stands for the operation of | nominalization. Thus, bwdng sha rény 2h weg > wing 2 sha rén zh sng > wang cht sha rén she EB K.-H (king kills peoplelns king — [king’s killing people]’s king — king’s killing people one = a king whe kills people 222. Nito shou sh hai én abe xiao BRL A HHH ‘The birds and teats that had injured people disappeared. (Mong 3B/9) 1 instead of deleting the second occurence of Ny inthe formula and replacing zhi Z by zhé #, we delete the first occurrence, within the modifying clause, we derive the construction found in examples 203 and 204 above, in which a verb phrase appears as the modifier of a noun: (wdng shd rén\y zhi wang — sha rén zhl wang ‘a king who kills people.’ As shown by the translations, these two constructions are equivalent in pee et acoso rela cheer n Balle Zhe H may ano stand forthe verb phrase asa whole “the doing X, the thing of doing X rater than “the one who does Xe, gang she BE # “ploughing: sha ren che AL ACH “the kiling of people” 223, Ba wei zh ya bi, neg abe a xing, he iyi ah AE KEELE BOE How do the forms of ot-dong and nt-being-abedtfer? (Meng 1a) Only context can distinguish between these interpretations3 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar & Sud FF ‘ud FA, as a full word, means ‘place,’ as in wang sud Ff the king's slace.’ dé qi sud 44 SE JIT get his (proper) place.’ When placed in front ofa verb it nominalizes it and most commonly stands for the direet object sud sha fit BK “those whom he killed,” sud you JIT 7 ‘what he has, what exists.” For examples see 8, 20, 31, 32, 56. It can also stand for the destination after a transitive verb of motion (1V.6): 224, Tuo ri jon cha, 2é bi ming you si sud zhi fH, HB HY» Bl ob oer A] BZ (On other days when you have gone out, you have always given orders to your officers as to where you were going. (Meng 11/16) an act as a lative complement 225, Yo Shim zhi ch ty xid, fl wd sus yong af xin zai FE HE LBRP REMARK ‘When Yo and Shin ruled the worl, could it be that they had nothing on which they exercised their minds? (Meng 3A.4) Such phrases may also be followed by zhé % , which then stands for the object or complement referred to by sud AF rather than the subject. 226. Sud wei gi gud zhe Af BH ak Bl ‘What one cals ‘an ancient kingdom’... (Méng 1B/7) ‘The subject may be expressed by Noun + zhi Z or gi FL: weing zhi suo sha che © & fff BA those whom the king killed." Note the use of sud Hf with coverbs: sud yt Ht VA that by which’ (not ‘therefore’ in Classical Chinese), sud ya Pf $€ ‘those with whom.’ For the passive construction with wéi # ... sud Jf... see Section IV.%., In the preclassical language, you 4 is equivalent to later sua ff 227. Wang 2ai Bs ing you, you la you fa ZEB fl > A HE ‘The King was in his Spirit Park, where the deer and stags lay resting. (ShT 242/2, quoted in Méng 1A/2)VIII. Topicalization and Exposure ‘An clement in a sentence may be given special prominence by being taken out of its normal position and placed in front, One common situation in which this occurs is when some element which is not grammatically the subject is announced as “topic.” Exposure also occurs, however, when an element, such as the object of the verb, is given contrastive emphasis ‘without becoming the topic, and since the grammatical devices involved are similar it is convenient to deal with the two matters together. The subject, which normally occupies a position at the head of a sentence, can also be exposed to give it contrastive emphasis or to announce it as not merely the grammatical subject, but also the topic of discourse. (For word order inversion in exclamatory sentences see XIV.3.) 1. Exposure of an Element That Is Not the Subject 228. Rén ér bi wang zhe, wei zn you ye HR HT AE BRA Thos never happened that in such cicumstances tre kingship was not obained (ong 1A) Ths js eqn owe yon bu wang oye ALAR HOE E “ch ml youre ryt qiqn shee RAL WOR HEAL Meng 1A/1). When the object is exposed, it is repeated by zhi 2, which intr fn shited to the posiion between the negative pate andthe verb by regular 2 non an gn uaa gait cn HH Bes BRE To a oo a ten thousand, or 100 from 1000, is already a beam many ie Here the base frme ate gin yd win BF HEB and gt by git HLH HF When the noun object of the coverh i Hare cxpesed, thy are repeatd by yon Babstting fry oft FE 2 Compare aso trample 63 in Seton V7 above 230, Wan shang zh gu, sh af Jon 2h, bi gn shang 2 ja LG MEHL PRL RK ‘The one who murders the ruler of a country of ten thousand70 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar chariots will certainly be (head of] a house of 1000 chariots. (Meng TAI) Here the base form would be si wan sheng zht gud zit jan zhe B86 3 Z BPX BF. The repeating pronoun isthe possessive gf HE. As in the previous example, the exposed clement is rhetorically repeated and contrasted by gin sheng hi gud “FA BD inthe next sentence 231, wi ma zh zhdi, shd ain yi sang HAZE > HZ WR Let them plant the household plots of five mit with mulberries. (= shi wii mG zhi ahdi yi sing 4 HBA 2% EW HK; Meng 13) In late Preclassical Chinese of the Shijing and the early Classical Chinese of the Zudzhian and Gudyi, the exposure construction differed in ‘an important way. A preposed object was repeated by a pronoun, usually zhi Z or shi %, placed in front of the verb instead of after it. This is no doubt a survival of a more widespread placing of pronoun objects in front of the verb in the preclassical language. 232, Rong Di shi ying AK 2 if ‘The Rong and Di, them he repressed. (Shi 300/4) 233, Gud rén zhi eng jan ér xi y8, yi Tin zhi yao meng shi HALKH MHL KELP That am ftowing your alr an going wes srl ul the Snge dram inn. ud 15/42 jh 990 meng BE HLKF) 234, Bing ér hdu zhi yan, hé cht zhi you #8 FT a2 4 If we run into difficulties and then offer them hostages, will it be 100 late? (Zud Ding 8/10 = you hé cht 1 i) Note that in the following example te repeating pronoun is placed in fron ofa particle of negation instead of between the negative andthe verb. 235, Shi zin bi wi, ér you yan c6ng shi 3-2 HF WT X Bee If we do not devote our efforts to this, to what else should we apply ourselves? (Zud Zio 32/5) In the case of the coverb yi YA, which regularly omits zhi Z as its ‘object, a preposed noun object is not repeated by a pronoun oft‘VILL Topicalization and Exposure n 236, Ryd Tn jan sto 1,28 a.m yt may xe rho DEBE MUN Mie ES DD i A> BRU E ie Lord of Jn ener in the morning, hen we women and chide dic inthe evening ie cme athe evening we die in te morning (Zad Hi 15/4 ao 8 "moray" anda “ecting’ a placed in on ofthe coverb tO forte sake of rrr const ba arn flowed by ¢ eaptsaig pronoun feiss ba ces oa etry vb) One seraxyped survival of his conuction Doth in standard Clase! Chinese and ate Literary Chine is wth the verb wei 237, Fadi ahi wei ye AF Z BH Te (the post) refers to you, sir. (Méng 1AJ7. This is derived from wai faa A F by moving the object fa zi A F in front and repeating with zk 2 — more literally: Your honour, him it refers to) 238. Fei ci ahi wei ye EH HE ah, I did not mean this. (Meng 2B/2 = ba wei ct 7 3H Hk y “The use of fei 4F as the negative particle in the above example is @ carry-over frm the eal contruction, in which the exposed element was often introduced by wei AB (HE HE), its negative el 4, or adnominal particles such asjdng HF orb 38 239. Shi fa ye, jiang bi we # ve a BZ This fellow will 14/6) Note that here the exposed object, though clearly contrastive, is not placed before the subject and can hardly be called the “opie.” 240. Ya bi chén shi zh 4 EE BY I certainly subjects them help =I will certainly help my subjects. (2ué Zhao 2212) ei giio a bai EK he HE not only the country of Wei. (Zué Chéng 2. Exposure of the Subject If the subject is the element to which special emphasis or contrast is given, it is not displaced since its normal position is in front of the verb, but it ‘can nevertheless be marked as exposed.n Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Inthe Shing and Zadchudn, hiss done by iseing he resumptive pronoun sh Bor shi HE "is between the subject andthe verb. The Exposed abject lke an exposed ober aie invodace by one of the Sdnominal aces wel fr SF ang HE 012 et 241, Ci ar rén che shi shi gua jon Je = A af ERR IE BE I was these wo men who murdered our ruler. (Zud Yin 4/6) 242, Pei zhi zin shi nin aE Ao HERE Its not knowing it that is difficult (2d Zhao 10/5) In other forms of Classical Chinese the demonstrative shi 2 may be used forthe resumption of an exposed subject, e.g, 243. Wang 2h ba wang shi zhé ahi 2m ei ye EXE TRL Mh ‘Your Majesty's not achieving true Kingshp isin the category of breaking a branch (Meng 1AM7) 244, Tian ye, fei rén ye, tian zhi sheng shi shi di ye ® Hh > aA CAZHE RE BH 1k was Heaven. It was not man, Heaven's giving me life it was that made me one-footed. (Zhuang 3/13) 3.2é fil Marking Exposure Besides its common function as a particle meaning ‘then” introducing the apodosis of a condition, zé $l), which is no doubt deictic in origin, related to the demonstrative stem in 21 3% ‘this, here,’ cr JE, “this,” etc., is used to ‘mark an exposed noun phrase as contrastive. Most commonly, but not exclusively, the exposed element isthe subject. 245. Shi né ai ba yur + Bl A 1, Shi, am not pleased at this. (Méng 2B/12) 246. Shi 2é ke you ye & HT Hy This is a thing to be concerned about. (Meng 4B/28) 247, Kongai yue, sheng 26 wi bu néng 4LF > B HE Confucius said, ‘To be a sage [am not capable.’ (Meng 2/2) 248. Nig 28 26 mi, mi qi néng 26 nido BY HE A > AR Ht fE ESVII. Topicalization and Exposure B ‘The bird chooses its tre; how can a tree choose its bird? (Zud Ai 116) 4X cht yi ZR Y Both the subject and a posiverbal element may be topicalized in a locative phrase with yi # nominalized by zht Z . (See also Section V.6b.vii.) 29g 2 pv glans 8 ng SFERER ED ERE RAE ‘A gentleman's attitude to birds and animals is that if he sees them ankehe cma tear tose thm de. (bug LAT Desived om Juni jfongi shou sheng BF IB We oe) uci nominalied paces wih 36 ash verb ae 00 confned topicalization. They occur in other situations where a main verb has been deleted, 250. Zhou Gong zhi yo Yin y&, MAL RARE MEZRL> PRLH Rab, ba you tian xia, you Yi ahi yd Xia, VV Yin ‘The Duke of Zhou's not possessing the empire was like Y1's situation in Xia, and 1 Yin's in Yin, (Méng 5A/6) 5. Other Particles Marking Topicalization or Contrastive Exposure ye th The use of yé 4¥, in these constructions is illustrated in such examples as 249 above. It is found especially, as there, when the topic phrase is @ nominalized verbal phrase, Compare the use of yé +H, after nominalized phrases that are objects of a verb. A further example is: 251. Zhang fa zhi gun y&, {0 ming zhi, ni 74 2h ji yé, mi ming ERE Ha ROL KFLKL BH 7 father orders the capping of a young man, the mother orders the marriage of a daughter. (Meng 3B/2 ) ‘Topic marker use of yé 4H, is also often found with proper names. This, is particularly common in the Liinyd, e.g," Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar BBE 0 708 00 aan er wa un ME HE > A TR When Li died, he had a coffin but no coffin case. (LY 11/8) Note alsojin yé 4 4H, ‘now," placed contrastively at the head of sentence, a usage similar to topicalization (see example 382 and XIL 3a). wy were E> HE > AB) The preclassical copula, wéi #E , performs a similar role to yé 4H, in the classical language in marking introductory noun phrases as topics, e.g. 253. Wéi tian you han AE K 7 HK In the sky there is the Milky Way. (Shi 203/5) (zhe In addition to its role in nominalization (VII.2c), 2ké occurs after nouns in exposed position as a marker of contrastive emphasis. 254. FA ming ting zh8, wing zhé 2h ting ye KW] af > PELE SY ‘The Hall of Light is a hall belonging to a King. (Meng 1B/5) Like yo-4H,, hd # is used after proper names. Ming tdng BA % in the above example is really a proper noun. In the following example zhé is used afler a proper noun which is not in exposed position within its ‘own clause but is effectively the exposed subject of the following clause. 258. You Yin Hut zhé, hao xde 7A BE TE! 2 > ‘There was Yén Hui. He loved learning. (LY 6/3) In time expressions like git zhé #% ‘in ancient times,” or xi zhé “formerly” zhé also has a similar function to yé Rak Fi % (EMC bua) as a demonstrative pronoun is discussed in the next section. Iis more common use is as an introductory particle announcing a topic as in example 254 above and the following. It often seems to have a generalizing force and is probably related to fan JL (EMC buam) ‘all’ (see XIIL. 1b), sede A RARE TERE WORSE ho A SS x put one’s hand on one’s sword, look fierce and say “How dareVIII. Topicalization and Exposure 15 he face me,’ is the courage of a common fellow, which is suitable ‘only for confronting a single foe. (Meng 1B/A) 257, Fa wo nai xing zm A 4 7d 4 Z As for me, I di it. (Meng 1A/7) [Note that there is a double focus in the sentence: 1 (the king) in contrast to you (Mencius) and did, as opposed to understood. Fi emphasizes the ‘subject while at the same time the effect of the particle nai 77 is to throw emphasis forward on to the verb. ‘An important use of fii A is with interrogative pronouns, The effect seems to be like adding ‘ever’ or the like in English. That is, it emphasizes the interrogative by widening its scope. 258. Fa shut yo wang di A BE HE AL Who in the world will oppose Your Majesty’ (Méng 1A/5) (©) Roo Fa HK Rio fi # HK “but as for...” introduces a topic contrasted with something immediatly preceding 29D Wen Winch fa tna é WerWng yong #3 2, BH PORRE PRE RES. BEX E> ‘Those who wait for a King Wén to bestir themselves are ordinary mnen. As forrest heroes, even without a King Wea they sl sti themselves. (Méng 7A/10) TB tet tpi of sucha cosaive pair may be ineoduced by nd rad EF This seems to be a locution peculiar to Mencius. 260, Nt ud af ging 2 KE yh wéi shin. ye it Rud fd wei bd shan, fe a Seta HT oh HER DAM H he Pee ie ot 2B ‘As far as one’s inner nature is concerned, one can be good. This is ‘what I mean by [nature's being] good. As for becoming bad, itis not the fault of one’s basic capacity. (Meng 6A/6)IX. Pronouns and Related Words" 1. Personal Pronouns (@) First Person There are (wo series of first person pronouns in Classical Chinese: (1) those with initial j- in Middle Chinese including vit ® (EMC jia), ya F (EMC {ia”) and preclassical yi & (EMC ji), together with zhén AK (EMC drim’ ) probably also had the sane Old Chinese inital originally? and 2) those with initial g- in Middle Chinese, including wa & (EMC go) and wa BL (EMC ga") and preclassical dng £1? (EMC pag). Judging by the use on the oracle bones in which yxi 4% and zhen BR reler (almost) exclusively to the king himself while wd 4% refers to Shang collectively, the original distinction was between singular (set 1) and plural (set 2).2 By the time of the early Zhou bronze inscriptions, the distinction was breaking down and it was becoming possible to use we 4% as singular ‘T’, but the older usage Contines in such expressions as yi yt én He -A"I, one mathe formula used by the Zhou king, on the one hand, and wo gué #% [A ‘our country’ on the other. By classical times yi 4 and yw F were obsolescent and the g- forms were normal in a singular as well asa plural sense, When yi 4 and yu F survive, they are still confined to the singular. tn redtonal reading pronunciation “is considered tobe just a praphicaltemative to and is ead yu lower level tone) in the sense of im contrast (0 its ecading (ising tone) in the sense of “give” In the Shing, however, it rhymes in rising tone in boh senses. Ths is also rue of the rhymes in the Chiic/, which makes a clear distinction in usage between 4 and ¥ , ceserbling that betveen wi Band wa 4, that is reserving to object position (nosy, but not exclusively posiverbal)23 261. Yu zhi io hing yi F BY HH He [pve son ang te spots gow. eng 202) Wa & and wo % were differentiated in grammatical usage, Wa & curs only in on of the word on which it depends Is most common pects olen SE oy land or hee ea See er ee er between a negative particle and the verb: bi wi zhi ED “does not know me.’ Wa 4% can occur both in front of a noun, as possessive, or aIX. Pronouns and Related Words n verb, as subject, and after a verb as object. It seems to be more emphatic and contrastive than wii and might be compared to the disjunctive form ‘moi in French versus me or je. 262. Zengzi yue, Ch 2H fb jf. BI af Ba 96 9 cuit, Bh a ju, wow 9h, wh gin ho zai HP AB HALE RAK A AUB > HDL RR ROG SEH Zeng sid, “The wealth of Fn and Chis cannot be asied ‘They wih tei wealth with my benevolence, they wit their honour, I with my rightcousness, why shuld be dssatsted? (tong 287) In this passage where there is song contest — a opposed 10 they — wd a used: otherwise xt 28 Precassical yf 4 (with various altemative graphic forms on inscriptions) and in BE are mostly posesive, occasionally nominative They are very rae in texts ofthe casiel period. The First Emperor of Qn chee ht 5 te ee pone ee thee sued doh imp ies aa way forthe emp o refer to himself. Preclassical dng FP? occurs in a handful of examples in the ‘Shing and Shujing, mostly but nt exclusively a8 a singular ‘Various expressions of selF-deprectoy nature wer commonly sed in place of Fist person pronouns, eg. gudrén BEAL “beret person 2 ‘orphan,’ big Pi ‘unworthy’ — terms used by rulers; chén EE ‘your subject” — used by a minister to his ruler; pi ‘your slave’ — used between equals (Japanese boku); qié 3€ *your slave’ — used by women; gié “private? — used in documentary sje (compare Japanese watakush ‘Another hue way of refering to oneself was by ise of one’s personal name (ming 4 ). (©) Second Person ‘The various forms of the second person pronoun originally all had inital fp ts cog fers n Tet Barn, Te nes frm of modes K was er FH (EMC pia ), perhaps originally pronounced something like ‘132. By regular phonetic change, the reading form became ér but in the collouialangugeit eeame nino ten P8 Ote ors wore ri (EMC pit) often writen X , ér TH (EMC ni), rud % (EMC piak) and, in the preclassical language, ndi JY (EMC naj’ ) and réng 7 (EMC suv). In classical texts, both &r E and ra 3 are used both as subject andB Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar object. There are differences in usage in different texts but what these are has not been clearly established, Er TH, like wi @ , is used only as subject or possessive. It is comparatively uncommon. 263. YG ér 2a ye HH 4 4h, Tam your grandfather. (Zué Xuan 3/9) 264, fr ni jn zhi zhi ha TH 77 4 He ZH Do you know it now? (Zhuang 7.1) stud 3 is common inthe Zhudnget and some Inte ext, bu isnt found inthe Menciu rear ext, loscrs a bth subject and abe Sever ofthe words meaning you ae homophonous wth wor tneaning lke’ hun’ ee and are writen wih the same characters: BE “hus s02 md 2 "lke dr so, then? ni 7) "thens Compare also ri AB ike? which differs ony in tone Tom rd "you In precassica texts, ndi ‘then’ was written with a different character, 18 , distinct from ndi 4 you, yours which suggests that it may also have been pronounced item "The rots for "you" and ike’ may have orginally differed in Some vay in thei nal consonants ontspondng to the humble forms used for the fist person are numerous honorific forms used as terms iierones One mode of honorific ‘isch ppona ere ning yar mst general terms are jiin ‘lord,’ ging 2 ‘lord,’ ging $M ‘minister’ (used by arulero bis minster, e1-F “mater si (also act swe EF) Nowe the expression braid BET "your majesty. lncrlly "beneath the steps (of the tone)’ The subject, not daring to address the ruler directly, addresses instead the servant seated below. Similar resins, grade by the rank othe person aessed, were dn wid Be "your highness” g@ nd BAF your excellncy” Zi xid 32 F ‘beneath he fet was orginaly an expression ofthe same Kind which came to be used as a respectful address between men of more or less equal rank. iam sheng $e “elder orn’ appears eal the Waring Sats, wed especially to teachers. Such honorifis could in many cases also be used when referring to others in the third person. (©) Third Person ‘There is no general third person pronoun equivalent ro modern #a 18, , which has the reading pronunciation ud and means ‘other’ in Classical Chinese,IX. Pronouns and Related Words 7 ( 2h Z comes closest to being a general third person pronoun. I is, however, almost exclusively confined to being object of a verb or cover’; sha zhi AL Z Kills him,” you zht HZ “from it.’ One must, of course, distinguish the object pronoun zhi 2. from the verb zh Z. “go to,’ written with the same character. The mark of noun subordination zhi Z, on the other hand, is no doubt etymologically related to the pronoun. In rare instances in a few texts, notably the Shijing and Zhudngel, zhi occurs as an attributive demonstrative ‘this’: 265. Zhi or chong you hé ahi & = BR fi] Ho ‘And what do these two worms know? (Zhuang 1.10) ‘As noted above, zhi 2 is always omitted after yi PL in pre-Han texts, and yr PA alone is then equivalent to yi zhi VA 2. The omission of zh! Z with the negative particles bt 7, fir H, ete, is discussed below. Zhi Z forms part of a number of contractions: toh He = + Es you chi A A “igi so? = XE + hah = + HE (or perhaps better Z + F , where F isa variant ok (V.Gb«ii)y: jia zhu br 10 BA BE “apply i 10 those’ = A ZB + chan it = + 5 (comparatively uncommon, there are a few example in Zia) nai hé F fT = rud zhi he H Z $F (see 1V.8g). On yan 5 as a substitute for yi HS + zit Z , which is not a contraction, see (e) below. So also rén 4 and yin ZH as equivalents to ri 3 + chr Z (and yue Fl + cht Z (g). On fd # and wi which did not originate as Contacons bt wete apparel interpreted as equvaen wo ba + cht and wii $F +2ht Zin Warring States times, see XL le and X1.2b, For the use of zhi . to repeat an exposed object placed in front ofthe verb, see Section VILL (Gi) There is no third personal subject pronoun as such. When one is required for contrast or emphasis one of the demonstrative pronouns is used. 266. Shi La Kong Chia yo % % 4L HL Is he Kong Chia of La? (LY 18.6) 26 Bi PEvy fa ye, wo oan ee wi one wai br 2ai BK A e is a man, Lam a man. Why should I be in awe of him? (Meng 3a)80 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Otherwise a third person subject is expressed by its noun or omitted altogether, sometimes even when the subject changes. (iii) qf FE as a pronoun serves as a substitute for Noun +, either in front of another noun (possessive) or in front of a verb (nominalization): gf GFE HE “his wite” gi lai 3 AR “his coming” ‘07 HE as a possessive pronoun must be distinguished from the modal particle gf written with the same character (XII.3a). Attempts have been ‘made to derive one from the other but they have not proved convincing so far. The modal particle, which is found already on the oracle bones, is the colder form. The possessive pronoun qi is not found on the oracle bones, carly bronze inscriptions, or the genuine parts of the Shijing, where one has instead jué KK. The Shijing uses both, jué being confined almost exclusively to the Dayed and Song sections which are thought to be earlier. Jué does not occur except in quotations in texts ofthe classical period” In the Warring States period, gi # is sometimes found as a demonstrative, more or less equivalent 10 a definite article, rather than possessive, e.g. 268. Qi rén fi néng ying ye St AH fie HE th, ‘The man could not answer. (HF 36, p. 265) (iv) Postelassical third person pronouns include yi gi 3 , and oa 4th. Ta HE. begins to occur in the modern sense in colloquial passages in post-Han texts (9) Fan behaves like a combination *yxé zhi HZ , which is never found. Though equivalent to *ya zhi HE Z in meaning, ycin Fy . is clearly not derived phonologically from a fusion of these two elements. It is probably derived from yx by the addition of a suffix *-n inherited from Sino-Tibetan that may originally have been been a mark of non-perfective or durative aspect, the anaphoric pronominal meaning being a secondary development. * 269, Wan ga qian yan... HR TH 10,000, to take 1,000 from it... (Méng 1/1. Topicalized form of it qian yi wan Ik FH HH ‘wo take 1,000 from 10,000") 270. S1 tian xia zhi min zhi yan HEA F ZR EH ‘Then the people of the world will come to him. (Méng 1A/3) 271. Dai you shen yin 78 WH Tt may be even worse than that. (Méng 1A)IX. Pronouns and Related Words 81 In some texts (though notin the Mencius or Linyt) yan #5 can occur before the verb in the sense of HR 2 yi shi “then.” 272. Bi zhi Iwan zhi sud 2i qh, yn néng chi 2h Pr > HME BZ ‘One must know where disorder arises from, then one can contro it (Mo 14) In Middle Chinese the postverbal particle, yan 5 ‘in it, there,’ had a voiced onset (EMC ian) which should have given a modern pronunciation xydn in second tone, while the interrogative yan 45 ‘where, how’ had @ glottal stop (EMC Tian) corresponding to the modern pronunciation in the first tone. This distinction is still maintained in reading pronunciation in some dialects such as Cantonese. Nevertheless, the two words no doubt have a common origin. The initial glottal stop would have been lost in the postverbal particle because it was always enclitic, that is, an unaccented ‘word pronounced in close association with the preceding word. An 3 (EMC tan) which is a variant of yan # as an interrogative particle, also cccurs occasionally in preverbal position inthe sense of “then.” 273... érbao gud and hua yi “++ TH AR EB Me and rebellious countries will then transform themselves. (Xin ma) Inthis sense an 3% is sometimes written instead of an 3% . This seems to imply the addition of a formative suffix *-s but examples are so few that cone suspects it may be simply an arbitrary graphic distinction. (vi) Rén % “Gcis) so” bears the same relationship to ri #0 ‘Hike’ that yan B does to ya H. Thus, it can be a complete sentence: Ran #8 “I is so"; or an initial clause: rén zé #& SIN “if itis so, then ..."; sui ran HE 2% “though it is so ...'; oF an imbedded sentence as in shi zhi rin 18 Z # ‘make it so," etc, For examples see 11, 36, 210, 228, etc. For use of rn to form adverbs of manner, see X.5. For the conjunction rénhou #& ‘afterwards’ see XV. (vii) Yin Z , EMC wun, ‘say (50)' bears a similar relation to yue Fl, EMC wuat, ‘say,’ which like ysi 2® and ra 41 (in the sense of “be like") is never followed by the object pronoun zht 2 RLS 274, Yue, cong yi yin, bi wei Meng sn. Za st mo RE IR OH Re He said, “If you follow my advice, you will certainly be the heir of fin, Jié cng aOR82 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar the Méngs.’ He said it (wo or three times, Ji followed his advice. (us Xiang 23/11) 278. Sin Ping Gong zhi y6 Hai Téng y6, ra yun 26 ra, 2ud yin 26 zud, shi yin 2é shi HF SZ RK WE Ae BL Ar BENE? REM Duke Ping of ln's behaviour towards Hai Ting was that when he (Cing) said ‘ener’ he entered, when he suid ‘st he sat, when he said ‘ea’ he ate. (Meng SB/3) In normal word order the quoted phrases ‘enter,’ ‘sit’ and ‘eat” would follow the verb of saying, yué El, in abject position. Here they are placed infront ‘of the verb because they are rhetorically in contrat, a construction that requires recapitulation by a pronoun after the verb (VITL1). Therefore yin ZF is used instead of yue Fl “The contrast between juin Z& and yué EI was probably originally aspectual, that is, “say” a8 an indefinite act without any time reference (yin) versus ‘say’ asa definite act on a particular occasion (yué ). Thus, yin Z= is often used to introduce quotations from books, as in: Shi yin FE Ze “The Book of Odes says’ in contrast to yué El, which introduces words spoken on a particular occasion. It can also be used as an intransitive verb “to speak,’ as in the phrase md yin 8 Z “be silent or speak* (Xiin 21/46), or in an example like the folowing 276, Zhongfu zhi bing bing yi, ké bd hut yin PC ZH TA RoT ER GH) a Your illness i erilical, you may speak without avoidance. Zhuang 24/51)? Yan % may close a quotation inoduced by yue El. tn many such cases, the quotation is not a main predicate but forms part of a subordinate clause, Yug El is never nominalized by insertion of zhi Z. after the subject orby af JE standing for N + zhi Z.. Instead the clause introduced by yue is placed in apposition to yin Z “say so,’ as here: 277. Zi yoo, ra an zhi yb yin ant FEL > ke HE fo Ba When you std, “How do you know the fishes" pleasure? (Zhuang 17190. Literally: You say, "You how know fishes’ pleasure’ say-so thing.) ype e we of #8 10 close an expression introduced by ri #0 orIX. Pronouns and Related Words 83 218m yb wing dy 26 Wee Wang Wo 26 ays 4B EERR MAE REE Now when you peak of igahip ating ey, [oes it mean that] King Wén (who did not achieve kingship in his lifetime) was ‘not worthy of being taken as a model? (Meng 2A/1) Yin ar sey thus aftegs quotation invoduced by yue indictesmagined secch! For er Bhs 2: blow) 279. Qi xin yue, shi hé aii yi yan rén yi yé yin &r HL D> RAP RREER EAM In their hearts they say, “How is he worthy to be spoken to about benevolence or righteousness?’ (Meng 2B/2) (€)Refexve Personal Pronoun The velexive yeronal pronoun fC. “sf is sed a8 a pronoun i ll positions — subject or object of a verb and attributive to @ noun. It thus Sirs synactaly fom the refenve pronominal adverbs? El (Xt) stich sways occurs immediatly a front of he ver 280, she he ching pee nou a AE AP TE 2. HR fn archer st himssf comet before he shots. (Heng 247) 281. Fs gén ah, yb Gee, yd db 6 6 én KE AE? CRIMEA CRIMEA ‘The man of vue, inself wishing Wo be exabished, establishes others, himself wishing to advance, advances others. (LY 6/30) 282. Rén yi wéi jira 2 Uh a GE Virtue he takes to be his own responsibility. (LY 8/7) JZ, unlike zi 1 , can be an inditect reflexive, referring not to the subject, ofits own verb but (o that of a clause in which its clause is embedded 283. Wa you bi rd ji che BK Fw a Do not make friends of those who are your inferiors, (LY 1/8; bi ard F A £0 would mean ‘not equal to themselves.) 284. Ba huin rén 2 ba jim FRA ZH SE He 1 do not worry that people do not know me. (LY 1/16. Not: bit zi zht ® EL #2 ‘do not know themselves.) Note that shen 4 ‘body, person’ can also be used as equivalent to a reflexive pronoun.84 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 285. Shen wi tid}, di wei pif, & wei gna ai ha SF 3 Fo RACK THRKZ FH Being himself Son of Heaven and his younger brother being @ commoner, cou he have been sid fo have treated his brother with the love due (o a close relative? (Meng SA/3) (@) Personal Pronouns with Negative Particles One of the special rules of word order in Classical Chinese is that personal pronoun objects are placed between the negative particle and the verb (IL3e:i), In addition to the following examples, see 284 above. 286. Fa ma zm bi woai REL ARH ‘That my parents do not love me ... (Meng SA/1) 287. Gi bi wii yuan ye A FB i 4, ‘Therefore he did not keep me at a distance. (Zud Zhao 20/3) 288. Lougou ba yu gh ye (40 7% A dk ‘The Lougéu |tortoise-shell] did not deceive me. (Zud Zhao 25ifit 3) 289. Méng yue, wo wii er zha, ér wi wo yo Bi ED > 4E Hite MRR Their covenant was: Let us not deceive you, let you not be concerned about us. (Zag Xuan 15/2) ‘The third person pronoun zhi 2 is normally omited when its verb is governed by the particle of simple negation bi 4 “not” or the negative imperative (or subjunctive) wi #F HB) do not” 290. Shi néng ya zhi? Tian xid mo ba yo HA HE HL © F FRER “Who can give i ohn? "No one inthe word wil not give i (to him).” (Meng 14/6) 291.0490 2h inh by yy 0 ef sh Ba RRRE ZS PRG? MURR SS OE Te it not possible orefe to accept t ESE) bonus is taking it trom people was unghcou bl giving sate acon? (ate 588) For zhi 2 placed in front of ba 7 when it recapitulaes an object preposed for contrast or emphasis in the language of the Zuézhuan, see WL shoveon arate enE eR ren t IX. Pronouns and Related Words 85 Exceptionally, especially when the perfect particle yi K is added, zhi & may follow the verb even after a negative. This seems to make the statement more emphatic. 292. Sheng rén wa bu dé ér jitn 2m yi BA BF EH SL. ZR A sage I shall not get to see. (LY 7/26) ‘This is especially common with the negative particles fi 9%, wi M% and mié & which originally ended in *-t, See XI.le, XL2b, X1.2h. Occasional examples in which other personal pronouns follow a negated verb also 293. You shi ér bb gio wo, bi ba jié yi AB TB AR > BER If you have some business and don’t tell me, it will certainly not succeed. (2d Xiang 28/6) 294, Fa bo wa rho A A RE Does he not hate you? (Zud Xiang 26/6) . With the negative particles wai AX and mo HL, zhi Z is normally retained but placed between the negative and the verb 295. Chén wei zhi wén ye EE AZ BA tH, ‘Your servant has never heard about them. (Meng 1/7) 296. Mo 2in néng ya ye KZ fle A, No one can prevent it. (Meng 14/7) 2, Demonstratives ‘The three main demonstrative pronouns in Classical Chinese are shi 3 , ct HL and 07 BE. Shi AE. is usually anaphoric (referring back to something) with no particular implication of closeness or remoteness. It may be translated by either ‘this’ or ‘that’; C7 Bt, and 67 4, on the other hand make a contrast between “this (here) and ‘that (over there).” (a) Shi Shi 3 may be used pronominally or adjectivally to refer to persons 0 things and as a pronoun may be subject or object of a verb. On its functio to recapitulate a phrase or series of phrases which is the subject of @ nou predication, out of which its later use as a copula developed, see TH.4 above86 Ouiline of Classical Chinese Grammar Probably because of the frequent collocation: shi 38 X yé Hh, fei AE Y ye th, ‘Icis X, itis not ¥." shi XE and fei AF came w be regarded as ‘opposites and were used inthe senses ‘right’ and “wrong,” ‘to allright, and “to call wrong.” This usage is not found (or is very rare) in Zudzhuan, Liiny., and earlier texts but is common in Mencius and other texts of the ‘Warring States period.*® 297. Yan zm chéng shi ye... HE ZH FE If [merely] covering them (ic. the bodies of dead parents) were really right ... (Meng 3A/5) 298. Wii shi fei zhi xin, fei nén ye ME JE AE Ze > SE A Not to have a mind which calls things right or wrong is not ‘human, (Meng 24/6) ‘Shi % forms part of the common sentence connectives shi git 3 #k for this reason, therefore," yxi shi 2 “thereupon,” and shi yt EVA “therefore.” The word order in the last of these can be explained as preposing for the sake of topicalization, the expected repetition of the object by zhi & being omitted, as always, after yi VA. Yr shi VA JE also occurs in the full sense “because of this.” Note also yii shi hia BS AEF for yi shi HE JE in the Zuazhuan. For the use of shi 3€ (like ht Z ) to resume a preposed object, see Section VIII on Topicalization. wb crt Cr IL ‘this (here), like shi JE, occurs freely as subject, object, or attributive, It can also be used to resume a phrase which isthe subject of a ‘oun predication, 299. Ci shuai shou ér shi rén ye JL ABER TH Pe A This is leading animals to eat men. (Meng 1A/4) It did not, however, become a copula, opi tt Like shi 22 and ct Ht. br Lcan be used either attributively or as an independent pronoun, but itis most frequent as the later. Inthe latter usage it frequently has a personal reference, taking the place of a third personal pronoun. In this respect it differs from shi & and ct IL, which are ‘occasionally found with personal reference but are mostly not so used.IX. Pronouns and Related Words 7 300. BI yt shi, cyt shi ye 4 — BR > a — BR ah, ‘That was one time, this is another time, (Impersonal reference; Meng 2B/13) 301. Bi dus gf min she 1K HF FE BF ‘Those (other rulers) rob their people of their proper seasons, (Personal reference; Meng 1A/S) 302. Bi wo ain zit RE Fe Z How were they (1e., those people who criticized the king) to know it? (Personal reference; Meng A/T) ‘We find it used attributively in: 203. Xing bi dy ly 9 Tia i cg gu gezeteyig wc Baee a uae RR ee Hi eRe Re ee Mahe DORR ek EERE Xiang was notable play an ative rol in his kingdom. The Son of Heaven sntan flo gover Kingdom ad 0 py is tribute and taxes to him (j.¢., t0 Xiang). Hence one refers to him 2s banished How cul he have bern allowed o oppress those people [of his kingdom]? (Méng SA/3) In the flowing example, note the ateibuive use of br OR with a post eai San peri ras BS Bi es stg gens ae w6i zha hou 0 48 $4) é (iy that) stealer ofa clasp is executed; one who steals @ ‘country becomes a feudal lord. (Zhuang 10/19) {As is apparent from the translation, this shift from a particularizing to a generalizing meaning may be compared to one use of the definite article in English (the tiger is a tawny beast” — not one particular tiger but any tigen). Bi sometimes forms a possessive by adding zhi Z , as in: 30S. Bei fi. Shi rén yi xing sé ming shéng wéi zi yi dé bi zhi gee EXUBE SR wee RS Is it not sad? The people of the world think that the form, color, ‘name, and sound (of something) are sufficient to get the nature of that (thing)? (Zhuang 13/67)88 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ‘An alternative construction in which qi #£ is inserted between the demonstrative and the noun is also found. 306. Bi gi dao yuan ér xiim 4 FE 3 AR TD Bie ‘The road to that place is long and perilous. (Zhuang 20/17) ‘The same thing is also found occasionally with other demonstratives. 307. Ci af go he ye HE HE ak fT ty ‘What isthe reason for this? (M0 9/38) “The following are less common demonstratives. FF SEM “this,” is used in place of ct JL in the Linyil and the “Tén Gong’ 48% section of the Liji, which is closely akin to the Liinyd 308. Qf si aha wai yo HEH BH Surely it means this. (LY W/15) 309. Li zhi yong, hé wei gui, xian wang zhi dao, si wei mei 7 ZA PHB? RELH > HAR In the carrying out of ritual, harmony is the most important; in the way of the ancient kings, this was the greatest excellence. (LY 12) 310. ang ob ty ty, wd tic 46 jit yan BE LERM UG PRE RARE ‘i ips ska cn ces ed them (LY 32) te alo occurs fe ines in his Sense in the Odes a in Mencia (only attributively, see example 475) but seldom elsewhere.*? In other tenis it isonly a connective, then” on Zi (EMC tsi) “this? is normal as » near demonstrative in the oracle bones and bronze inscriptions, the Shijing, and inthe Zhou Song JB] AR and Da Ya K HE Odes. It survives toa limited extent in classical tens We find it used adverbialy in the following two passages in Mencius 311. Jin a wei néng 4 KA HE For the present I am not yet able, (Meng 3B/8)IX. Pronouns and Related Words 89 312. Shi, 26a bo yud + > RY REF HR 1, Shi, am displeased at this. (Meng 2B/12) (© Shi HE and she Shi % (EMC zit, for *azit 2) and the variant shi 3S (EMC dzik) represent ‘a pronoun related to shi SE (BMC dzia’) that is found in the Shijing, Zudzhudn, and Gudyi Wis wsed to recapitulate the subject and mark it as contrastive (see VIIL2 above). 313. Rén shi you gus A tis others who possess the country. (Zud X19 fil 2) (e) She FE Shi HE (EMC dai) “this,” also related to shi 2, is found only in the preclassical language. At that period it seems to be a relatively unemphatic form as opposed to both ht and ski wan shi yi A 35 HH 314. Yong xf &r jf, st Forever they will give you the utmost blessings; they will be in ‘myriads, in myriads of myriads. (SAI 209/4 CF. Karlgren 1950a) FAR Fi X “that” (EMC bus, to be distinguished from fu % EMC pus ‘mar male person’ written wit the same character) is probably related (0 bt ‘that’ (EMC pia’), though the voiced initial is a problem.35 Though fairl common in the Zudzhudn, its les so in ater Warring States texts 315, Sut Chi you c4i, Jin shi yong zhi, Zimi yue, fi dd wii 2 Yin ha? Ddi.yue, soi you ér yong Chi edi shi duo. SE 38 Mo PRN Le FRE ABR TF © HoH ARM ES “Though Chi has the talent, iti Sia that makes use of it." Zimi sald, ‘Are they (ie, the Jin rules) alone without clansmen and relatives by marriage?’ He replied, “Though they have, their use © talent from Chi, that is greater.” (Zud Xiang 26 fia 6) 316. Fi Yin Shi wa zhi yo zai KF EE fo FH How should shat Yin Shi know me? (Meng 2B/12, Though this90 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar the standard interpretation, it seems possible to interpret fit here is the generalizing particle: ‘any Yin Shi ... ") EH Besides rin #8 , discussed above, &r FH and sud AF (next section), among the words derived from the family of words beginning in *n- meaning “like, 80, etc.’ are used as demonstrative, pronouns. In this sense ér HE _is sometimes said to be a fusion of nf ct #2 Ht, but, though ef J and ar rhymed in Middle Chinese, they are usually considered the rhyme to come from different Old Chinese rhyme groups. In the classical period, ér is ‘more like an independent pronoun than a combination of verb and pronoun, While bi ran 7 4 is common, bi ér F H only occurs in post-Han texts and only with the meaning, “i it is not so.” 317 eat amy do. wpe 2in ja 2h, suo wit wa shi Er gee oe fKKRLKL > HBA ‘There is a way to gain their hearts. tis thus — what they desire, gather for them, what they hate, do not impose, (Meng 4A/10) ‘As here, and in the expression yin ér Z FA (see example 279 above), ar is most frequently found at the end of a sentence, but it can also occur attributively as in: 318. Fei tin zinjiang odie sha ye AEA Me A HH th, Its not that Heaven's bestowing of talent is so different. (Meng 6a) @ Rud In the preclassical language, rud 4 was a verb meaning ‘agree, accord with, conform to, ete.’ and could also be used adverbially in the sense of “thus,” for example, in the frequent formula wang rud yue E. 4 Fl “The king thus said..." at the beginning of bronze inscriptions. Besides its other uses in the classical language as a verb meaning ‘like,’ a conjunction ‘if etc., we sometimes find what appears to be a survival of its earlier usage when it is found attributively t0 an embedded clause in the sense of ‘that kind of, such.” 319. Yi rud suo wei gid rud suo ya DA Ar AE AOR Ar HE HK‘DX. Pronouns and Related Words a1 ‘To seek for that sort of wish with that sort of action (Meng 1A/7) 3. Interrogatives Interrogative pronouns fall into two main groups: (a) those referring primarily to persons, which begin with dz- in Middle Chinese pronunciation — shui 3B and shi HL; (b) those referring primarily to things, which begin with y- in Middle Chinese pronunciation — hé #4, x1 Khe B, hi BA, hé B, etc. A third group, (c) with initial glottal stop in Middle Chinese appear to be derived from the coverb yi #% with the addition of various elements — dn 3, yan #, wa, wa ha BF, etc (a)(i) Shut BE Shui ¥E(EMC dawi) ‘who’ can be either subject or object. Note that it precedes the verb even when it is the object. It can also appear as the complement in a noun predication. 320,_.... y6u shut zin ji xid, peirén shut néng ya ain BA AK RP > oR EE BZ like water going downward in a torrent, who can stop it? (Mang 1A/6) 321. Xiang rén zhang yi bé xiong yi sul, 2€ shui jing 388 A fe RM — Be WB a [Suppose that] a man of the village is a year older than your elder brother, then which do you respect? (Meng 64/5) 322, Zhuil wo 2hé shut ye 38 #% 4 a tH, Who is it that is pursuing me? (Méng 4B/24) ‘With the copula verb wéi #, shut BF follows. 323. Zi wéi shui F #% 7 Who are you? (LY 18/6) As object of most coverbs shut # precedes in the normal way. 324, Wang shut ya wéi shan #8 HL a With whom (i.e, with whose help) will the king do good? (Meng 38/6) With yi 7, which has the syntax of a copula, it follows. 325. Dio git zhi xing, yi shut 2é ér ke ha BBX tT > WH eK TF2 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar For the thefts and robberies, on whom is it right to lay the blame? (Zhuaing 25/50) . When used possessively, shut #E is mostly followed by zht Z 326. Shi shui zhi gud yo % BE Z 38 HL Whose fault is this? (LY 16/1) In Han and later texts ch? Z_ may be omitted: shui zt HE F ‘whose son, Shui HE may also occur attributively, without zhi Z , before nouns referring to human beings, where it must be translated into English as ‘what’ or ‘which’ — shuf shi BE EQ ‘what clan?,” shut rén BE AC what Gi) Shut Be “which” Si (EMC dzuwk) is one of a group of words in *-k including ge 4 (EMC kak) ‘each,’ Aud 8 (EMC ywak) ‘some,” and md 3 (EMC mak) ‘none,’ which are confined to preverbal position referring to the subject, and ‘which usually select the subject from a larger group. 327, Zou én y6 Cha rén zhin, 26 wéng yi wei shi shéng BA, REAR EDS ith men of Zou fot wih te men of Cho, which des Your Maesty think would win? (Mong 1A) Is often und in comparisons. 328, wii Zi yi Zi Lis sha xin BF HF HH ‘As between you, sir, and Zi LO , which is superior? (Méng 24/1) ‘Sometimes the group {rom which shii $4 selects is indefinite and the ‘meaning is hardly different from shu referring to the subject. 329. ShG néng yi zh ... Shii néng ya zin 3 f—E — 2 2 Hie RZ ‘Who can unite i? .. Who ean give it to him? (Méng 1A/6) Inthe frst case the set of possible subjects is, no doubt, a limited one, the rulers of states, and shui 9X might be rendered ‘which (ruler),” but in the second ease its not obvious how one could define such a limited set, Shit YH, sometimes refers to things, replacing hé 11 which cannot normally be used forthe subject. 330, Da le yur, ya rén 18 yue, sha We 2B) HER > A RRRIX. Pronouns and Related Words 93 ‘Which is better, to enjoy music alone or to enjoy music with other people? (Meng 1B/1) In the previous examples which involve comparisons between two things, A and B, the pattern is A (SE) B 9K + Adj. This is the normal word order with such words that define the scope of the subject (see Section XI). The onder A 3K SL B + Adj. is also found. This is a possible word onder al surface level because of the verbal nature of the coverb ya $8. 1 preserves the order Subj. + shi HR + V. 331. Zao jit zhi, shui yo wan jid zm biam “ER Z > He HE RZ ‘Would it be more convenient to go to their aid earlier rather than later? (ZGC, Qi cb 50/103/30) Sometimes A 34, BE B is used by itself to make a comparison without an adjective expressed 332. Cong tin ér song zhi, shi ya zhi tian ming ér yong zhi # Ri 2 WMH A i AZ Is it better to follow Heaven and sing praises to itor to institute its mandate and use it? (Xin 17/44) Shui ¥%A, is rarely found as object, but there are occasional examples. 333. shing rén you bai, wii shi fi yan BA HH > BH we ‘There ae a hundred sages. Which among them shall take as my model? (Xin 5/28. The role of yan #5 in this sentence seems to be to refer back to the preposed topic sheng rén 3 A, the group of people out of whom shi 9K selects, hence ‘among them.’) iit) Cha Chou * (EMC druw) ‘who,’ found in the Shijing, is an etymologically related wor. con He tT HE {4 ‘what; why, etc. is the ordinary interrogative pronoun for things. It is used: (1) to form a noun predicate, hé yé 47 4, or hé ya fT HE, he yo 49 AB ‘is what’ (sometimes meaning ‘is for what reason, why’); (2) as object of a verb or coverb, hé ya {71K what do you want?” hé yi fT VL “by means of what,’ as well as the destination of a verb of motion, hé zhi 49] Z where is he going?’; and (3) adverbially *how, why’ — wang hé bi4 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ue tt E 4 2 EI Ai] -why must Your Majesty say “profit"?” Whether as (2) or (3) it precedes the verb. Like shui BE, it follows a copula or the coverbs yti F and ya HS. 334. QF dio wei he St $9 AB AT ‘What is your fishing line? (Shi 24/3) 335i you sh Ne zang He BAR? TH ‘That this sun is eclipsed, wherein lies its evil? (SAI 193/2; Karlgren 1950a) 336, You ben a 2h yh bn ah, sng ben yg ght 2 ‘wang zn shi 4 AZ WAL EK RG HELE Ter is the matter of giving it a foundation .. In what does one give ita foundation? One gives ita foundation above in the precedents of the ancients, the sage kings. (MO 35/6) In the preclassical language ri $07 ‘like’ had the syntax of a copula and i ht 48 PE isthe replar word order fori ike What? Late his was regularized to hé ni $1 $0 36 337. Ye rd he i K HO fT SH How is the night? (Shi 182/1; jv 3 ishere a preclassical question particle) ‘Yué Fl is replaced by yxin Z both as the copula ‘is called” (111.3) and as the verb ‘to say.” 338. Qi ming yan he HE 4 % 17 ‘What is its name? (Guan 56, p. 302) 339. Zizhang yut, Zixid yin he? F HK A> FRX Zithang said, “What does Zixia say” (LY 19/3) HE {also follows when it is the second object of a verb that takes two objects: wei zhi hé BZ {7 ‘call it what?” (as opposed tohé wei 1 BY refer to what’), ré zhi hé, #9 Z 4 ‘what about it?” (sometimes abbreviated to ni hé 3H £7]. See IV.8g). HE tT may also be used attributively to nouns, as in hé rén fT A “what (sort of) man?” A eonmon locution is hé gi fT 8K “what reason, why.” Note the use of hé £2 in front of a preposed object in front of the verb, resumed by 2h! (sce VIHL.1). This construction is even found in Mencius1X Pronouns and Related Words vs 340. Kou chou hé fii zhi you 38. M8 fT AR 2 #T ‘What mourning clothing should be worn for an enemy? (bang 1VBI3, More literally: (For) an enemy what [mourning] clothing there ist?) HE £4] is not normally used as the subject of a verb, Where it would be required one finds shui ¥& instead. A rare exception is the use of hé shi f7 in Zudchudn, where shi BH has its normal function in that text of recapitulating a subject which is given contrastive emphasis. 341. Jin 2 zha hou hé shi ji, hé shi xiong 4 4 5H AR 1T wo fT ws AL this time which of the feudal lords will be lucky and which unlucky? (Zud Zhao 11/4) xr XR is found as a less frequent alternative to hé {I in preverbal or prenominal consiructions but not as an independent noun predicate. See examples 424 and 576. Gi) Ha Hi #A is found already in the preclassical language and is mostly confined to adverbial usage meaning ‘why, how." Note also hi wei 8A # ‘why’ in which hii A *why’ replaces hé 1 ‘what’ as the object of the coverb wai ®. Compare English ‘why for?” Ha A is not very common in texts of the classical period, He & Hé B (EMC yat) is found in the preclassical language in adverbal usage, ‘mostly as ‘when’ but also sometimes as ‘why,’ ‘how,’ ‘what." It is not found in Mencius except in quotations but is fairly common in some other texts such as Xiinzl and the Gangyrdng zhudn. The difference between hé and hé 4 in these texts has not been made clear. Hai # (EMC yajt < *- als) is sometimes used for hé Bin preclassical texts, where it should probably be read he. He HE B (EMC yap) = hé ba fT F why nor?" Pholotogically it makes better sense to regard it as a contraction of hui bd 8 7 rather than hé bil ar.96 Outline of Classicat Chinese Grammar 342, HE ge yén be ah BH Why don’t you each tell your wishes? (LY 5/26) (0G) Yan 5 , kn ‘The interrogative pronoun yan #% ‘how? where?’ which always appears in front of the verb if a positional variant of the third person pronoun substitute yam #5 ‘in it, there, ec.” which appears in postverbal position. 343. Tianxid zi fO kui zit, qi al yan wing RF 2 RH LZ RFRE ‘When the fathers of the world tured to him (King Wén), where {else} could the sons go? (Meng 4/13) 344. Br yan néng mei wo zai FH fe BR A How can you defile me? (Méng 24/9) ‘AS with postverbal yan #), the meaning of preverbal yan 3 corresponds (o the locative coverb yii 7% + a pronominal element, in this terpreted as interrogative rather than anaphoric.”” 'F is identical in syntax and meaning with introgatve yan % See example 277 above. It is much less common than yan #) in relatively carly texts such as the Zudzhudn and the Liinyid and even in Mencius, but becomes more frequent in later texts of the Warring States. Gi) Wart BF war BK, wt Wit hi % “how, wher,’ sometimes shortened tow XE, is equivalent in meaning to yi he 7 £0. An 345. You kilo zht zhé ... Wa ho Kio 2h? Ko xian pute z= geneee “BERL ERE ‘There is the matter of searching it out... In what does one search it out? One searches it out in the precedents ofthe former sages, the great kings. (MO 37/3) 346, Wa zai gf wei min fu ma ye XE HE HH AR RE th, Wherein lies his being father and mother to the people? (Meng 1AV4; equivalent to gf w6i min fa. mii y&, zai ya he SE FRR FE HAT with exctamatory inversion of subject and predicate.) ‘Though there are problems about explaining the phonology, it seemsIX. Pronouns and Related Words 9 quite likely that wi hit X Fis in fact derived from yi he # 4, whieh is quite rare in texts of any period.3* In late Warring States and Han texts wit } is som: of wa 4. Indefinite Pronouns Some of the notions conveyed in English by indefinite pronouns, ‘one, someone, any, another, etc,” are expressed in Chinese by adnominal or adverbial particles of inclusion and restriction (see Section XI). There are, however, also a few words with such meanings that behave syntactically like nouns, (a) Tuo ft : Tuo fb, ‘other,’ is used either substantively or adjectival. 347. Wing gi zud you ér yén two EAR Ze A Hh ‘The king looked to left and right and spoke of other things. (Méng TB/6) 348, Tuo ri xian ysi wing ue... 12 LR ES ‘On another day he appeared before the king and said... (Méng 1B) (b) Mou ‘Mou % ‘some one, a certain one" is used either to refer to a specific person without using the name, or more vaguely to some one unspecified. PERLE e zai si, mou ai si FH Zs ‘The master said, ‘So-and-so is here, so-and-so is here” (making introductions for a blind visitor). (LY 15/42) 350. Mou ku jiang zhi EE EB ‘Such and such marauders are going to arrive. (Zud X1 19/7) ‘Mou 3 is sometimes used to refer to oneself instead of using one’s own name, (Ren A Rén A ‘person’ may be used as an indefinite pronoun meaning ‘some one else, other people.’98 Outline of Classical Chinese Gras mar 351. Zi yue, bi hun rén zi ba ji zh, hun ba zt én ye F Bo RBAZAA HM? BRAD ‘The master said, “I do not worry about others’ not knowing one. I worry about not knowing others.” (LY 1/16) Itcan also mean “each,” 352. Ba mud rén you sud bio TF A A It would be better foreach to keep what he values. (Zud Xing If “The use of the eduplicated form rénrén A. A, to mean ‘everyone’ is found in both Casscal and Modem Chinese. 353, Ren én cn oi, sing gf sing, & in siping A.A, REM Re WR Te I everyone love te parents and respected ther dr a8 they shoul the wl world would be peace (ng 44/12X. Adverbs “The term ‘adverb is used broadly to refer to words which stand infront of verbs (including adjectives) and modify their meaning or application. It is even extended somewhat illogially to the small group of words which can similarly stand infront of verbless noun predicates — yi JF also," yu ‘also, moreover. 61:56 “necessarily, chéng A “eally. xin 1B ‘reatly, gv El ‘definitely, oh¢ HE ‘ony. ete, 1b). isa heterogenous category grouped together for convenience including both fll words (nouns and verbs) used adverbally and empty words which are used primarily in this function, This section is concerned only withthe former. Adverbial particles of negation ime, aspect, tc, are dealt with in other sections 1. Adverbial Use of Nouns ‘As well as taking nouns as subjects, objects, or other types of complements, verbs may have nouns as adverbial modifiers. In the following examples, the noun describes the manner of action of the verb. 354, Shi rén Wi ér AR A SE Hl ‘The pig stood up like a man (literally, ‘man-stood”) and cried, (Zud ‘Zhuang 8/5) 355, Yo gf a sin QF ya yo A HE FZ HE HE If he wants his son to speak in the manner of Qf... literally, speak’). (Meng 3B/6) ‘This construction can be derived by a transformation from a complement vase invoced by rd 3 or ud SE Miron AE BD As yt Ot [ren] $5 St FE LA | (eee V.66), A similar transformation is possible with a locative complement. 356. Shin qin min shi ér yé i, ... Ming in gf guan ér shut si, veg Jigin bai ga ér shan si HF 84 KB i SF FE Bh SB AR RR ‘Shun was diligent about the people's affairs yet he died in the wilderness ... Ming was diligent in his office yet he died in the river... Jiwas diligent in the cultivation of the hundred cereals yet he died in the mountain. (GY 4, p. 166)100 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ‘The nouns in adverbial postion here ae equivalent to lgative phrases placed afer the verb: 31) yB.. yo sh. yi shan 3 “Another casein which » noun may appear in adverbial postion is when a par ofthe body isthe instrument ef. 357. Zi ya shou yun ian ia no FAK FAR FE Do you want (me) 10 save the world with my hand? (Meng 4/18) “This can be ransformationally derived from a coverbal phrase intxduced by yi PL, Compare with yudn zhi yi shou 4 2 DL carler inthe same passage. 2. Adjectives as Adverbs Adjectives placed in front of a verb form adverbs of manner or degree, ¢.2., 358. Tian xia you da uan KF XA AL ‘The world again becaine greatly disordered. (Meng 3B/9) z fan shuo yue ye 14 359.6 x wd su 2, jing we MDL Instoying extensively an espounting it atone as sti) intel on ims ogo back and expound whats essential (beng B13) Ajstives an themscves fe mid adverbial to nicat dpe. 360, ... shen xi HE was very pleased. (Meng 28/10) 361.,Rud shi 26 di 2 zhi hud i shen AF AE HH FAW HE I thats so, then your disciple's perplexity is even (literally increasingly) greater. (Meng 24/1) ‘As the last example shows, an adjective used as an adverb of manner can only be turned into a predicate if the verb it modifies is mominalized: dizi shen hud 38 F 4 RE ‘Lam very perplexed’ ai zi zhi hud shen 3 F 3% E -Your cisciple’s perplexity is very great.’ This shows that the functioning as an adverb is a basic property of adjectives in contrast to the adverbial function of nouns which is comparatively rare and is transformationally related to more normal constructions in which the noun is linked to the main verb by a coverb,X. Adverbs 101 3. Verbs as Adverbs {As already discussed above (V.5), verbal phases linked to a main verb by ér HH (which can also be omitted) can have a quasi-adverbial force, rather than simply expressing consecutive action or components of a single action. Such usage must, however, be distinguished from true adverbial use of certain verbs with restricted, grammaticalized meanings e.g., li 3E “stand,” adverb ‘on the spot, immediately.” 362. Gi wo you shan, 26 Hi yi wo, wo you gud, 26 I hut wo 3K RAS MTRR RAB MERH ‘Therefore, when I have good points, they immediately praise me; ‘when Ihave errors, they immediately blame me, (Guin 32 "Xitto cheng,’ p. 179) Other examples include jin # ‘exhaust,’ adverb ‘completely’ (XIIL.1g); yi B stop," adverb ‘already’ and, with adjectives, ‘very’ (XII.tc); et. 4, Numerical Expressions as Adverbs Numerical expressions, like adjectives, can be used as adverbs. sie he, 1 Yin ye HBL 363, Wa jit Tang, wa REE PPh He who five mes weno Tang and ive mes went 1 Jig was Yin. (Méng 6B/6) or“ and tice here re pci ave foms, 2% FF and sn 364. J) Wénzi stn si é hdu xing. Zi wén zhi yue, zai 2é ke yi XFSeMRHe TMZ HM TR 1 Wen ought hice befor ating; when the mater herd hi he said, “Twice would be all right.’ (LY 5/20) Ye “tees tosis ay ply wah ‘ns bx ny as have extended eapcaions chat ‘onee end foc af ot competey nan ini las it can havea conjunctive fore lke once in English, That i it not only modifies the verb ofits own clase butt also mars its clase as a temporal modifier of the following clause. 365. Yang jn, ér gus ding yi. — JE HEEB HEH Once rectify the ruler and the country will be settled. (Meng 421)102 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar ive expressions besides numerals can be used as adverbs, 366. BO ri chéng an. FH eZ In less than a day they completed it, (Shi 242/1, quoted in Meng 1A) Ri His here a quantily of time, not the noun ‘day.’ Hence it can be negated by ba 7. 5. Expressive Adverbs in Rén 9%, Rui 3, etc. in #X hich occurs in a variety of ways by itself as an equivalent for *rit zht BZ “is like this,’ also occurs as a suffix forming expressives which describe the manner ofan action, 8 367. Cd rin wen... 4% FA He abruptly asked ... (Meng 1A/6) 368. Tian you ran zud yin... ith AF E Heaven copiously forms clouds. (Meng 1A/6) Such expressives are often formed by reduplicated syllables. 369, Mang ming rin gu... EE HF He wearily returned home ... (Meng 2A/2) 370, Wang wang rén qu zin 32 22 # EZ He would haughtily leave him. (Meng 2A/9) (Or reduplication may be used alone, without rén #8 , as in: 371, Sti shi cing wai tai AE AG 48 Jb AR He jauntity came in from outside. (Meng 4B/33) Less commonly, other particles such as ri $1 or yan J are used in place of rin 4% , as suffixes for expressive adverbs.XI. Negation Negative particles fall into two groups, distinguished by the type of initia: (2) p/f, (b) m/w. Forms with initial f and w- resulted from a process of regular phonetic change that affected labial consonants in LMC. P/f negatives imply simple negation; m/w negatives imply non-existence. 1. Pit Negatives (BaF Bi © is the panicle of simple verbal negation, of which many examples have been given above. The expected reading pronunciation for the Old Chinese morpheme written with this graph is fou, corresponding to the reading EMC puw found in the Qiéyiin rhyme dictionary. It is preserved in a few proper names. The colloguial reading, which preserves the Old Chinese initial *p- unchanged bi, strictly speaking belongs to another word, EMC put, properly represented by the graph 4 (see below) which had replaced EMC puw in colloquial usage between Han and Ting. EMC pul, or rather, an enclitic variant of it, EMC pat, also lies behind Modern Cantonese pet A and corresponding forms in other southern dialects. (b) Fou & Fou & , originally written simply as 7 and not infrequently found so written in early texts, was the form taken by bit © (i.e, fou) when the verb which it negated was omitted and the particle stood on its own in phrase final position. In Mencius, fou ® is most frequently found as an answer (0 a question: ‘No.” 372, ... 6 wang x0 chi ha? Yue, fou HE HF Z gous +... then would Your Majesty allow it” He replied, ‘No.’ (Mang 1) Ttalso occurs ina form of alternative question: 373. RG ci zé dong xin fou ha J He Hl Bh BE If it were like this, would it stir your mind or not? (Méng 24/2)104 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar In other texts, we find a variety of other uses, e.g,,fou standing for ba F + deleted verb in the main clause of a declarative sentence or in an “if clause 374, Gio zé sha, bi ran, zé fou # ME HAR > MS Fit was announced, it was recorded; otherwise not (Zud Yin 11/fi 4) 375. Yi 26 jin, tou x6 feng shen ér wi HE + HW A Hii ik itis right, he comes forward; if no, he takes his person and withdraws. (Zuo Xiang 2623) ‘A rather common usage isin indirect (embedded) questions, e-8., 376, Zin ba fu, an ye ROT B+ So TToknow what is posible and what snot st know. (Zhuang 10112) ‘The character B originally stood for anther word, pt % “bad, evil found especially in the expression zangpt #8 2 ‘good and evil.’ In this sense and reading it is the name of one of the hexagrams in the Book of Changes, On the final particle fii A “is it nor?,” which may be a contraction of unaccented bi 7 + hut # , see XIV.26vii ori ‘There has been much discussion of the meaning of this particle, EMC put, Which has been taditionally regarded as just a less common variant of bit 7, EMC puw. One popular idea has been that fia # is a fusion of bit A + the object pronoun zhi Z, which is plausible phonologically and can be supported by examples lke the following: 377. Dé zhi 26 sheng, fb dé 26 si 4 ZB E> He A BN x If he gets it he will live, if he does not get it he will die. (Meng 64/10) in which dé cht Z in the affirmative is matched by fi dé # 4 in the negative. Against this is the fact that the object pronoun zhi. is regularly omitted even with bi 7, as in: 378. Kongai jin yi h, tl yi yi. dé zhi buds, yue, you ming, FL, FRU RURAL A AeXI. Negation los Confucius entered office according to propriety and retired from it according to righteousness. Whether he obtained it or did not obtain (it), he said, “It was ordained.’ (Meng SA/8) Moreover, when it first appears on, the oracle bones, and also in preclassical texts such as the Shajing, ft 9% appears freely in front of both intransitive verbs and verbs with noun objects. There is reason to think that at that period it was one of a set of particles ending aspectual distinetion between a continuing state or an action going on (bi f ) and realization of a potentiality or a change of state (ft ## )®, Even in texts of the classical period there are certain recurrent patterns in which it collocates with the final particle yr &., often with an intransitive verb or with a verb followed by an expressed object, that suggest an aspectual meaning. 379.2190 Zheng gus 69 0 id fs 8 ing 498 BL Foie eA wR Within fouror ve years fom now the country of Zheng wll have no peace (a0 ing 83) 360. Su y0 ajo s06, od am EZ BLR Though sais slong wit im, wil nat ome upto im (Meng 64/9) in tas ch silos echoes rosin okt follows dhe ves associated with an instead of preceding it. If we assume that the normal position of a pronoun between the negative particle and the verb is that of an unstressed clitic, when we find it following the verb as here, it presumably gives a greater degree of emphasis to the statement, something that also often seems (0 be implicit in the use of the perfect particle atthe end of the sentence. It is, nevertheless, true that in the Warring States period jit ## does ‘mostly occur where a pronoun zht Z can be understood between it and the following verb whi initial consonant of the pronoun fused with the negative particle. It scems clear that in the end, sometime between Hn and Téng, both the aspectual force of *put and any association it may have acquired with the object pronoun became attenuated and it survived simply as a stronger form of po-. Compare the replacement of ne by not < nought in English or the simple ne by.ne ... pas and then by pas alone in French. The history of bi % and fa # is complicated by the fact that the character fii #8 was suggests that the final -t was reinterpreted as the106 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Labooed for time daring the Han dynasty Because i was pan of the pons ame oF LF io reigned a the Emperor Zio HY from -86 to -74. We know from manuscript evidence that this resulted in the replacement of #% by 7 in the transmitted text of the Dao de jing HH FE The exten o which the abow bas influenced the ansmisson of other pre-Han texts is uncertain. What seems clear is that in post-Han Chinese, 7 took over as a normal way of writing both *pit and *p3 and that eventual the pronunciation with © proved common sage. As mentioned above, modern readings of 7 in all dialects are derived from “put or *pat, with irregular retention of bilabial [p] instead of labiodental tf. wri rE , the negative particle used with nouns, is an early contraction of bi wéi 7 HE, notin the classical sense of ‘only" but inthe preclassical sense ‘of a copula and noun marker! Its use in noun predication is described above, ICs also found with nouns and verb phrases treated as nouns which 4do not form main predicates. The translation “if not’ or ‘unless’ is often appropriate when an expression negated by f21 3F occurs as a conditional clause (XV.2b.vi), before the main predicate, ez, 381. Foi gf dao, 2 yt dan sbi bi ke shou yi rén 4E SE GR > WOM REA LRA Iris ot in accordance with he pope way, even one ast of food should not be accepted from another person. (Méng 3B/4, tera isnot way) Other derived uses of fei AE that must be noted are: (1) as an adjective ‘wrong,’ opposite of shi Z& ‘right’ (IX.2a); (2) as a verb “to deny, call wore? 32.8 nn dh 1 wan wang 2a do eo eR SLAP LE Now the ste 4ongued southern aaron denies he dctnes of the former Kings. Mong 3A) Inprosanical langue we sometimes Fin i FE orf AE instead of jit (ey Po E Po IE is a (wot very common) contraction of ba ke FA +s not ponte?XI. Negation 107 one Hé &, EMC yap, is a contraction of hé bi fF or hii bi BAF “why not’ (see IX.3b(¥) below). 2. M/w Negatives (@) Wi Hwa H and we HE These characters originally represented two distinct morphemes: (I) a prohibitive particle, properly writen $F ; and 2) a verb meaning “nat have" (opposite of you 7 ‘have’, property written & (or JE. in some texts +84 Zhudngdl). The morphemes were already homophonous in late Zhou times and are confused in many texts such as Mencius, but were very likely pronounced dffereily at an early perio. Thus, $F appears to have mit as phonetic, which would put it into the *-9(y) thyme category, while $ belongs in the ay) category. (i) Wa B CH) as prohibitive particle 383, Zé wi wang min 2hi duo yé tin gus ye. SH A 22 RZ HB th ‘Then don’t hope that your people will be more numerous than in neighbouring countries. (Meng 1A/3) 384, Wing wa zui sul. = $F AR Let Your Majesty not blame the harvest. (Méng 14/3) 385. Ji in gu ahi zhi xtt wai shi qt sht REAR 4) xi Inthe raising of chickens, pigs, dogs, and swine do not lose their time [of breeding). (Méng 1A/3) Note that in the second example, the subject of the second person imperative is expressed. Prohibitive wii 4& can also be used in subordinate clauses where one cannot use an imperative in English, suggesting that it should be interpreted as a kind of subjunctive particle rather than simply prohibitive,*? e.g., 386, Wi yh 2é wing ha? 4 DA = By Bl EE If Lam not to stop. then (shall I speak about] kingship? (Meng 1a7) 27 Sa yw wg, ta BRE, RAT108 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Even if he wished that he should not become king, it could not be managed. (Meng 4A/10) Gi) Wi “not have.” See Section 1V.7 above. Wa I ‘donor’ Wa 2] (EMC mut) ‘do not,’ bears the same relation to prohibitive wii (& ) as fi H (EMC put) does to ba F . That is, the ancestral forms of the two graphs on the oracle bones appear to have an aspectual distinction, while in the Warring States period there is reason to think that the final -t ‘of wit J may have been interpreted as the incorporated object pronoun zhi 2. ‘The surviving aspectual meaning is illustrated in example 382, while the apparent incorporation ofthe pronoun object i illustrated in 383. ERGE 388. Wang yi xing wing zheng, 2 wit hut 2h Bor WARK If Your Majesty wishes to practice kingly government, then don’t destroy it. (Meng IBIS. The question of whether or not to destroy tthe Hall of Light has been posed to Mencius by the king. The implication of the fina perfect particle, presumably strengthened by the use of wit 2) instead of wi $8 , seems to be that that seltles the matter and leaves no room for further argument.) P Bai ma zn tidn, wi du af shy HBA ZH + Wy aE HE Do not deprive the hundred mi fields of their times (of cultivation). (Meng 14/3) In this sentence we should expect the preposed indirect object of dus 4 ‘deprive’ (sce IV.8b above), bai mii zhi tidn FE WA HD ‘hundred mit fields," to be repeated by the pronoun zhi in its normal position between the negative and the verb and this could be represented by the final *-t of wit Contrast wii shi HE A “let them not lose” in the immediately preceding sentence, (example 379) in which the preposed clement is the subject of the verb rather than its object and so would exclude the object pronoun between the negative andthe verb, Like prohibitive wit #., wit J can be used in embedded sentences: 390. Rén jie you zhi, xién 2hé néng wi sing er. A EF AT 2 a ie yeeXI. Negation 1 All men have it; it is just that the wise are able to keep from losing it. (Meng 64/10) (© Wing t Wang €, which, in texts ofthe classical period, is most commonly avert rmeaning ‘tose’ (trans. or ‘disappear, abscond, de” (intrans.), is sometimes found in the sense of wii M& ‘not have’ but without an expressed object Traditionally iis then read wi, but this is not supported bya rhyme in the Shijing and seems to be merely alate explanation by commentators fo which there is no good ancient authority."? The two words are no doub: ctymologically closely related, Wang Tis infact the graphic form founc on the oracle bones where wi would appear in Inter texts. This usage i especially common in the Lin but snot confined to that text, 391. Rén jie you xiong di, wo dui wing A HA LH HR ae Every one has brothers, I alone have nt. (LY 12/5) 392, Wen you yd, yue, wing yi BA HR A OR If (his father) asked whether there was anything left, he would say, “there is not” (Meng 4/20) (@) Wang FE Wang IE is sometimes used inthe sepse of wii in the precasicl language. It is not, however, like wing T in the Liinyi , an equivalent to wii zhi $& Z with the object pronoun omitted. ome & Mo SL (EMC mak) is used adverbially to define the scope of the subject in the sense of ‘no one, nothing, none’ (XI3b). In postelassical times md is found as a prohibitive particle, “do not. wei A Wei A is an aspectual negative. It is probably derived from the existential negative root #m- + the perfective panicle ji BL “already," and thus means. “not already” = ‘not yet’ or ‘never.’ It is incompatible with the final particle yi &, which implies change of state, tha is, the close of one situation and the beginning of another. On the other hand, yé 4H, , which seems to imply110 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 4 continuing state when it occurs after verbal predicates, is very common swith wai 393. Jian nig wai jit yang ye. J&P AR JL th, ‘You saw the ox but you had not seen the sheep. (Méng LA/7) For further discussion see XII.1b below. Four less common m/w negatives are described below. (ey wei 8K Wei 8, also used for a full word meaning ‘small, minute; secret,’ is the ‘*m- negative formed from the preclassical copula wéi “E , corresponding to S81 AE from ba F + wei #E 4 Like fei AF itis used to negate nouns and ‘occurs in various patterns in the Shijing. In the classical period itis not very common but does occur occasionally in the first clause of a conditional sentence meaning “ift had not been for.” 394, Wei Yo wi gf yo ha HH 3 HF IFit had not been for YG, would we not, surely, have been fish? (Zud Zhao Uf 3. Note the absence of a copula. A textual variant hhas gf wei yi ha Ht % Fy (ty Mi AE (Mi AB isa particle glossed as wii $€ ‘not have’ in the Shijing 395, Tian ming mi ching K # AB #% Heaven's Mandate has no constancy. (Sh! 235/5) ame & Mié B (EMC med) otherwise ‘destroy,’ is a negative particle, found mostly in the Zudehudn and Gudyit. It is a *-t form corresponding to wai 4 ‘not have’ in the same way that fii ## and wa corresponds to wil #F ‘do not. Thus, itis frequently accompanied by final yi 396. Chén cha Jin jan, jan a oH er, mie bi ji yi EH E EMTHS ER Texel crest ced oa ein Chngeeahing will be successful. (Zué Xi 10/fa. Literally: ‘there will be no not siecenting)XI. Negation m1 OMe K ‘Mo 7 (EMC mat) is similar to mie BE, mostly in the Lainy. $97. gue a 1 2 wh aM be PRPAM RANE BRR LH Ifa man does not continually ask himself, ‘What am I to do about it, what am T to do about it,’ there is no possibility for my doing. anything about him. (LY 15/16, Waley 1938)XII. Aspect, Time, and Mood In infected languages verbs very often have formal distinctions to show the tense (in English, past, present, or future, the aspect (primarily whether and in what sense the situation described is looked on as complete or incomplete), or the mood/modalty (terms that can cover various things including the nature of the speech-act involved — statement, question, command — and the attiude of the speaker towards the necessity or possibility of what is being said). Though Chinese in general is regarded as an uninflected Janguage, Modern Mandarin does have verbal suffixes marking aspectual distinctions (-le J , -zhe 4, -guo il, etc.) and other dialects have comparable formations. Classical Chinese does not have such suffixes but, as we have noted at various points above, there seem to be traces in certain seis of grammatical particles ofan earlier system of dental suffixes marking aspectual distinctions — *-n for imperfective/durative and *-( for perfecive/punetual — that had at one time been a more general feature of word formation.” In the classical language one cannot set up morphological paradigms of this kind, but distinctions of an aspectual kind are important both in the syntax of verbs as such and in distinctions between sentence types expressed by final particles. 1. Verbal Aspect — Preverbal Particles In Modem Mandarin the verbal sufix -le Tis used to indicate perfectivity, that is, that an event is looked upon as complete or a bounded whole.*® In the classical language an equivalent role is played by the preverbal particles 1B and yi B Modern -le J is derived from the verb tido Y ‘to finish, dispose of and classical perfective adverbs have a similar etymology. The earliest is ji BE which is frequent in both the Shijing and the Shajing. In the classical period it survived but its functions were partly taken over by yt E., the morpheme found in modern yijing E, #8 ‘already.’ The negative particle corresponding to jt BE was wei A ‘not yet, never.’ (Sentence final Te {in Modern Chinese, as a mark of change of state, corresponds quite closely 10 the sentence final particle yr %, ueated in 2a below. By contrast, final yé +H, after verbal predicates can serve as a mark of ‘unchanged, continuing state.)XIL, Aspect, Time, and Mood 3 oy WB ‘Asa fll verb BE means ‘ase up, nish, complete” as in: 398. Ri you shi hist AL > BE “There was an eclipse ofthe sum; it was complete. (China Hun 3/4) More commonly BE precedes the main ver adverbial to show that the action is complet, Inthe mai cause ofa sentence jt BE is commonly followed by the final particle yi 3 marking the fact thatthe completion of the action results ina new situation, 399. Wen shou Bian zhé jiang pan: chén shui i yi tho 2h, i dé pg ERS Eth ak Uh BE > Bh = Theard that the guardian of Bian was going (o revolt. led my followers to punish him and have taken it (Bian). (Zud Xiang 1922) 400. Rén 26 fo 1) sheng yi ha AR BA FL RF If so, then, have you, master, attained sagehood? (Meng 2A/2) ‘The omission of final y7 in an introductory clause sets up an expectation of a conclusion to follow and ji Bb may then be translated as a perfect participle ‘having done so-and-so’ or as @ conjunction ‘when, afte, since.” 401. Bing ron ji jie... 5% 77 BE ‘When the weapons have crossed... (Méng 1A/3) Ji ér BE TA, with the verb that should come immedately after ji BE omitted, has an anaphoric meaning, ‘after (his), afterwards.” 402. 0 ér fan ran gai yur... BE TH A #8 Be ED ‘After this, he abruptly changed and ssid... (Méng SA/T) Note the combination jt... yOu » K oth and." in which ji BE. is more like a coordinating than a subordinating conjunction. The first action modified by ji BE is still looked upon as a bounded whole that logically precedes the second introduced by you X 403.51 yi gf sheng, you yi gf si, shi hud ye BE A HE AE» RE ER14 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar Having wished it to live, also to wish it to die, this is confusion. ye 12/10) (b) wei Wai A, EMC mujt, ‘not yet, never,” is an aspectual negative particle that, has the opposite meaning to ji B& in the affirmative. That is, it looks upon an action as not completed. Etymologically it seems to be formed from the existential negative root *m- in wii % plus j? BE, EMC kij§, hence ‘not already’ — ‘not yet’ (see X1.2f above). Note the contrast between wei AE and ji BE, in successive passages in a case like: 404, en i Bb sh nn 2. wh geet eM RET FR While I have not yet seen the lord, Iam desirous as if morning- bhungry .... When I have seen the lord, he will not remove and reject ime, (Shi 10/1, 2, Karlgren 19508) Since ‘not yet’ implies a continuing situation, wei AC is inconsistent with final yz 58 and this combination is never found, Instead one regularly finds final yé 4B, , which contrasts with yi Sas a mark of a continuing situation after verbal predicates, following wei A in the main clause of a sentence. on you rén ér yi gi qin ahi ye AR AT 4 HA HE HBL ‘There as never yet been csc of on who, being Benevolet, abandoned his parents. (Méng 1A/1) 406.1 sh yud 9, wai kt yin ys EE AR 8 Coe Now you have been in this oie several monks. Have you yet had no occasion o speak? (Meng 255; Bis equivalent to nat, Fy Just as ji BE in an introductory clause can have the force of a subordiatng conjunction ‘ater’ wei A in the same situation means “belo” 407. wei chéng, yi rén zhi shé chéng AEH — A $e ie Before he had finished, another man’s snake was finished. (ZC,XIL Aspect, Time, and Mood Ms Qeé 2, 11/57/16) (©) Preverbal i B Asa verb, yr & means ‘stop, fini 408, Renji wei wo hut Ming Téng. Ht zho, yt ha? A BH RRWS eo RH OF People all tll me to destoy the Hal of Light Should I destroy it, or should I stop? (Meng 1/5) also has various uses as a grammatical pale Us earliest use as & preverbal pact seems o be as an intensive adverb before adjectives in the Sense of “very” “excessively,” "too. a usage that is already found inthe pweclsseal language, Compare the Inter use of ué 38 ‘cut off inthe sense of extremely" 409. Jonz\ yi Qf rén sha Ai Jiang ye wéi yi shen yw HF VA HARRKALER ‘The superior man will judge the putting o death of Ai Jiang by the people of Qf as excessive. (Zud Xi 2/10) In the classical period it was used like ji BE as a preverbal particle ‘already’ to indicate completed action. This is rare or nonexistent in the preclassical language, but inthe classical period it gradually takes over from Ji BE especially in the main predicate of a sentence, where it is usually ‘accompanied by final yi 410. Nido yig shi w FB t+ RK He was already 70 years old. (Meng SA/9) Yr B, can also occur, like ji BE, in an initial clause A411, Shang eén yi, 26 dh do bi gh, sanxia ping é¢ wi ga WE KER? HRERR RTE MEAS ‘hen sages ve dit he pet robbers wl ot are dhe world will be at peace and without troubles. (Zhudng 10/16 ) ABE and yi B. can occur together, as in: 412. van nam amy FE fo eR Talready know it. (Meng 6B/13) vB. can sour expecially in somewhat ter et ke BE ina initial clause. So also can yf ér C2 instead of ji ér EET.16 Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar 413. Yi ér da ya sht am BH A KS Afierwards a great fish ate it. (Zhudng 26/12) 2. Sentent Aspect — Sentence Final Particles @nk& ‘The correlation between the preverbal markers of perfective aspect, ji BE and yt G, and sentence final yr RX, and between the negative wei AC and sentence final yé 4 ,has been illustrated above. Although aspect is generally looked on as a characteristic of verbs while sentence final particles in Chinese are traditionally classified as ‘modal particles’ (yugici 88 4 47] ), this seems to provide prima facie evidence to suggest that at least part of the meaning of yi & and yé 4H, must be involved with the same basic semantic contrasts that are expressed by the perfective/nonperfective contrast {hat applies to verbs. It has long been recognized that the final particte yi $& of Classical Chinese closely resembles sentence final le Tin Modern Chinese in its ‘meaning and syntactic behaviour. If, as has often been assumed, sentence final le Tis etymologically the same as the perfective suffix -le J , and, furthermore, if one could connect the classical final particle yi & cetymologically with the verb yt E. ‘stop’ and the derived preverbal particle yt & “already,” the case for regarding both and sentence final le 1 as aspect markers would seem overwhelming. There are, however, serious difficulties in the way of such a conclusion. Other modern dialects often use etymologically quite separate morphemes for the two functions performed by le Jin Mandarin, and doubts have been raised as to whether sentential Ie Tis etymologically the same word as suffix -le Y in Mandarin itself"? There are also good reasons for doubting that there is any etymological connection between yi & and yi G . Nevertheless, 1 think there is good reason to think that both sentential fe J in Mandarin and final y1 Sin Clase Chinese are basal aspect in fonction Li and Thompson (1981) adhere to the traditional practice of Chinese grammarians in classifying sentential fe J as a member of an undivided class of yugici #F 4&, FA. For le they propose the general meaning “currently relevant state.’ Nevertheless they elsewhere (Li, Thompson, and ‘Thompson 1982) recognize that le J has aspect as at least part of its meaning, which they propose to characterize as perfect in contrast to the perfective force of the verb suffix -le T . This is confusing in terms of theXII. Aspect, Time, and Mood 417 ordinary nontechnical use of ‘perfective’ as an adjective derived from ‘perfect,’ but corresponds to a technical use of the terms by linguists. The Slavic languages provide the definition of perfective as meaning simply an action viewed as a bounded whole. In contrast to this, perfect in languages like Greek and English relates the completion of the action to the time of ttterance (in the case of the present perfect) or to some definite past or future time in the case of the past perfect (or pluperfect) and future perfect. ‘Whereas “it rained” simply means tha a period of rain occurred at sometime in the past, ‘it has rained’ has the addtional implication that the period of rain in question has some particular relevance at the time of utterance, perhaps by confirming or disconfirming an expectation or by ending @ period of drought, or something else thatthe speaker and auditor are aware of in the situ “Perfect, in this sense, seems particularly appropriate in cases ike 399 and 400 where yi 58 completes the main clause of a sentence in which the verb is preceded by perfective ji BE or yr Bi. What the addition of yi seems to do is to assert that as a result of the completed action that is referred {0 « new situation has arisen (or had arisen or will arise in the future if the time of reference in the utterance is in the past or future) “Change of state” is a meaning that is commonly assigned to sentence final Je J and is also one that fits very well with the concept of referring the situation described in the sentence to its reference time. Another term that has been used to cover at least par of the functions of le is “inchoative, that is, applying to situation that is new or only new to the speaker (Chao 1968:798). This is also a concept that is aspectual in nature and that applies equally well to many occurrences of yi & . Whether, in the end, ‘perfect” will turn out fo be the most appropriate designation for Mandarin le J and Classical yi & must await further study, but I adopt it provisionally in order to emphasize its aspectual character, even though it applies 10 sentences as & whole and not simply to verbs. Many examples of yi & have been given above. Here are a few more. As in the second example below, i often makes a vivid future. 414, Mido z¢ gho yi BH Hl 45 & ‘The sprouts had dried up. (Méng 24/2) 4s she xi jido zheng li ér gus wei yi EF 3 4E #1 Tt