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Classical Chinese Lecture Notes: Words and Syntax

High school classical Chinese lecture notes on content words vs. function words, flexible word usage (causative, putative, and benefactive), elliptical sentences, and four inverted sentence patterns, with classic examples.

Machine-translated from the Chinese original.

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Content Words and Function Words in Classical Chinese

Many words in classical Chinese are made up of a single character; when analyzing a classical Chinese sentence, you must constantly break it down to each individual character/word.

Classical Chinese also has many two-character / multi-character words, but these generally fall under “don’t translate” / “convey the sense”.

诸葛诞以寿春叛，魏帝出征，芝率荆州文武以为先驱。Book of Jin · Biography of Lu Zhi

Classical Chinese words fall into content words and function words

  • Content words carry both concrete lexical meaning and grammatical meaning
  • Function words carry only grammatical meaning or function

Function-word senses often don’t need to be forced into a translation
Content words must be accounted for

A classical Chinese word may carry both a content-word sense and a function-word sense at once

Basic Cases and Special Cases

Basic Case: Words with Multiple Meanings

Based on the word itself and the text (context / the whole), we can accurately grasp its meaning

Special Case: Words Whose Meaning Has Changed Over Time

Special Case: Phonetic Loan Characters

Flexible Word Usage

Noun → Verb

The core meaning stays connected (once you grasp the core meaning, shift the part of speech yourself)

Causative Usage

A verb / adjective / noun used causatively expresses to cause ... to be/do something

  • If inserting the word “cause” produces a valid causative usage, it can be treated as causative usage
  • If it can be translated smoothly and accurately as a causative usage, then don’t casually substitute another interpretation

Putative Usage

A noun / adjective may have a putative usage, expressing to regard ... as ...

Adjective → to consider … to be [some quality]
Noun → to treat … as [something]

Putative usage always occurs within a predicate-object (verb-object) structure

Putative usage is hard to render directly with a single modern Chinese word; it generally follows the pattern to regard ... as ...

Benefactive Usage

A verb / adjective / noun used benefactively expresses to do something for the sake of ...

等死，死国可乎？[Han] Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian · Biography of Chen She

“Don’t Translate” and “Convey the Sense”

Don’t Translate

Helps you quickly spot what you don’t need to translate

  1. Personal names (including courtesy names, style names, and other forms of address)
  2. Place names (including location names, related directional terms, etc.)
  3. Official titles
  4. Imperial-exclusive information such as era names, temple names, and posthumous titles
  5. Plain numbers
  6. Other special proper nouns or proper concepts

Convey the Sense

Some content in classical Chinese has no single exact equivalent in translation; conveying the sense is enough to get credit for it

  1. When it’s hard to find the most precise / most direct translation for a word, or several approximate renderings exist
  2. Content translated by conveying the sense must still match the original meaning / grammar of the text

Ellipsis in Classical Chinese

Precondition: absolutely no ambiguity

Four Basic Types of Ellipsis

Ellipsis Recoverable from Preceding Context

永州之野产异蛇：黑质而白章，触草木，尽死；以啮人，无御之者。[Tang] Liu Zongyuan, The Snake Catcher

The word snake has been omitted

吾妻之美我者，私我也；妾之美我者，畏我也；客之美我者，欲有求于我也。Zou Ji Remonstrates with the King of Qi

my wife / my concubine / my guest have been omitted

Ellipsis Recoverable from Following Context

于是王召见，问蔺相如曰……Records of the Grand Historian · Biographies of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru

Self-Reference Ellipsis

When an author states their own view, they omit themselves

🕶 苟利国家生死以，岂因祸福避趋之。[Qing] Lin Zexu, Composed Upon Setting Out for Exile, to Show My Family
🐸🐸🐸

Indefinite-Reference Ellipsis and Contextual Ellipsis

The subject content refers to an indefinite/general referent

见贤思齐焉，见不贤而内自省也。The Analects

The context is clear, leaving no possible ambiguity

江山如画，一时多少豪杰。[Song] Su Shi, Niannujiao · Meditation on the Past at Red Cliff

Omission of the Preposition 于

When the meaning is clear and 于 expresses “at/in,” it can be omitted

Four Inverted Sentence Patterns

Subject-Predicate Inversion

The predicate is placed before the subject (extremely obvious)
Mainly expresses emphasis, so it mostly appears in exclamatory / rhetorical-question sentences

甚矣，汝之不惠！The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains
渺渺兮予怀，望美人兮天一方。[Northern Song] Su Shi, Former Ode on the Red Cliffs
贤哉，回也！The Analects · Yong Ye

Object Fronting

The most important inversion in classical Chinese
The only inversion in the strict sense

  • The object is placed before the predicate (verb / preposition)
  • Only occurs in negative sentences and interrogative sentences
  • The fronted object must be a pronoun (之 / 谁 / 何 / 是 / personal pronouns, etc.)

之 can function as a particle marking object fronting

Confucius said: “何陋之有?”
富而使人分之，则何事之有?

A few special cases

  • 唯……是…… (as in 唯命是从, “obey whatever is ordered, unconditionally”)
  • A handful of directional words

Postposed Attributive

The attributive is placed after the head noun

Two structures

  • Head noun + 之 + postposed attributive + 者 (at least one of 之 / 者 must appear)

居庙堂之高则忧其民，处江湖之远则忧其君。[Northern Song] Fan Zhongyan, Record of Yueyang Tower
蚓无爪牙之利，筋骨之强。Xunzi · Exhortation to Learning

  • Head noun + numeral/measure word

湖上影子，惟长堤一痕、湖心亭一点，与余舟一芥、舟中人两三粒而已。[Ming] Zhang Dai, Watching the Snow at Mid-Lake Pavilion
帝以芝清忠履正，素无居宅，使军兵为作屋五十间。

Postposed Adverbial

Essentially only one structure: postposed prepositional phrase
The most common postposed adverbial is a prepositional phrase formed with 于 / 以

申之以孝悌之义。Mencius · King Hui of Liang, Part 1
苟全性命于乱世，不求闻达于诸侯。[Three Kingdoms] Zhuge Liang, Memorial on Setting Out on the Campaign