{9} Lesson 2
2.1. Reading: Analects 12.11 (Edited)
。 子 不 子 。 |
父 父 。 子 子 。 公 曰 。 君 不 君 。 臣 不 臣 。 父 不 父 |
齊 景 公 問 政 於 孔 子 。 孔 子 對 曰 。 君 君 。 臣 臣 。 |
{10} 2.2. Vocabulary
(Twelve new characters, one new meaning)
齊 (齐) Qí n., Qi (name of a state in what is now 山東 Shāndōng Province)
景 jǐng s.v., to be bright, shining; n., Jing (honorific posthumous name)
公 gōng n., duke (highest hereditary title below the king)
問 (问) wèn t.v., to ask someone (indirect object) about something (direct object)
政 zhèng n., government, governing
於 (于) yú prep., from, of (in this passage, marks indirect object of verb)
孔 Kǒng n., Kong (the family name of 孔子 Kǒngzǐ, “Master Kong,” better known in the West as “Confucius”)
對 (对) duì adv., respondingly, in response
君 jūn n., ruler, lord; s.v., to be a ruler, to be a lord, to act as a ruler (should)
臣 chén n., minister; s.v., to be a minister, to act as a minister (should)
父 fù n., father; s.v., to be a father, to act as a father (should)
子 zǐ n., Master; n. -master (honorific title following a family name); n. son; s.v., to be a son, to act as a son (should)
不 bù (tone changes to bú before a word in fourth tone) adv., not (negates verbs or verbal phrases)
{11} 2.3. Grammar Notes
Some Titles, Verbal Sentences and Their Negation,
the Preposition 於 yú, the Adverb 對 duì, Nouns
as Stative Verbs, and Grammatical Mood
Reading 2 consists of two sentences from Analects 12.11.1 I’ll give you the rest of the passage in Lesson 5. Look up the words 君 jūn and 不 bù in the vocabulary list for this reading. Now consider the following sentences:
君君 jūn jūn
君不君 jūn bù jūn
The first occurrence of 君 jūn in each of these sentences is a noun and the second occurrence in each of these sentences is a verb. See whether you can work out the meaning of each sentence above based on this grammar. Now look up the other words in the vocabulary list and see whether you can translate the rest of Reading 2, following the same grammatical patterns when you encounter the words 臣 chén, 父 fù, and 子 zǐ.
In order to understand these sentences, imagine that the Master is recommending how people should act in order to have an ideal community, and the Duke is lamenting how people act in a dysfunctional community.
2.3.1. Some Titles: 公 gōng,子 zǐ, and 王 wáng
A common way of identifying a hereditary ruler is by providing information in the following order: the state he ruled, his name, and his title (“duke” or “king”). In the case of 齊景公 Qí Jǐng Gōng, 齊 is the name of an ancient state governed by a duke, and 景 jǐng (which can mean “bright, shining”) is this duke’s 諡 shì, “posthumous title,” an honorific name given to him after he died. The fact that this title is used shows that {12} this passage was recorded after this duke died (in 490 BCE), which helps us to date it.
公 gōng, “duke,” is the highest hereditary rank below the 王 wáng, “king.” During Kǒngzǐ’s lifetime, dukes reigned over the small states into which China was divided. In theory, they were all loyal to the king of the 周 Zhōu dynasty, but, in actuality, each state acted independently. (The king at the time this dialogue took place was 周敬王 Zhōu Jìng Wáng.) This increasingly led to war as the states competed for supremacy. Sometimes the dukes themselves were mere figureheads, and the power in a state was usurped by powerful ministers. This was, in fact, the situation that Duke Jǐng was in when Kǒngzǐ talked with him.
Back in Lesson 1, we learned that 子 can be a noun, referring to a “Master,” and in the Analects this means Kǒngzǐ (Confucius). This lesson introduces several new meanings for 子 zǐ: as a noun meaning “son,” and as the corresponding stative verb, “to be a son” or “to act as a son (should).” (As we will see in Lesson 6, 子 can refer to daughters too, but because traditional China was patriarchal, 子 normally means “son.”)
Now is also a good time to make explicit another use that we’ve hinted at: 子 as an honorific title following a family name. 孔子 Kǒngzǐ is technically a family name followed by a title: “Master Kong.” You’ll see this pattern a lot in Classical Chinese. In later lessons, we’ll encounter 老子 Lǎozǐ (“Master Lao”), 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ (“Master Zhuang”), 孟子 Mèngzǐ (“Master Meng”), and others.
In the previous lesson, we read two nominal sentences. In this lesson, we shall read several verbal sentences. Nominal and verbal sentences are the two basic classes of sentences in Chinese.
At its simplest, a verbal sentence may consist of only one word: a verb. A verb should have a subject, but the subject will often be implicit in Chinese. (In other words, you may be able to guess it from context, so that you don’t have to state it explicitly in the sentence.) A transitive verb must {13} have a direct object, and direct objects are usually explicit.2 Some verbs, but not all, also have an indirect object.
In English, “the ball” is the direct object of the transitive verb “hit” in the sentence “He hit the ball.” In the sentence “He gave the letter to her,” “letter” is the direct object of the verb “gave,” and “her” is the indirect object. Sometimes the indirect object is marked with a preposition. In the previous sample sentence, “to” marks “her” as the indirect object. But other times there is no preposition: In “He gave her it,” we just know from word order that “her” is the indirect object and “it” is the direct object.
In this lesson, 問 wèn, “to ask,” is a transitive verb. In this case, it takes both a direct object (the topic that is asked about), and an indirect object (the person the question is asked of). The other verbs in this lesson are all stative verbs.3
The English language loves prepositions, and we have a lot of them: “in,” “on,” “of,” “with,” “than,” and others. Chinese (both Classical and Modern) has fewer prepositions and uses them less often. The most common preposition you will see in Classical Chinese is 於 yú. We see it in this lesson, where it marks the indirect object of the verb 問, the person of whom the question is asked. 於 has lots of other functions, though. It usually occurs in between a verb and a noun.4
Recall that, in Classical Chinese, it is generally true that adverbs precede the word they modify. We saw one adverb in Lesson 1: 相 xiāng, “to each other.” Similarly, in this reading, 對 duì, “responding-ly, in response,” comes before the word it modifies, 曰 yuē, “to say,” describing the manner in which Kǒngzǐ spoke.
This lesson illustrates a characteristic feature of Classical Chinese: nouns can sometimes act as verbs. When a noun in Chinese is used as a verb, it can be either transitive or stative. In this reading we see nouns acting as stative verbs. The stative verb corresponding to a given noun, N, means “to act as an N.”
Pattern:
N 
to act as an N5
Example:
臣臣 Chén chén
Ministers act as ministers.
So the first 臣 in the example above is a noun, and the second is a stative verb.6
2.3.6. Verbal Negation with 不 bù
There are several different words in Classical Chinese that change a verb into a negative. (Words of this kind are called “negative adverbs.”) In this reading {15} we meet the most common of these negative adverbs: bù, “not.” Note that 不 can only come in front of a verb or a verbal expression. (We’ll learn how to negate nouns and nominal expressions in Lesson 6.)
Grammatical “mood” is difficult to define abstractly, but examples of sentences with different moods would be stating something (declarative mood), commanding something (imperative mood), or expressing a wish (optative mood).
Kǒngzǐ’s comment raises an interesting translation issue: what mood should it be translated into? Certainly, Kǒngzǐ is not describing how things actually are in his own society. So perhaps we should say that he is expressing a sort of ethical imperative: “Let rulers act as rulers. . . .” But he might be said to be describing what is the case in an ideal society. We might get at this by translating, “True rulers act as rulers. . . .”
2.4.1. Philosophical Issues: Role Ethics
One characteristic of modern ethical thought is that it tends to abstract from a person’s ethical roles. This has certain advantages, since it makes us think of humans as possessing intrinsic value or dignity. However, Kǒngzǐ emphasizes following our ethical roles, which has at least two advantages. First, if we think of ourselves as occupying a role, we usually know what our ethical obligations are. It is not too hard to know that, as a student, I should complete my assignments, be prepared for class, etc. Second, as a matter of fact, we do occupy roles, and any ethic that ignores this risks being too abstract.
When she was six years old, my daughter, who reads a bit of Chinese, made an interesting observation about this passage: “He doesn’t say anything about mommies and daughters, so they must already have been doing everything okay.” Then she said, “Actually, he doesn’t talk about lots of people.”
{16} In general, how would Kǒngzǐ apply what he says to other groups of people?
Free practice materials—including quizzes and additional readings—are available at www.hackettpublishing.com/chinese-for-everyone-support.
1. For an English translation of the complete passage, see Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, p. 36. Remember that if you really want to learn Classical Chinese you have to struggle through the lesson first before you check a translation.
2. Nerd note: Direct objects “disappear” in the presence of certain negative adverbs. See the grammar notes for Reading 4, under “Some Pronouns,” for an example.
3. Nerd note: You might think that 曰 yuē is also a transitive verb, but technically it is not. 曰 does not function like a normal transitive verb in that its direct object cannot be replaced by the third-person pronoun 之 zhī, “it.” (We shall encounter 之 as a pronoun in Lesson 4.) What follows 曰 is called its “complement,” not its direct object.
4. Nerd note: For some examples, see Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, p. 567.
5. The symbol will be used to indicate a grammatical transformation that a word or expression can undergo.
6. Nerd note: As we shall see in Lesson 3 and Lesson 6, if the verb were used transitively, it would mean “to treat as an N” or “to make into an N.” So 臣之 chén zhī means “(He) treated him as a minister” or “(he) made him into a minister.”