Wényán thread

[zompist]

Anyone know wényán? I didn't want to put these questions in the Chinese thread as Old Chinese is pretty different from Mandarin.

I'm trying to translate the first chapter of the Dào Dé Jīng, and I have some questions that aren't quite answered by the grammatical sketches I've read.

故常无欲，以观其妙；
Gù cháng wú yù, yǐ guān qí miào;
thus always not desire / with observe its wonderful
Thus as we avoid desire, we observe its wonder;
常有欲，以观其徼。
cháng yǒu yù, yǐ guān qí jiǎo.
always exist desire / with observe its boundary
As we possess desire, we observe only its edges.

1. What is gù doing here? I took it as "thus", but it could also be "because", I think.
2. yǐ has many senses; what makes most sense here is "so, to that extent", but I may be wrong.

此两者，同出而异名，同谓之玄。
Cǐ liǎng zhě, tóng chū ér yì míng, tóng wèi zhī xuán.
this both NOM / same exit but different name / same call 3.obj dark
These two have the same effects but different names; they are called mystery.

3. I'm pretty sure zhě (usually a nominalized) is acting to group the preceding words— "these two together". Sound right?
4. Hmm, what's the second "tóng" doing? Is that "[they have] the same name, mystery"?

玄之又玄，衆妙之门。
Xuán zhī yòu xuán, zhòng miào zhī mén.
dark SUB again dark / multitude wonder SUB gate.
Mystery and again mystery, the gateway to all marvels.

5. The first clause is usually translated something like "mystery within mystery", but it's not a locative. If it were 玄之玄 it'd be "mystery of mystery", and if it were 玄而又玄 it'd be "mystery and again mystery". But I don't understand the structure of "again mystery of mystery".
6. Zhòng is "multitude, crowd", so I think this is literally "the gateway to multitudinous mysteries". But "all" sounds like how we'd express it in English.

Lǎozi seems to be very careful with every word, so I'd like to make sure I'm not missing any nuances.

[M Mira]

1. I interpret it as "because there are 道 and 名… (previous parts), thus we do these things to observe them"
2. I don't know how to gloss it in English, but there's this very usage in our national anthem: 三民主義，…，以建民國 means 建民國 with/using/by the means of 三民主義.

3. I don't think there's the "together" part in 者, it's more like "these two things" to me.
同出:I think 出 means "source, origin" here, so 同出 is "come from the same source", there is also an idiom 同出一轍 "come from the same track"
4. I think that's where the extra "together" from 3 should go to, so 此兩者，同謂之玄 is in my interpretation "These two things together are called mystery/mysteries."

5. The structure is used to reinforce 玄, like in 少之又少. The analysis of such structure is beyond me, though. Perhaps it's part of the reason why it is considered a autological phrase?
6. It can mean "all" in some cases, like 眾生平等 "all lives are equal", definitely not "most lives are equal".

[zompist]

That's awesome; thank you!

[Salmoneus]

If you're concerned with not missing nuances, the SEP article on daoism goes a little way into examining the issues of translating 'dao' and 'chang' (I think an earlier version of it actually went through three or four proposed translations of the first sentence, but i can't find that anymore).

The problem is, unfortunately, that translating very detailed philosophical concepts from another time period, culture and language, is extremely difficult to do properly and requires a very great deal of scholarship.

[zompist]

Thanks for the pointer to SEP; there's indeed some helpful stuff there.

Translating wényán is a pain and a half... what isn't philosophy is mostly poetry. Even adding barely enough words to make the English grammatical feels like it's doing violence to the Chinese.

Still, all I want is a very literal translation (as I will pair it with someone else's much nicer but less literal one).

[svld]

If you're translating wényán, maybe this commentary (in wényán) can help.
http://zh.wikisource.org/zh/%E9%81%93%E ... 6%9C%AC%29

[Seirios]

1. It can also mean "therefore" here.
2. 以 can also mean "so as to/in order to" "by which means", etc.
4.It means something like "equally/both/samely called" to me. So basically what you understood as.
By the way, I once read something that said the 常's here were originally 恒, only later changed to 常 to 避諱.

[zompist]

I've seen conflicting information on whether 也 is a copula or not.

Jerry Norman says it's "a particle denoting factuality"— that is, an evidential. That's echoed by this site which calls it a "final particle of strong affirmation or identity": http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=也

However, I've seen an online grammar which asserts that it's just 'to be', and South Coblin considers that it's "very
similar to that of the Modern Standard Chinese copula 是".

Now, there's no dispute that the standard copular formula is X Y 也, as in 南冥者，天池也。But is 也 functioning here as a verb or a particle? It's a little weird that it's always final and that it's not negated with 不; rather you use the negative copula 非. You can say either 白马非马也 or 白马非马 (a white horse is not a horse).

The reason I resist the verb interpretation is that it doesn't seem to cover cases like these:

不离者有白马不可谓有马也。
not leave NOM exist white horse not can call exist horse PT
Without separating it, having a white horse can’t be called having a horse

以马之有色为非马，天下非有无色之马也。
with horse it exist color make not horse / heaven-under not horse can PT
If a colored horse is not a horse, then the world has no colorless horses.

不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。
There have been none, who, not liking to offend against their superiors, have been fond of stirring up confusion.

古之人与民偕乐，故能乐也。
The ancients caused the people to have pleasure as well as themselves, and therefore they could enjoy it.

Here 也 coexists with other verbs, which easily fits the evidential interpretation.

Any thoughts?

[M Mira]

Well, what exactly is the difference between a copula and a particle? Since there's no morphology in Chinese, is there a clear difference between them?

BTW, here's two other random interpretions I just came up with, no guarenteed veracity, but they seem to work at first glance:

1) "=" equivalent relation
南冥者=天池
不离者=有白马不可谓有马
不好犯上，而好作亂者=未之有
古之人与民偕乐=故能乐

2) "In the case of A, B" conditional/resultative

In the case of 南冥者, 天池
In the case of 不离者, 有白马不可谓有马
In the case of 不好犯上，而好作亂者, 未之有
In the case of 古之人与民偕乐, 故能乐

And there's always the possibility that 也 is heterogeneous in origin, a historical merger several different meanings into one word, so there's no one-size-fits-all analysis .

[svld]

And there's always the possibility that 也 is heterogeneous in origin, a historical merger several different meanings into one word, so there's no one-size-fits-all analysis .

That could be the case. Here's an example from Analects of Confucius:
其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生。孝弟也者，其為仁之本與
The last 也 seems to have different usage than others.

[Ser]

I'm trying to make a gloss of the first few verses of the Analects, but I'm really struggling to understand the grammar of part of the second verse.

其爲人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣
gi hjwe(H) nyin yaeX xaewH dejX, nyi xawH bjomX dzyangH tsyaeX, sjenX hiX (Middle Chinese reading in Baxter's notation)
• They are few who, being filial and fraternal, are fond of offending against their superiors. (James Legge, 1861)
• Parmi les hommes naturellement enclins à respecter leurs parents, à honorer ceux qui sont au-dessus d’eux, peu aiment à résister à leurs supérieurs. (Among the men naturally inclined to respect their parents, to honour those above them, they are little fond of resisting their superiors.) (Séraphin Couvreur, 1895)
• A young person who is filial and respectful of his elders rarely becomes the kind of person who is inclined to defy his superiors. (Edward Slingerland, 2003)

What would be the syntactical structure of the six bolded words?

[zompist]

I'm an amateur at this myself, but hopefully those who know will come correct us. I would gloss...

其为人也孝弟，[...]
Qí wéi rén yě xiào dì, [...]
its do person PT filial younger.brother

为 has various meanings 'do, make, act, serve as, be'— it seems clearly to be 'act, do' here. I don't really know why 其 is needed here. ctext.org actually uses this sentence as an example of the 3s possessive meaning, so I guess 其为 is "their acting" and 其为人 is something of a relativization— "people who act (that way)"

I think 也 is being used as a topicalizer here— as you can say 夏也 "as for Xia". "As for those people who act..." (I asked above about 也 being a copula, but when it's used as such it's always final.)

Finally we get how they're acting— with 孝 filial piety and 弟 (like a) younger brother. I guess 孝弟 get moved out of the NP to keep it simple (perhaps as in this thread).

So it's something like "As for those who act in a filial way..."

(Or in context, "Among those [...]" since he goes on to say that within this group, the subset of those who like to offend superiors is small.)

[Ser]

I think I'll go with your reading, and give 爲 the 平 tone, in other words the Middle Chinese reading "hjwe".

I posted the gloss in Yng's Gloss Thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41893&p=1100000#p1100000

[M Mira]

I was taught that the 弟 here should be mapped to modern 悌 (tì, frateral duty/love/something) and we should read it as such, and it was written that way because the derivation hadn't acquired its own character yet at his time.

Grammatically though, I don't have much idea for why a 也 is stuck in the middle, although I do have a leap-of-faith guess: 'twas just a mistake in punctuation! It should be 「其為人也，孝弟而好犯上者，鮮矣」! It could possibly be backed up with another part of the Analects: 「其為人也，發憤忘食，樂以忘憂，不知老之將至云爾」, but within the same quote there's 「孝弟也者，其為仁之本與」with another 也 sandwiched that cannot be "solved" by moving commas around so it's a rather wild guess.

For reference, the whole quote:
「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生；孝弟也者，其為仁之本與。」
The 與 there is 歟 or so I was taught. It could be a rhetorical question or an assertion.

[Ser]

I was taught that the 弟 here should be mapped to modern 悌 (tì, frateral duty/love/something) and we should read it as such, and it was written that way because the derivation hadn't acquired its own character yet at his time.

I think you're right. Though curiously, Baxter and Sagart's reconstruction of 悌's pronunciation is the same as that of 弟: dejX, which means they probably think that both 弟 and 悌 are really the same word (where "be a young brother [to somebody]" = "be of fraternal duty/love"). Although "tì" could also point out to a "dejX" reading just as well.

I think it's related to the use of certain human nouns as verbs. Pulleyblank in his Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar (1995) gives two interesting examples:

• • 43. Jūn jūn, chén chén, fù fù, zǐ zǐ
    君君，臣臣，父父，子子
    Let the rules act as a ruler should, the minister as a minister, the father as a father, the son as a son. (LY 12/11)
    
    44. Wéi chén ér jūn ... wáng zhī běn yě
    為臣而君亡之本也
    For one who is a minister to act as a ruler ... is the root of perdition. (Zuǒ Xiāng 7/7)

Grammatically though, I don't have much idea for why a 也 is stuck in the middle, although I do have a leap-of-faith guess: 'twas just a mistake in punctuation! It should be 「其為人也，孝弟而好犯上者，鮮矣」! It could possibly be backed up with another part of the Analects: 「其為人也，發憤忘食，樂以忘憂，不知老之將至云爾」, but within the same quote there's 「孝弟也者，其為仁之本與」with another 也 sandwiched that cannot be "solved" by moving commas around so it's a rather wild guess.

For reference, the whole quote:
「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生；孝弟也者，其為仁之本與。」
The 與 there is 歟 or so I was taught. It could be a rhetorical question or an assertion.

I got the lines from Wikisource, and the text they used has 歟 here instead of 與.

[M Mira]

I was taught that the 弟 here should be mapped to modern 悌 (tì, frateral duty/love/something) and we should read it as such, and it was written that way because the derivation hadn't acquired its own character yet at his time.

I think you're right. Though curiously, Baxter and Sagart's reconstruction of 悌's pronunciation is the same as that of 弟: dejX, which means they probably think that both 弟 and 悌 are really the same word (where "be a young brother [to somebody]" = "be of fraternal duty/love"). Although "tì" could also point out to a "dejX" reading just as well.

It appears that they were still homophones as late as in 14th century, as seen in Zhongyuan Yinyun and Hongwu Zhengyun and probably diverged when devoicing in Mandarin happened.

「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生；孝弟也者，其為仁之本與。」
The 與 there is 歟 or so I was taught. It could be a rhetorical question or an assertion.

I got the lines from Wikisource, and the text they used has 歟 here instead of 與.

Yeah, it should be understood as 歟 in any case.