Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar

by Edwin G. Pulleyblank

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 Lúnyu, and, to a lesser extent, the Zuõzhuàn texts. Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar starts with a brief historical overview and a discussion of the relation between the writing system and the phonology. This is followed by an outline of overall principles of word order and sentence structure. The next sections deal with the main sentence types – nominal predicates, verbal predicates, and numberical expressions, which constitute a special type of quasiverbal predication. The final sections cover such topics as subordinate constitutents of sentences, nondeclarative sentence types, and complex sentences.

Genres: China, Linguistics, Nonfiction, History

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

Reviews

[Daniel Evensen · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's natural to want to rate Pulleyblank's work highly. After all, it is one of the few Classical Chinese books that treats the language as a whole, rather than explaining a few random textual excerpts along with a few scattered example sentences. Along with Du's Handbook, it is one of only two books that I am aware of in which you can study Classical Chinese in a grammatical structure familiar to native speakers of European languages, such as the various parts of speech, aspect, parataxis, hypotaxis and so on.

So what's so wrong with it?

First, Pulleyblank's explanations leave a lot to be desired. This book reads like it was written on small index cards, spread out over a coffee table, then rearranged and ordered in a sequence as close to logical as could be possible. The reader is constantly referred to other sections of the book, even right from the get-go. The perfect aspect particle 矣, which is similar in function to the pesky Modern Chinese 了 that remains the bane of Western students, is not really explained until page 116, neatly tucked away into the aspect section. And yet it makes its first appearance on the 4th proper page of text, in which the reader learns that 矣 doesn't follow 也, but 也已 and 也已矣 basically mean the same thing that the hypothetical 也矣 would mean. Even an expert in complex Greek and Latin grammatical concepts would find 了 and 矣 challenging, and English translations are notoriously poor at expressing its aspectual feel - but the reader is expected to get a feel for it by the 4th page of the book!

That's not to say that Pulleyblank's handling of 矣 is all that great, either. Rather than carefully explaining what this aspect means and how to understand it in different situations (ala Li and Thompson's Mandarin Chinese Grammar), Pulleyblank spends a lot of space speculating about a possible etymological connection between 矣 and 了. In fact, the entire work is filled with etymological oddities and notes only interesting to the dedicated expert in the language. Only a few pages later we are taught that 嘗 is occasionally written as 甞, and considerable space is dedicated elsewhere to rather arcane usages of particles such as 庸, 詎 and so forth.

For a legitimate expert on the etymology of Chinese, Pulleyblank certainly has no qualms about mixing textual examples from different classical eras. Even given only the short examples here, it's not hard to see that the language of the Zuo Zhuan differs greatly from that of the Lun Yu, and that the Shang Shu and Shi Jing almost represent an entirely different language. I'm personally more interested in historical texts, and found it frustrating that nothing more recent than the Shi Ji was ever quoted. As is usually the case with both English and Chinese works on Classical Chinese grammar, the majority of quotes are the same well-worn Mencius quotations. There is a clear philosophical bias in these scholarly treatments, and I really wish we had something better.

I should also note that Pulleyblank's English translations could really use a proofreader. There are also a number of examples of incorrect pinyin, one sentence with Wade-Giles romanization, and at least one translation that I consider to be flat-out wrong. This would be the attempted translation of the famous Lun Yu line 子曰，不患人之不己知，患不知人也。 My understanding is that Confucius is referring to himself there, i.e. "I do not worry about others not knowing me; I worry about me not knowing others." Pulleyblank's translation completely misses the 己, as well as the point: "I do not worry about others' not knowing one."

I would love to see a better Classical Chinese grammatical outline. I would love to see Routledge come out with a comprehensive grammar, similar to its excellent comprehensive grammar of the modern language (not to mention Japanese, Korean, modern Greek, etc). I would love to see a serious scholar take the time and the space to do an in-depth treatment of this language, replete with multiple example sentences from a myriad of sources.

I would love to see somebody follow in the footsteps of Tae Kim's excellent Japanese grammar and try to explain Classical Chinese in Classical Chinese terms. The language clearly revolves around the use of the 之乎者也 "empty" particles. Why can't we have an English language grammar that treats the language on its own terms? Surely that would be better than all these endless debates about aspect, or whether 也 technically counts as a copula, or what the precise Middle Chinese pronunciation of any given word may have been, or what the etymological relationship between certain classical characters and modern characters might have been.

Without this, we are left to the whims of Pulleyblank.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the dictionary by Paul Kroll, this is an indispensable book for English speakers and must be owned by anyone serious about reading the classical literature.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and useful book dealing with Classical Chinese grammar, with plenty of examples to show usage.