Word classes, Classical Chinese

Word classes (cílèi 詞詞 in Modern Chinese) are usually understood as

categories of words with similar morphosyntactic and/or semantic

characteristics. The widely used concept of word classes or

“parts of speech” is based on the Graeco-Latin grammarian

tradition, which has survived until present in most textbooks of

particular languages and in many domains of applied linguistics.

It is so well entrenched that a need is rarely felt to explicitly

reflect on the nature of the categories and to clearly and

unequivocally define them. In general linguistics, there have

always been many problems associated with the definition and

delineation of word classes, and the approaches and criteria vary

wildly according to the many particular theoretical models of

language developed over the last two hundred years. These

problems become even more evident and in cross-linguistic

comparison, or in application of the concept to languages which

typologically diverge from the more well-known “Standard Average

European” languages (Haspelmath 2001:1492–1510). The most

elaborate attempts at a full-fledged general theory of parts of

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speech thus tend to be presented by typologists.

Pre-modern Chinese is a good example of the aforementioned

difficulties, which are moreover exacerbated by problems to

delineate a word, to define the very notion of wordhood, and by

the absence of an indigenous grammatical tradition, despite the

fact that a basic classification of words did evolve in pre-

modern China (cf. below). Moreover, while a more vivid dicussion

about word classes in Modern Chinese has been underway in the PRC

at least since the 1950’s and has produced some interesting

results, including the recent elaborate monographs by Guō 2002b

and Yuán 2010, the state of research in the field of Classical

Chinese is more dissatisfying (cf. Miáo 1997, Zádrapa 2011:77–

92). Although a modest amount of work in this domain has been

done, starting already in Mǎ 1898, it has been rather

intermittent and fragmentary, and the long period in between,

i.e. beginning roughly with post-Hàn Chinese and ending with

Early Mandarin (Sòng era), remains practically unexplored in this

respect.

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The indigenous philological tradition (xiǎoxué 詞詞, especially the

xùngǔ 詞詞 branch) systematically recognizes two large types of

words – or, more precisely of “characters” (zì 詞) not clearly

distinguished from words and understood primarily as graphemic

units, since the notion of a word as conceived today was imported

from the West at the beginning of the 20th century. Since the

Sòng times, they have been often called shízì 詞詞, literally ‘full

characters’ (Dobson [1958:354] uses a Graeco-English calque

plerematic words, ultimately taken over from Copenhagen glossematics)

and xūzì 詞詞, ‘empty characters’ (Dobson’s cenematic words), though

the earlier designations for “empty characters”, such as cí 詞 or cí

詞 (since Eastern Hàn) or zhùzì 詞詞, yǔzhù 詞詞 etc. (since ca. 5th c.)

survived into early modern times as well (Pú 1987:457–459, Hé

1995:279, Dobson 1962:20). Basically, full characters mean

content words with a distinct lexical meaning that typically

refer to a thing, event or property in the extralinguistic

reality, while empty characters are mostly function or

grammatical words with much more abstract meanings, sometimes

depicted as merely relating the content words to each other or

lacking any meaning altogether (cf. Yuán 1710’s preface). Apart

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from that, these designations were occasionally used for nouns

and for verbs respectively (see Mǎ 2000 [1898]:19–21 for a

critique of such confusion). Likewise, since the Sòng, we also

encounter such terms as sǐzì 詞詞 ‘dead characters’ and huózì 詞詞 ‘live

characters’, which are employed for nouns or sometimes adjectives

and verbs respectively (Mǎ 2000 [1898]:19–21); some authors, such

as Jiǎ Chāngzhāo 詞詞詞 (997/8–1065; cf. Behr 2003), distinguish

dòngzì 詞詞 ‘action characters’, usually (transitive) verbs and jìngzì

詞詞 ‘still characters’, usually adjectives (or intransitive or

passivized verbs, but occasionally even nouns). This terminology

is far from consistent and well defined, with usage varying from

author to author, even within one period. The general distinction

between full and empty words has survived until today, and their

usefulness is sometimes recognized even by theoretical linguists

(see Haspelmath 2001:16539).

Despite the existence of such terms, they were not systematically

employed for description of the lexical or grammatical structure

of the language, except for the works concerned with readings of

characters in ancient texts and aimed at systematization of the

so-called pòdú 詞詞 or “split readings”, i.e. different readings of

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a single character according to its function in the sentence (see

Branner 2003). Nonetheless, explanation of function words later

evolved into a discipline of its own that gave rise to a series

of specialized works. These include such “dictionaries” as Lú

Yǐwěi’s 詞詞詞 Yǔzhù 詞詞 (1324), Yuán Rénlín’s 詞詞詞 Xūzìshuō 詞詞詞 (1710),

Liú Qí’s 詞詞 Zhùzì biànlǜe 詞詞詞詞 (1711) or Wáng Yǐnzhī’s 詞詞詞 Jīngzhuàn

shìcí 詞詞詞詞 (1789), which are often perceived as evidence for an

early interest of Chinese philologists in grammar. Mǎ Jiànzhōng 詞

詞詞 (1845–1900) draws upon this tradition throughout his Mǎshì

Wéntōng 詞詞詞詞 (1898), the first Chinese grammar, yet the system of

word classes is almost entirely adopted from Western sources

(Peyraube 2001 suggests that Mǎ’s primary source was specifically

the Grammaire de Port-Royal by Arnaud and Lancelot from 1660).

The word classes in Mǎ (2000:19–23) are to a large extent based

on semantic criteria, and although his conception has been

criticized by Chinese authors, who have seen it as a more or less

mechanical application of Western categories to a language onto

which they do not fit well, this approach has been dominating the

field until recently (see e.g. Cuī 1998). Western scholarship, on

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the other hand, is characterized by widely different opinions

regarding the very existence of word classes in Chinese, and

especially in Classical Chinese, including the extreme position

of denial (Mártonfi 1977 is one of the latest and most elaborate

“generative” efforts to support this stance), and by efforts to

rely purely on morphosyntactic criteria, often in accordance with

larger trends in the theory of language prevalent at a particular

time. Nevertheless, it seems that it is the basically functional

perspective and the emphasis put on tracing both the semantic and

syntactic aspects in their interplay that has turned out to be

the most fruitful way of dealing with them. This stance is shared

by specialists on Classical Chinese of last decades and converges

with several recent discourses on word classes in general

linguistics (Construction Grammar, Cognitive Grammar [cf.

Langacker 1987, 1991] etc.), and in typology (Evans 2000, Croft

2001, Anward 2001, Haspelmath 2001b). The model of neatly

delineated disjunctive Aristotelian categories has been mostly

abandoned (for Classical Chinese see Harbsmeier 1998:138; for

Modern Chinese cf. Guō 2002b and Yuán 2010), irrespective of the

dissensus regarding many other points (see e.g. the debate of

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Croft and Aarts, Croft 2007). The view that Classical Chinese

does not have word classes has become very marginal.

Unfortunately, the harm that this myth, having much in common

with orientalistic prejudices in other disciplines, has done to

sinology, especially to history of Chinese thought and even to

the perception of the mental predispositions of the Chinese in

general, has been immense.

Among the scholars who have dealt with the issue so far in a more

theoretically serious way we can count e.g. Humboldt (1827), Zhōu

(1961), Kennedy (1964), Cikoski (1970), Nikitina (1985),

Harbsmeier (1985), and Yīn (1997); a nice summary can be found in

Harbsmeier (1998), and lately there appeared new studies by Zhāng

(Wénguó) (2005), Bisang (2008) and Zádrapa (2011). Only Kennedy

tried to apply purely morhosyntactic criteria deliberately

dismissing semantic and lexical information and thus confusing

characters with words, and his attempt resulting in resignation

on the concept of word classes in Classical Chinese has usually

been considered practically unsuccessful (Zhōu 1961:24–39,

Cikoski 1970 passim, Zádrapa 2011:49–53). Apart from that, we have

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several systems of word classes introduced in various textbooks

and grammars, some of which are theoretically important, even

without much theoretical reflection (e.g. Gabelentz 1881,

Nikitina 1982, Gassmann and Behr 2011).

There are indeed some features of Classical Chinese that

complicate the task. First of all, it is the absence of

productive morphology that would systematically overtly and

unequivocally indicate word class affiliation of lexemes as such,

at least in the Eastern-Zhōu period, even if accept the recent

reconstructions of Old Chinese word-formative derivational

morphology (Baxter and Sagart 1998, Sagart 1999, Jīn 2006,

Schuessler 2007). Even those scholars who base themselves on the

medieval tradition of sound glosses and its “split readings” find

it difficult to assemble more than a handful of well attested

paradigms (cf. Sagart and Baxter 2011, Schuessler 2007, Gasmann

and Behr 2013), and the best attested affixes, such as the suffix

*-s (see Schuessler 1985, Mei 2012), are highly polyfunctional.

In addition, most of the reconstructed derivative processes seem

to belong to an earlier stage of the language, and many

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derivations of a single root came to be written by different and

often quite unrelated characters during later periods.

Another problem is the relatively high word class flexibility

(the phenomenon is analyzed in detail in Zádrapa 2011). Although

it has often been grossly exaggerated (Zhōu 1961:24–39; cf.

Zádrapa 2010:427 and Zádrapa 2014), it does contribute to the

relative messiness of the situation. Both mentioned factors are

interrelated and reinforce each other, and the notions of and

relationships between characters, words, polysemy, roots,

grammatical forms and syntactic constructions are still an

unsettled issue.

Apart from that, there is a complication of a more technical

nature. Absent morphological symptoms, distribution of the word

judged ideally against all constructions of the language, but

especially against those that encode the main propositional act

functions (reference, predication, modification). becomes the

absolutely crucial criterion. But the corpus of Classical

Chinese, even if we take into consideration excavated texts, is

limited and does not allow for a proper distributional analysis

of each lexical unit. Many words occur only several times and

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their word-class affiliation has to be assessed on the basis of

very modest evidence. Scholars often have to resort to looking

for support in ancient reference books, however methodologically

unsound this is. Consequently, the categorization of low

frequency words may be quite tentative.

In distributional analysis, some words co-occurring with the word

under investigation are traditionally and to a large extent

justly considered more important than others, because they

strongly indicate the function of the word in the text. These

“diagnostic characters” (jiànbiézì 詞詞詞) include such grammatical

words as the relative pronouns zhě 詞 and suǒ 詞, the 3p pronoun in

the object position zhī 詞, the negatives bù 詞 (non-nominal

predication) and fēi 詞 (nominal predication), the attributive

particle zhī 詞 and possessive 3p pronoun qí 詞, the modal-aspectual

sentence-final particles yě 詞 (nominal predication, static) and yǐ 詞

(perfective, dynamic), the aspectual-modal adverb wèi 詞 (‘not yet,

never, definitely not’), the aspectual adverbs jì 詞 and yǐ 詞 (both

perfective), or the conjuctions yǔ 詞 (basically nominal) and ér 詞

(basically predicative). However, not all of them are equally

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reliable markers as the grammatical meanings of many of them have

been extensively yet inconclusively discussed, most of them thus

have to be applied with caution. The strongest evidence is

provided by the negative bù 詞, which excludes nominal

predication, and the pronouns suǒ 詞 and zhī 詞, which can appear

exclusively with transitive verbs and coverbs (but zhī 詞 is

usually dropped with a coverb). There are other constructions of

a key value for recognition of the major word classes, such as

the counting construction with classifiers or measure words (for

nouns) and the constructions encoding degree (for adjectives).

Generally, two basic approaches can be distinguished – splitting

and lumping (Croft 2001:65–81): “lumpers” tend to work with a few

widely defined classes, which can be divided into subclasses if

necessary, while “splitters” prefer establishing many special

categories in their own right. Since distributional analysis, if

carried out properly, yields almost as many patterns as there are

words (Croft 2001:36–39, 83, Harbsmeier 1998:138 “categorial

continuum”, Guō 2002b:68 referring to Chén 1998), the distinction

is just a matter of a different descriptive perspective: the

lumper approach emphasizes similarities, while the splitter

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approach emphasizes differences in distribution. The present

research on word classes in Modern Chinese represents a

reasonable compromise in this respect – both Guō 2002b and Yuán

2010 define around twenty word classes. Their systems could serve

as an inspiration for the analysis of Classical Chinese, although

the two languages are far from structurally identical.

A word class can be described as a radially structured category

with typically fuzzy boundaries, graded membership and variable

centrality of members, often with overlaps with other categories.

While the category prototypes are universal, the structure and

boundaries of a word class are language-particular. For this

reason, designations such as “verb”, “noun” etc. are merely

conventional labels with only limited usefulness for cross-

linguistic comparison. Thus, the noun is the prototype of a class

of words that denote things, syntactically functioning most

commonly as subjects and objects. The verb is the prototype of a

class of words that denote actions that are predicated,

syntactically most frequently functioning as predicates; and the

adjective is the prototype of a category of words that typically

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denote properties that modify “nominal” concepts and

syntactically play the role of attributes (Croft 2001:87–88,

Anward 2001:727–728). In principle, minor parts of speech are

defined in a similar way, though sometimes with greater

difficulties.

Harbsmeier (1998:138) calls the tendency of words in Classical

Chinese to occur with a distinct set of functions functional

preference; Nikitina 1985 speaks of syntactic paradigms (this

concept has been recently applied on the Lǎozǐ 詞詞 in an exhaustive

analysis by Sehnal 2013, and it is also present in the

architecture of the Thesuarus Linguae Sericae database). Unlike in

inflecting languages, if a word is used in a non-prototypical

function, we usually cannot discern this from a change of its

form, but we may, due to the typological markedness, perceive a

functional “strain” (or “pragmatic markedness” in Bisang’s

terms), which always results in a semantic shift of varying

magnitude (cf. Croft’s “semantic shift universal”, 2001:73). Some

shifts appear to be more syntactic in nature and some more

lexical (Anward 2001:731–732) – this is pregnantly formulated for

Classical Chinese by Yīn (1997:30–31).

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Some of these extensions are systematic and some unsystematic,

resulting in systematic and unsystematic polysemy respectively

(Zádrapa 2011:99–105). In principle, syntactic extensions are

always systematic and unsystematic extensions always lexical.

However, many principally lexical extensions are semantically

relatively regular and at least partially paradigmatic. Also,

some uses of words in typologically marked positions may be

sanctioned by convention. Thus we find object-denoting words in

adnominal modification and in nominal predication, in which case

the semantic extension is simply the function of the respective

construction; similarly, action-denoting words are often found in

the role of syntactic subject and object, in which the action is

referred to (zǒu 詞 ‘to run’ → ‘running, that he runs etc.’).

Certain classes of words may exhibit systematic polysemy of a

more lexical type: e.g. primarily property-denoting words can by

convention be employed to denote entities that bear the

respective property. Thus, dà 詞 ‘(to be) big’ can be used not

only in the referring construction with the meaning ‘to be big,

being big, that it is big’, but also with the “absolutive”

meaning ‘a big one’. The principial difference between the two

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types of extension is captured by Zhū’s 1983 terms zìzhǐ 詞詞 ‘self-

reference’ and zhuǎnzhǐ 詞詞 ‘transferred reference’ respectively.

All this does not mean that words can have any function and

assume any meaning vaguely related to a core concept, and that

Classical Chinese thereby has no real word classes. These

extensions and functions are still governed by conventional

rules, not by universal pragmatic considerations.

Outside the scope of these fully systematic and predictable

extensions there are derivations that are not fully or not at all

paradigmatic, though the degree of paradigmaticity may vary

considerably for different semantic subclasses of lexemes

(Zádrapa 2011:136–146). For example, designations of social roles

or professions are quite systematically and predictably used

verbally with the meaning ‘to play the role of N’ or ‘to become a

N’, cf. xiàng 詞 ‘prime minister’ → ‘to become/be the prime

minister’; similarly, instrument nouns quite predictably occur as

denominal verbs with the meaning ‘to use N in the role of

instrument’, such as biān 詞 ‘whip’ → ‘to whip’. As far as we can

tell from Middle Chinese readings, lexical derivations of this

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type are seldom marked overtly (typically by the *-s suffix or by

voicing or devoicing of the initial consonant due to an earlier

prefix – see Handel 2012). The status of the extended use may

vary in the range between a hapax legomenon or “nonce-formation”

(e.g. chì 詞 ‘wings’ → ‘to flap wings’) and a fully lexicalized

combination of form and meaning (e.g. fǎ 詞 both ‘model, law’ and

‘to follow the model of’). There is disagreement among scholars

in the field as to whether such lexical item constitutes merely

another meaning of a polysemous lexeme or rather represents a

separate word – the latter stance is basically advocated e.g. by

Zhū (1984:38–39) or Zhāng (2000:150–163). Nevertheless, in

deciding this question, there are also other factors that come

into play, such as the absence vs. presence of differentiation of

the particular form-meaning pairings in sound (i.e. a possible

split reading) and/or in writing (typically by addition of a

semantic determiner). Among those who allow different meanings of

one single word pertain to different word classes, the term

jiānlèicí 詞詞詞 ‘words that belong to several classes’ is current (see

Zhāng 2005:354, Zhāng 1989:206–209 for discussion; see also Liáng

and Fēng 2006, Guō 2002b or Kwong and Tsou 2003 for Modern

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Chinese). This kind of lexical derivation (“zero-suffix

derivation”) seems to be rather the norm in morphologically poor

languages, and it can be quite reasonably compared to English

conversion (Harbsmeier 1998:124–126, 133); the fundamental

studies on English conversion, such as Clark and Clark 1979 or

Štekauer 1996, can thus be fruitfully exploited for description

of the phenomenon in Classical Chinese, as is demonstrated in

Zádrapa 2011. Word class flexibility observed in the pre-Qín

period was reduced first simply by gradual functional

specialization of lexemes, observable already during the Hàn

dynasty (Zhāng 2005), and also by proliferation of compound words

whose functional preference has been always much more rigid and

stable. This development eventually resulted in the modern system

in which the genuine word class flexibility is a rather rare

phenomenon.

Many of the aforementioned points can be demonstrated on the case

of adjectives. The question, whether Chinese in general possesses

a class that would deserve the conventional label of adjectives,

has been extensively debated in linguistics of Modern Chinese,

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and remains controversial until now (cf. e.g. Li and Thompson

1981, Hengeveld 1992, Lin 2004 vs. Xu 1998, Paul 2010). A number

of authors consider property-denoting words to be simply

intransitive verbs, and the same stance is reflected in the

syntactic categories established in the Thesaurus Linguae Sericae.

Although property-denoting words indeed have much in common with

verbs, most notably the inherent predicativity, it can be argued

in accordance with some latest contributions on the topic in

Modern Chinese (Xu 1998, Paul 2010) that they differ

substantially from intransitive verbs. This actually comes as no

surprise, since there is also a conceptual difference between a

state, i.e. an atemporal relation, and imperfective process

(Langacker 1987:214–222 and 254–261). From the point of view of

the basic defining traits, adjectives, unlike verbs, are

prototypically gradable and their prototypical propositional act

function is modification (Croft 2001:87–88). Thus, the

possibility of occurrence of a word in a comparative construction

is one of the strong indicators of adjectivity: whereas we can

say xiàng dà yú quǎn 詞詞詞詞 ‘the elephant is bigger than the dog’,

nothing comparable can be done with e.g. zǒu 詞 ‘to run’ or mèi 詞

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‘to sleep’. The fact that a few verbs, such as ài 詞 ‘to love, to

tale loving care of’, can be graded too only confirms that the

categories variously overlap and have fuzzy boundaries. Further,

when we look at the Yīn’s (1997:28) detailed statistics for the

Lǚshì Chūnqiū 詞詞詞詞, we can see that verbs only exceptionally occur

as adnominal (0.8 % of occurrences of verbs, 6 % of all unmarked

adnominal modification) or adverbal (0.06 % of occurrences of

verbs, 1 % of all adverbial modification, 2.7 % of all adverbial

modification with time nouns and localizers excluded) modifiers,

while adjectives as traditionally understood quite freely modify

nouns (22.7 % of occurrences of adjectives, 38.4 % of all

unmarked adnominal modification) as well as predicates (if we

exclude time words and localizers, 81.6 % of all adverbial

modification is executed by adjectives, without doing so it is

31.3 %). This is a crucial distinction. On the other hand, the

strong affinity to verbs can be seen from the fact that

adjectives most frequently function as non-nominal predicates

(38.7 % of all occurrences of adjectives). It is remarkable that

the most frequent adnominal modifiers are nouns, not adjectives,

which is also in accordance with the observation by Nikitina

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(1985:235). Apart from that, the range of systematic derivations

is different for both classes: while adjectives can be used 1.

absolutively (dà 詞 ‘big’ → ‘a big one’), 2. causatively (→‘to

make big’), and 3. putatively (→‘to consider big’), intransitive

verbs can usually be used only in the causative construction. All

this points to important structural distinctions between the two

categories and supports establishing a separate major word class.

There are some well-established word classes that are not common

in the European grammarian tradition and deserve special

attention. These include most importantly localizers (fāngwèicí 詞詞

詞), state words (zhuàngtàicí 詞詞詞), classifiers (liàngcí 詞詞), and

sentence particles (yǔqìcí 詞詞詞).

Localizers is a small closed set of words indicating basic

orientation in space: shàng 詞 ‘above’, xià 詞 ‘below’, qián 詞 ‘in

front of’, hòu 詞 ‘behind’, zuǒ 詞 ‘left’, yòu 詞 ‘right’, nèi 詞

‘inside’, wài 詞 ‘outside’, zhōng 詞 ‘in’, jiān 詞 ‘between’, cè 詞

‘side’, páng 詞 ‘side’, dōng 詞 ‘east’, xī 西 ‘west’, nán 詞 ‘south’,

běi 詞 ‘north’, and occasionally a handful of others (cf. Yīn

1997:72). They are characterized by an extraordinarily high

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flexibility, occurring freely as spatial nouns, motion verbs,

adnominal and adverbial modifiers and post-positions (if we do

not consider them the head in such typical constructions as shān

xià 詞詞 ‘mountain’ + ‘below’ = ‘under the mountain’). Also, unlike

nouns, they practically never take on the marker of adnominal

modification 詞 (cf. Yīn 1997:50).

State words have strong affinities to adjectives; they are words

expressing or evoking a state or appearance, very often on the

basis of phonaestetic principles, and they typically take on a

syllabic suffix, such as rán 詞, yān 詞, ěr 詞, hú 詞 (Künstler 1967) –

cf. qīqīyān 詞詞詞 ‘with satisfaction’ or mángmángrán 詞詞詞

‘weary/wearily’. They occur exclusively as either adverbial

modifiers or descriptive predicates and cannot be negated nor

graded.

Classifiers serve to count nouns, e.g. mǎ sān pǐ 詞詞詞 ‘horse’ +

‘three’ + CLF, or, more precisely, “individuate whatever they

refer to in term of the kind of entity that it is” (Lyons

1977:463; for more details see Aikhenvald 2000). They are well

attested since the earliest records on the late Shāng dynasty

oracle bone inscriptions (13th c. BCE), but unlike in Modern

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Chinese, they are not obligatory in the counting construction

(their absence is the norm), and if employed, the numeral with

the classifier usually come after the counted noun (only 3 % pre-

nominally in the Mèngzǐ 詞詞 according to Yang-Drocourt 2004; Warring

States grave inventories have the ratio approximately 2 : 1 in

favour of the post-nominal position [Wáng 2002]). Also, the

repertoire is much smaller and not as well differentiated, and

there does not exist a general classifier equivalent to the

present-day gè 詞 in the pre-imperial era; from the Hàn on, it was

the measure word méi 詞 that came to acquire such function (see

Zhāng (Wànqǐ) 2000). In the post-classical period, the use of

measure words gradually became systematized and obligatory, the

counting complex moved more regularly to the pre-nominal position

and particular measure words became much more specialized,

eventually functioning as real, i.e. “sortal” classifiers. Unlike

Modern Chinese, Old Chinese basically did not know measure words

quantifying events (“verbal classifiers”; this traditional view

has been recently questioned e.g. by Yè and Luó 2007, but Yáng

2009 shows that their evidence is not convincing).

Particles usually subsumed under the label of “modal” particles

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(yǔqìcí 詞詞詞) in the Chinese grammatical tradition have been viewed

as a special feature of Chinese at least since Mǎ Jiànzhōng

(2000:323). Of course, such a view seems justified in comparison

with Indo-European languages, but not so with many other

languages of the region. They are usually seen as a word class

whose members cannot function as syntactic constituents, do not

express a relationship between clauses or sentences (like

conjunctions) nor between sentence constituents (like “structural

particles”), but rather convey modality of the whole sentence or

clause; in fact, they often have other functions as well, mainly

aspectual (Pulleyblank) and discursive ones (cf. also Liú 2007,

2008). Particles are sometimes futher divided into sentence-

initial and sentence-final particles, but there are also

sentence-internal topic markers and similar particles that do not

always fit the categorization neatly. They are omnipresent and

the repertoite is relatively rich, yet the domain is grossly

underresearched, despite the generations of traditional

philologists commenting on their occurrence in the canon (see the

excursion on the history of research of “empty characters”). We

do have many dictionaries of particles and their combinations,

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which are quite common (Yáng 1981, Hé et al. 1985, Wáng et al.

1996, Gǔdài Hànyǔ xūcí cídiǎn 1999), but those are not a substitute

for a systematic survey in a really modern linguistic framework,

which is much rarer (e.g. parts of Hé 2004 for the Zuǒzhuàn and

parts of Zhāng 2011 for excavated texts could be counted as such;

in the West, Dobson 1974 has been unfortunately considered as an

infelicitous attempt). Moreover, scholars quite often disagree

with each other regarding their interpretation. The finely

nuanced but highly variable meanings of particles are notoriously

hard to grasp, and they therefore represent the level of the

language and texts that tends to be most neglected and that most

evades our attention and understanding.

References:Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., Classifiers. A typology of nound categorization devices.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Anward, Jan, “Typology of Morphological and Morphosyntactic Categories:

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