The term "Classical Chinese" refers to the written language of the classical period of Chinese literature, from the end of the Spring and Autumn period (early 5th century BC) to the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC—or in a broader sense to the end of the Han dynasty in 220 AD. "Classical Chinese" is also often used for the higher language register used in writing during most of the following centuries, a register generally referred to as "Literary Chinese"; this article focuses on the grammar used during the classical period.
This article uses modern Standard Chinese readings of characters, following the common practice among scholars, even though it is also possible to read Classical Chinese using the literary readings of other modern Chinese varieties—for example, Cantonese readings are common in Hong Kong—or even a historical reconstruction of character readings used in previous centuries.
Classical Chinese's most obvious contrast with modern written vernacular Chinese is that the former rarely uses words of more than one character; nearly all Classical words are one character in length. This stands directly in contrast with vernacular Chinese, in which two-character words are extremely common. This phenomenon exists in part because compounding was used to resolve ambiguities as sound changes created homophones among words.
Unlike Old Chinese, Classical Chinese has long been noted for the absence of inflectional morphology: nouns and adjectives do not inflect for case, definiteness, gender, specificity or number; neither do verbs inflect for person, number, tense, aspect, telicity, valency, evidentiality or voice. However, in terms of derivational morphology, it makes use of compounding, reduplication and perhaps affixation, although not in a productive way. There is also an extensive use of zero-derivation.
The basic constituent order of Classical Chinese is subject-verb-object (SVO), but is not fully consistent: there are particular situations where the VS and OV word orders appear. Topic-and-comment constructions are often used. Neither a topic, nor the subject nor objects are mandatory, being often dropped when their meaning is understood (pragmatically inferable), and copular sentences often do not have a verb.
Within a noun phrase, demonstratives, quantifying determiners, adjectives, possessors and relative clauses precede the head noun, while cardinal numbers can appear before or after the noun they modify. Within a verb phrase, adverbs usually appear before a verb. The language, as analyzed in this article, uses coverbs (in a serial verb construction) and postpositions. Classical Chinese makes heavy use of parataxis where English would use a dependent clause; however, there are means to form dependent clauses, some of which appear before the main clause while others appear after. There are also a number of sentence-final particles.
Two simple coordinated nouns can be joined with a conjunction, but this is not always the case. This, combined with the fact that two nouns in a possessor-possessed construction are not always marked for their functions either, can lead to ambiguity: Chinese: 山林 (literally: "mountain forest") could mean either "mountains and forests" or "the forest of a mountain".
With the absence of inflectional morphology, Classical Chinese is largely a zero-marking language, except that possessors and relative clauses are usually dependent-marked with a grammatical particle.
Negation is achieved by placing a negative particle before the verb. Yes–no questions are marked with a sentence-final particle, while wh-questions are marked with in-situ interrogative pronouns. There are a number of passive constructions, but passives are sometimes not marked differently from active constructions, at least when written.
The Classical Chinese lexicon has been traditionally divided into two large categories: content words (Chinese: 實字, literally: "substantial words") and function words (Chinese: 虛字, literally: "empty words"). Scholars of Classical Chinese grammar notably disagree on how to further divide these two categories exactly, but a classification using word classes similar to those of Latin (noun, adjective, verb, pronoun, etc.) has been common. However, this remains debated, as many words can be used as multiple parts of speech. Examples shown below.
While an English sentence can be divided into active voice or passive voice depending on the form of the verb within the sentence, the verbs in classical Chinese have several usages based on the relationship between the verb and the object. These are separated into usage (; original meaning), usage, usage, and (; "passive") usage. Moreover, a verb does not change its form at different situations, with the exception of the beidong usage of verbs. Within the examples shown below, the words located within parentheses do not appear in the original Chinese sentence.
In classical Chinese, it is common for nouns or adjectives to be used as verbs or adjectives, and most of these cases involve a yidong usage of verbs.One peculiarity is that a word that is originally a verb does not share the same usage. In addition, there are slight differences in meaning between the noun and the adjective in the usage.
For a noun, it becomes an action done by the subject which indicates the subjects opinion about the object in the form "consider (object) as + (the noun)".
For an adjective, it becomes an observation in the form of "consider (object) (the adjective)".
In this case, nouns, verbs and adjectives share usage, but with different meanings.
For a noun, it means "make ... + (the noun)". For instance:
Literal translation: (Fulfilling the agreement that) the person who defeated the Qin dynasty and entered Xianyang first, [people] would king him.
(Note: Such scenarios are rare, though historical cases exist in ancient China. The translation of the sentence is rather controversial; the interpretation provided above represents the most widespread consensus.)
For a verb, it could mean "make... + do/done/to do", depending on the sentence. For instance:
Literal translation: (The music was so sad that) cry the widow in a lonely boat
Semantic translation: (The music was so sad that it) made the widow in a lonely boat cry.
For an adjective, it means "make... + (the adjective)". For instance:
Literal translation: Since you have been here, then calm yourself here
Semantic translation: Since you have been here, make yourself calm here.
The following examples demonstrate weidong usage of verbs. Such usage may occur:
Chinese: 等死，'''死'''國可乎？
Literal translation: It's equally death (delay for work and protest the rule of the Qin dynasty), is die country an option?
Semantic translation: It's death in any case, is dying for the country an option?
Chinese: 便'''苦'''咳嗽
Literal translation: He suffer(v.) cough
Semantic translation: He suffered from a cough.
Chinese: 自'''序'''其詩
Literal translation: Himself introduction his own poem
Semantic translation: He wrote the introduction to his own poem .
Chinese: '''泣'''之三日
Literal translation: Cry it for three days
Semantic translation: Cry over it for three days.
Pronouns can be separated into the following groups:
| 吾, 我, 余, 予, 朕 | ||
| 2nd person | 爾, 汝/女, 而, 若 | |
|---|---|---|
| 3rd person | 之 (accusative), 其 (genitive) |
Classical Chinese did not distinguish number in some of its pronouns, for example, 我 could mean either 'I, me' or 'we, us'. There was no 3rd-person personal pronoun form that could be used in subject position, but the distal demonstrative 彼 'that, those' and the anaphoric demonstrative 是 frequently take that role.
The use of some nouns as pronoun-like terms is also attested. Common examples in texts are the humble 臣 'servant' in the 1st person, and 子 'son; master' in the 2nd person.
Classical Chinese interrogative pronouns and adverbs are notably polysemic, many of them bearing multiple meanings.
| Classical Chinese | Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| 誰 | who | |
| 孰 | which | |
| 何 | what, why, how | |
| 曷 | when, what | |
| 奚, 胡 | where, how, why | |
| 安, 焉 | where, how | |
| 盍 | why not | |
| 惡/烏 | where, in what |
An example where this polysemy is exploited is found in a tale in the Zhuangzi (chapter 17). Zhuangzi is asked "how do you know this?" (with the interrogative 安), but being unable to answer the question, intentionally misinterprets it as "where did you (get to) know this?".[1]
The usual order of core constituents in Classical Chinese is subject, verb, and direct object (SVO).
Important exceptions to this basic order exist. When a verb is negated, a personal pronoun serving as the direct object is placed between the negative particle and the verb, leading to OV order.
Interrogative pronouns similarly generally precede the verb when they're the direct object.
Exclamatory sentences, often but not necessarily marked with 哉, can optionally invert the order of the predicate's verbal phrase and the subject, leaving the subject afterwards.
In the latter example, the predicate's verbal phrase is 惡在 "to be/lie where", while the following words (until 也) are the subject.
When the topic-and-comment construction is used, the topic phrase (which expresses what a sentence "is about": "Regarding this person...", "As for this thing...") goes at the front (start) of the sentence, often but not always marked with a topic particle, alternatively repeated by a resumptive pronoun.
Classical Chinese typically does not use a copula verb to express positive nominal predication ("X is a/the Y"). Instead, it places two noun phrases (one of which could be a pronoun) followed by a final particle, usually 也 . The particle can be omitted but rarely is.
It is the above kind of sentence, with 是 serving to repeat the topic as a resumptive pronoun, that later led to the use of 是 as a copula (already in texts of the early Han dynasty).
However, Classical Chinese did not lack copula verbs, as it not only had the negative copula 非 (used to express "X is not Y"), but also the positive 為 . The final particle is commonly optional when these verbs are used.