[Multilingual Monday] Archaic Chinese, Negation, And Mood
Pre-classical Chinese is a curious beast for me. My inexperience with Classical Chinese (outside of various writings I've procured that were written by the Japanese in CC) yet my knowledge that no one spoke the way they wrote in, say, the seventeenth century led me to believe that the language was spoken the way it was written centuries before Christ, and that the spoken language changed while the written script -- the script unifying the lands of the Middle Kingdom -- stayed the same.
Yeah, it's not QUITE like that. Though, indeed, the written form became what Latin had become in medieval times in Europe, before what we refer to as Classical (or Literary) Chinese there were several periods where the written syntax was quite different. Author W.A.C.H. Dobson, in the sixties, did a number of write-ups involving pre-Classical Chinese forms (some of which I'm still working on getting my hands on!). While his writing can be sometimes "out of reach" -- what the hell is a "pregnant form" of a pronoun??? -- the wealth of information and study are enough to make me squeal with glee. It's fascinating to see that, as the writing evolves, how exactly the characters change in meaning, or shift in usage. Eventually many of the characters develop meanings that equal their usage in Japanese, yet in modern Chinese those same characters either no longer have that same meaning, or have fallen out of usage altogether.
One of the most fascinating aspects to me was the use, up to the Late Han period of Chinese, of using the negative to also reflect a sentence's mood. I had always wondered why so many "negative" characters existed, and in varying ancient texts -- from the Book of Songs to the works of Mencius -- various character reflect not only that the verb is being negated, but other aspects of the sentence:
不 - this is the current negating syllable in Mandarin Chinese (except for words like 有), and had been used as a standard indicative negation, before other negatives' usage became weak and imprecise. As this happened this one negative became a "do-all" ... well, a "do-most".
弗 - this was a strenghtened form of the above. Kind of an "absolutely not, under no circumstances".
未 - This had different meanings at different times; at one point it negated experience of an instance rather than whether or not it happened; it slowly morphed into "not yet" (its current Japanese meaning).
匪 - This, and at one point the above character, both meant "never"
否 - Curiously, there's not a true "yes" or "no" in Mandarin Chinese as we do in English or in other languages, though in Late Archaic Chinese this character served to indicate as a negative reply. By the Late Han period this had fallen into disuse.
毋, 勿 - Regular and stressed forms, indicated a command or indicated what one shouldn't do.
罔,靡,無 - These marked the subjunctive, indicating that the situation being described isn't actually happening, but rather that the action is just a possibility or a hope. "May x not happen".
Of course these all had characters that could act as positive mood indicators (有, 庶, 猶, or 如, among others, could indicate the subjunctive positive mood; 上, 尚, 必, or 義, among others could indicate a positive command or suggestion). However, several of these characters dropped from usage (or at least became "fossilized" to certain phrases only), leaving 不 (in combination with other words) to get ideas like "shouldnt", "mustn't," "never", etc. And I wonder: in modern Chinese is there even still a subjunctive? I don't ever see anyone describing it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't currently exist. Mandarin speakers? Prove me wrong. :: laugh ::
Yeah, it's not QUITE like that. Though, indeed, the written form became what Latin had become in medieval times in Europe, before what we refer to as Classical (or Literary) Chinese there were several periods where the written syntax was quite different. Author W.A.C.H. Dobson, in the sixties, did a number of write-ups involving pre-Classical Chinese forms (some of which I'm still working on getting my hands on!). While his writing can be sometimes "out of reach" -- what the hell is a "pregnant form" of a pronoun??? -- the wealth of information and study are enough to make me squeal with glee. It's fascinating to see that, as the writing evolves, how exactly the characters change in meaning, or shift in usage. Eventually many of the characters develop meanings that equal their usage in Japanese, yet in modern Chinese those same characters either no longer have that same meaning, or have fallen out of usage altogether.
One of the most fascinating aspects to me was the use, up to the Late Han period of Chinese, of using the negative to also reflect a sentence's mood. I had always wondered why so many "negative" characters existed, and in varying ancient texts -- from the Book of Songs to the works of Mencius -- various character reflect not only that the verb is being negated, but other aspects of the sentence:
不 - this is the current negating syllable in Mandarin Chinese (except for words like 有), and had been used as a standard indicative negation, before other negatives' usage became weak and imprecise. As this happened this one negative became a "do-all" ... well, a "do-most".
弗 - this was a strenghtened form of the above. Kind of an "absolutely not, under no circumstances".
未 - This had different meanings at different times; at one point it negated experience of an instance rather than whether or not it happened; it slowly morphed into "not yet" (its current Japanese meaning).
匪 - This, and at one point the above character, both meant "never"
否 - Curiously, there's not a true "yes" or "no" in Mandarin Chinese as we do in English or in other languages, though in Late Archaic Chinese this character served to indicate as a negative reply. By the Late Han period this had fallen into disuse.
毋, 勿 - Regular and stressed forms, indicated a command or indicated what one shouldn't do.
罔,靡,無 - These marked the subjunctive, indicating that the situation being described isn't actually happening, but rather that the action is just a possibility or a hope. "May x not happen".
Of course these all had characters that could act as positive mood indicators (有, 庶, 猶, or 如, among others, could indicate the subjunctive positive mood; 上, 尚, 必, or 義, among others could indicate a positive command or suggestion). However, several of these characters dropped from usage (or at least became "fossilized" to certain phrases only), leaving 不 (in combination with other words) to get ideas like "shouldnt", "mustn't," "never", etc. And I wonder: in modern Chinese is there even still a subjunctive? I don't ever see anyone describing it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't currently exist. Mandarin speakers? Prove me wrong. :: laugh ::