《子路》 Passage 13.22

the Master said

• 子 Master, honorific title for Confucius
• 曰 said, spoke (introduces reported speech)

southerners, people of the south

• 南 south, southern
• 人 people, person

to have a saying, there is a saying (that goes)

• 有 there is, to have (introduces the existence of something)
• 言 words, saying, speech

verb introducing a direct quotation: says, goes

English introduces the quoted saying directly with a colon or comma after 'have a saying' rather than translating a separate reporting verb.

a person, one (generic subject)

conditional conjunction: if

Most translators recast the conditional clause as a relative or participial phrase ("who lacks," "lacking") instead of translating 而 as a separate word; only Watson renders it explicitly as "If."

to lack, be without

constancy, steadfastness of character

Roberts renders this as 'a steady mind' rather than 'constancy'.

cannot, may not

1. 不 bù

   not

2. 可以 kě yǐ

   can, be able to, be permitted to

   • 可 can, be able to (modal auxiliary)
   • 以 modal particle: can, may (from 'by means of')

   English fuses the negation 不 and the modal 可以 into one word ('cannot'/'will not'), so the same span is quoted for both units.

to become, act as, take up (a role)

shaman-doctor, shaman healer

• 巫 shaman, spirit-medium
• 醫 healer, physician, doctor

well said, well put, good

exclamatory final particle: indeed

Legge, Slingerland, Peimin Ni, and Lau treat 夫 as a plain exclamation carried only by the punctuation mark; Watson and Chin instead read it as a rhetorical tag question.

inconstant in, lacking constancy in

不恆其德，或承之羞 is the 九三 line statement of hexagram 32 恆 in the 易經, quoted here as a second saying; Ames & Rosemont and Chin mark the source, and the Master's 不占而已矣 comments on it.

1. 不 bù

   not

2. 恆 héng

   to be constant, steadfast (in one's virtue)

his, its (possessive pronoun)

virtue, moral character

perhaps, probably (epistemic modal adverb)

Translators split between reading 或 as an epistemic adverb (perhaps, probably, likely) and as an indefinite subject; Peimin Ni's "always" is an outlier reading.

to receive, incur, be visited with

resumptive object pronoun: it

only Ames & Rosemont renders it explicitly as "it.".

shame, disgrace

the Master said

• 子 Master, honorific title for Confucius
• 曰 said, spoke (introduces reported speech)

not

to divine, prognosticate (esp. from a Yijing line statement)

A crux. 鄭玄: the Yi yields no prognostication for a man without constancy. 楊時/朱熹: such a man simply never divines. Legge construes it as failing to attend to the prognostication, and marks his own reading as one option among several.

only, that's all, nothing more than that

• 而 particle marking limitation: only, merely, that is all
• 已 particle marking limitation: only, merely, nothing more

final particle marking assertion or completion

its work is already carried by 而已's 'simply/that's all'.