《子罕》 Passage 9.31

wild cherry, a flowering shrub

• 唐 first syllable of 唐棣, a flowering shrub, perhaps wild cherry
• 棣 second syllable of 唐棣 (tángdì), a flowering shrub, perhaps wild cherry

Species disputed among translators: also rendered aspen-plum (Legge) and juneberry (Roberts).

possessive/modifying particle: of

flower, blossom

fluttering, swaying (of blossoms in the wind)

Read as a loan for 翩 (flutter); its ordinary sense is 'leaning to one side'.

it, they (pronoun referring to the blossoms)

turning back and forth, swaying

verse-final exclamatory particle

rhetorical question particle: how could it be that... not, surely

not

you (fronted object of 'think of')

to think of, think about

house, home

copula: is

far, distant

verse-final exclamatory particle

the Master said

• 子 Master, teacher (a term of respect, here referring to Confucius)
• 曰 said, spoke

negation-assertion frame: has not, did not (really, at all)

• 未 not, has not (negates the verb that follows)
• 也 final particle of assertion

也 lends the negation its assertive force; most translators render the pair together as an emphatic 'not really' rather than giving 也 its own word.

it, her (object of 'think of', referring to the matter just described)

to think of, consider

discourse-initial particle marking a rhetorical turn: now, then

English recasts the rhetorical turn as a conditional clause ('if he did...') rather than lexicalizing the particle itself.

rhetorical frame: what... is there?, how could there be...?

• 何 what, how (interrogative pronoun, fronted object of the verb 有)
• 之 resumptive particle marking the fronted object before 有 — Part of the classical 何X之有 fronting construction ('what X is there?'); it has no lexical meaning of its own here, unlike 之 at index 27.
• 有 to have, exist; there is, there would be

Modeled on 何陋之有 (9.14): 之 here only marks the fronted object 何遠 and is not itself translated; Roberts restructures the whole clause into a declarative and drops the frame.

far, distant