虛詞 Function Words
Common particles, with examples from the Analects
虛詞 do grammatical work — marking possession, mood, aspect, and relation — rather than naming things. The traditional split from 實詞 (content words) is not a sharp one: 之 can be a demonstrative, 其 a pronoun. The difficulty is not that they are missing from dictionaries but that a single character does several jobs, and only its position relative to the surrounding words tells you which.
Choose a character for its senses, every occurrence in the book, and how much of it reaches English. Hover or tap any Chinese for a gloss.
3774 occurrences across these 21 words, each read in its own passage.
之 之 is the most common character in the whole book, and it has three jobs as a grammatical particle. It stands in for “him”, “her”, or “it” after a verb. It links two words the way 的 does in modern Mandarin, so X之Y is “the Y of X”. And it turns a short sentence into a phrase you can talk about. Every so often it is a real verb meaning “to go”, which is the fourth sense counted below, but don’t expect to run into that one much. 613× · 4 senses 也 If you’ve studied modern Mandarin, the first thing to do with 也 is forget what you know. It does not mean “also” anywhere in The Analects. Here it’s a spoken full stop: the speaker is making a statement, not asking a question or making a suggestion, but stating a fact or an opinion. And it doubles as a pause after naming the thing you’re about to talk about. 532× · 3 senses 者 This is the same 者 you already know from modern Mandarin words like 記者, reporter, and 作者, author. Stick it after a verb or a quality and you get the person it describes: 知者 is “the one who knows”, the way English “-er” turns “run” into “runner”. Its other job is to hold a word up for definition, X者，Y也, “an X, that’s a Y.” That second job didn’t survive into the modern language, but the first one is alive and well. 219× · 2 senses 乎 A busy little word. At the end of a sentence it asks a question, like modern 嗎, or adds a burst of feeling, like 啊. In the middle of a sentence it’s a stand-in for 於: “in”, “at”, “to”, “than”. The trick is to look at where it sits before deciding what it’s doing. 158× · 4 senses 而 This is the word that joins two actions, and it can mean “and”, “and then”, “but”, or “yet”. Nothing in the character tells you which. You have to look at whether the two halves pull the same way or against each other. Spoken Mandarin mostly dropped it, but it’s alive in written compounds like 而且 and 然而. 343× · 4 senses 矣 This is the ancestor of modern 了. It tells you something has happened, or that a new situation has arrived. Its opposite number is 也, which marks what simply is rather than what has become. I’ll admit it has about ten different uses if you go looking, but the one thing they share is that feeling of a change that’s now complete. 181× · 1 sense 焉 One syllable that packs in “in it”, “to him”, “there”. It’s 於 (in, at, to) and 之 (it, him) fused together, sitting at the end of the clause. A separate use, in front of the verb, means “how” or “where” in questions that already know their answer. And a few times it’s just a sound that rounds off the sentence. 88× · 3 senses 其 其 has four jobs. Mostly it’s “his”, “her”, “its”, “their”, where modern Chinese says 他的. With a verb after it instead of a noun, it’s plain “he”, “they”, “it”. A third, smaller job is softening a sentence to “perhaps”, “probably”, “surely”, a little the way 吧 softens one today. And it sits inside a fixed frame, 與其⋯寧, “rather than”. 270× · 4 senses 以 This is the verb “to use”, worn down into a connecting word: “with”, “using”, “by”, “in order to”. Modern 用 and 以便 split its work between them. The thing being used usually comes right after it, and every so often it comes in front instead. 211× · 5 senses 於 This is the all-purpose preposition: “at”, “in”, “to”, “from”, “than”, one word covering most of what English prepositions do between them. Modern Chinese splits its work among 在, 到, 從, and 比. Always good to stay flexible with this one. The verb in front of it and the noun after it decide which English word you need. 175× · 5 senses 則 “Then”, linking a condition to what follows from it. It’s exactly the job modern 就 does. Once in the book it’s something else entirely, a verb meaning “to take as one’s model”, 唯堯則之. 124× · 3 senses 與 One character, three readings, six jobs. Read yǔ, it’s the conjunction “and”, the preposition “with”, the verb “give”, and half of the frame 與其⋯寧, “rather than”. Read yù, it’s the verb “take part in”, as in 吾不與祭. Read yú, at the end of a sentence, it asks a question more gently than 乎 does, or floats a guess. 144× · 5 senses 然 然 means “so”, “thus”, “like this”. On its own it can be the whole answer, “yes”. Glued to another syllable it makes an adverb, the way English “-ly” does. And in 然後 and 然則 it’s the connective “then”. This is one you’ll recognize from modern Mandarin straight away. 38× · 4 senses 諸 諸 has three jobs, and two of them are the same trick. Before a noun it means “the various”, as in 諸侯, the various lords, and that’s the meaning it still has today. The other two are contractions: 之於, “it to”, squeezed into one syllable between a verb and a noun, and 之乎, “it” plus a question mark, at the end of a question. Think “do not” and “don’t”. 43× · 4 senses 哉 An exclamatory final particle expressing strong emotion - wonder, admiration, lament, or emphasis. Often follows 乎 or 矣 for intensification. 61× · 1 sense · coming soon 斯 A joining word, "then" — "you want ren, and THEN ren arrives" — and a pointing word, "this," like modern 這. The two shade into each other, and the book uses them in almost equal measure. 71× · 2 senses · coming soon 所 Turns a verb into "the thing that gets verbed": 所好 is "what is loved," not "the one who loves." It is the mirror of 者 — 愛者 the lover, 所愛 the loved. English "what" usually covers it. 50× · 2 senses · coming soon 是 The demonstrative "this". It is not yet the regular copula of later Chinese, and a modern reader will misparse it: where it looks like "is", it is the demonstrative subject of an equational sentence, and the copular work is done by 也. 60× · 3 senses · coming soon 夫 Three jobs: raising a topic at the start of a sentence, adding a sigh at its close, and pointing as a demonstrative — 夫人, "that man". All read fú, distinct from 夫 (fū) in 夫子, "the Master", which is an ordinary noun. 105× · 5 senses · coming soon 何 The interrogative — what, why, how. Its meaning is constant; the difficulty is the frames it appears in, since two of them wrap around their object. 118× · 2 senses · coming soon 為 Two words sharing one character. Read wéi it means to act as, to practise, to be; read wèi it means for the sake of. Tone decides which, and only context reveals the tone. 170× · 5 senses · coming soon