Classical Chinese for Everyone by Van Norden Bryan W.;

Author:Van Norden, Bryan W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated
Published: 2019-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

6.3.5. Unmarked Subordination

In both English and Chinese, grammatical subordination of one phrase to another is often marked by a conjunction, like 如 rú, “if,” or 雖 suī, “although.” However, both languages also have contexts in which subordination is unmarked, usually for rhetorical or poetic purposes. Think of Caesar’s famous “I came, I saw, I conquered.” What he really means is, “I came, and then I saw what was there, and then I conquered it.” More prosaically, in English, “Do the crime, serve the time,” means “if you do the crime, then you will serve the time.” Grammarians call this phenomenon parataxis (when the clauses are coordinate) or hypotaxis (when one of the clauses is subordinate to the other).10

The first two pairs of clauses from the Dào dé jīng illustrate hypotaxis. The first one is equivalent to something like “If 道可道, then 非恆道,” or “道可道, but 非恆道.” We find a similar construction in Analects 8.1:

是可忍也。孰不可忍也。

Shì kě rěn yě. Shú bù kě rěn yě.

忍 rěn s.v., to endure

孰 shú n., what . . . ? (interrogative pronoun)

This can be endured. What cannot be endured?

If this can be endured, then what cannot be endured?

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