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the first in an adjectival sense (人, “human being,” being used as an adjective, “human”).
It is, of course, common, to find A+R phrases that are composed of an adjective
preceding a noun, as in English or MC.

1.3 Ellipsed subjects
舍其路而弗由

In WYW, it is far more common to construct sentences without explicit subjects than in
English, or even than in MC. In such cases, we say the subject is “ellipsed” (“ellipse”
means “omit”). In the sentence above, we need to ask what the qí refers to. The only
antecedent subjects available are rén 仁 and yì 義, and neither of these candidates will
serve the sentence well. In fact, here qí 其 seems to be resuming the modifier of lù 路,
that is, rén 人. The ellipsed subject is also rén 人, even though it has not previously
served as a subject in this passage – we must infer it from context.

Thus the fully explicated sentence phrase would read:

人 舍 人 之 路
|_| |_| |________|
S V O

Most of the time, the identity of ellipsed subjects is obvious (that’s why they can be
ellipsed). But if you are having trouble understanding a sentence or phrase, check to see
whether you may not have presumed the wrong subject.

1.4 Juxtaposed Root-words (R+R)
雞犬

This phrase, which is actually a binome, exemplifies a unique feature (well, at least a neat
feature) of WYW. Although it is composed of two juxtaposed nouns, and so resembles an
A+R phrase (as in 1.2 above), it is not. In this structure, the juxtaposed nouns are more
tightly bound together and there is no modifying adjunct. Rather, the two words are
combined in order to point towards a third concept. The structure may be best conveyed
through further illustration:

牛馬 níumă: [cow + horse =] livestock

山水 shanshǔi: [mountain + water =] landscape

干戈 gange: [spear + halberd =] warfare

R+R binomes may also be composed of words other than nouns: