Page 23 - EALC C306/505

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“Duke, high minister, grandee: these are the offices of man.”

Topics are not subjects – they are best thought of as introductory adjunct clauses that
have the effect of saying, “Here’s what the upcoming sentence has in mind as the
background topic upon which it will comment.” In the case of the sentence we have been
considering, the topic is, in fact, identical to the subject (此 simply “resumes” the topic
and fixes it in the subject position). But consider the following very similar sentence:

公卿大夫人善之矣

“Duke, high minister, grandee: people consider these [ranks] to be good.”

Here, the identical topic is not equivalent to the subject of the sentence, it is, instead,
equivalent to the object of the verb shàn 善 (represented in the sentence by 之). The
subject of this sentence is rén 人; gong qing dà-fu 公卿大夫 is resumed by zhi 之.

公卿大夫 人 善之 矣
|________| |__| |____|
Topic S V-O [O=Topic]
|______________|

In WYW, it is extremely common for sentences to begin with topics, and one very
productive way to approach a sentence which you find difficult to read is to ask whether
you may not be mistaking the topic for the subject. (This is most useful in topic-sentences
with ellipsed subjects.)

2.3 The coverb yǐ 以

A “coverb” is a verbal element that cannot stand alone and must be an adjunct to another
verb; the coverb binds a modifying phrase to the main verb. The word 以 can function as
an independent verb, “to take, to use”; from this root meaning the word developed a set
of usage patterns that are more appropriately considered “coverbal.”

The three most common coverbal senses of 以 are:
modern equivalent
by means of 用

in order to 來
on account of 因為
Consider the following sentence, which shows the link between 以 as a full verb and as a
coverb:

王以犬求卿
wáng yǐ quán qíu qing