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Let the prior context indicate that the qing 卿 in question is a minister who is, for some
reason, hiding from the king. This sentence may be translated by taking 以 as a full verb:

“The king took a hound and sought the high minister.”

However, this fails to convey the point that the king was, apparently, using the hound as
a means of finding the minister. It would be more accurate to translate the sentence:

“The king sought the high minister with a hound.”

Here, 以 is rendered in English by a prepositional phrase (“with a hound”); it is no longer
a full verb.

N.B.: Let the context for this same sentence be that the minister had cold-
bloodedly killed the king’s favorite hound and then sought to
escape. In such a context, the sense of 以 as “on account of” might
be more appropriate:

“The king sought the high minister on account of [his killing] a hound.”

Though coverbs most often precede the main verb, this is not invariably so. They
may follow, and when they do, it often reflects a different semantic emphasis (though
again, not invariably; context is more significant). For example, in any of its possible
senses, our sentence about the minister and the hound could be framed thus:

王求卿以犬

In placing 以 after the main verb, we can expect that the stress is less on the search than
on the means of the search or its cause. For example, rather than, “The king sought the
high minister on account of the hound,” we might render the sentence, “It was on account
of the hound that the king sought the minister.” But again, context would be a more
important factor than word order in determining our reading.

2.4 Partitive zhi 之

The particle 之 is chiefly used to create noun phrases. One of the most common forms in
which 之 is used is:
X 之 Y

which routinely means, “The Y of [belonging to; characteristic of] X.” However, when
the particle 者 is appended to this structure, the grammar is different. The phrase

X 之 Y 者