Page 33 - EALC C306/505

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子何以言之: “why do you say it?”

何 serves as the object of the coverb yǐ 以, “on account of” (thus, “on account of what do
you say it?”).

3.3 Sentence adjuncts

“Sentence adjunct” is a handy jargon term to denote a very common feature of WYW.
Many sentences begin with a type of “stage setting” phrase, which, like a “topic” at the
start of a sentence, underlies the meaning of the rest of the sentence, but is not engaged in
any further grammatical relationship with the remainder of the sentence, as a sentence
subject would be.

In this passage, the phrase:

君伐中山: [When] you, my lord, attacked Zhongshan . . .

serves as a sentence adjunct. Like many sentence adjuncts, the phrase is a marker of time,
and so contextualizes all that follows. Were we to interpret this same phrase without
reference to its place in the full sentence, we might render it, “You, my lord, attacked
Zhongshan,” which in this context would be a misreading. The distinction could be
clarified by restoring an ellipsed shí 時 ([N] time, season) as follows:

君伐中山時 ．．．

3.4 Ellipsed objects
君伐中山，不以封君之弟．．．．

The fully stated sentence would read:

君伐中山，不以之［中山］封君之弟．．．．

The redundancy of the particle zhi 之 has led the authors to ellipse those instances which
are not strictly necessary. The result has left the coverb yǐ 以 without an explicit object.

3.5 “If... then...” expressed through parallel structure

其君仁，其臣直

Aphorisms, which are very common in WYW, are usually composed of brief and parallel
phrases (often rhymed – this one is not), much as in English. In the case of this
sentence, all explicit markers of the contingent “if . . . then. . .” have been ellipsed, but