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聿 yù (Particle) used in poetry to fill meter (it possesses neither meaning
nor syntactical function)

厥 júe (Particle/pronoun) archaic functional equivalent of qí 其

Grammar and Notes

5.1 (R+R) structure at the phrase level

Parallelism is a prominent aspect of WYW. In the clause

先王有至德要道

the object of the verb 有 is composed of the four characters that follow. These may be
analyzed as two sets of two, each composed of an (A+R) phrase: 至德 [utmost virtue]
and 要道 [pivotal Way] (here, the A+R phrases are not composed of nouns, as in
Grammar 1.2, but are Adj + N).

The firmly nominal nature of the root words (德 and 道), which frequently appear in
parallel, make it easy for the reader to understand that 至 (which may be a verb) and 要
(which may be a noun or a verb) are here modifying the nouns as adjectives. The two
phrases are linked by no conjunction; they are merely juxtaposed. In this way, the phrases
themselves become an R+R construct, serving as the complex object of 有; in a sense,
utmost/virtue-pivotal/Way has been formed into a single complex nominal, much in the
way that ji-quăn 雞犬 was formed of simpler elements in Lesson 1.

5.2 False parallelism

False parallelism is the product of the high valuation of balanced phrasing in WYW. It is
frequently the case that texts will include strings of four- or five-character lines which lull
the reader into a mistaken sense of parallelism through their metric balance. While in
simple texts the context and diction may make the meaning transparent, unless one is
alert to the traps of false parallelism it is easy to misread more complicated texts.

As an example of false parallelism, two linked phrases from the 孝經:

以順天下，民用和睦

At first, it may appear that these clauses are parallel. On closer examination, however,
they turn out to be very different in structure: