Logical Impossibilities in Modern Chinese

Colloquialisms have a way of taking on a life of their own, even when they make no sense. The famous (and vexing) example from American English that comes to mind is: "I could care less." Then there are ambiguous phrases. Who remembers the old SNL skit revolving around the phrase "you can't look at the sun for too long"?


Modern Chinese has a number of such phrases which, while perfectly intelligible to users in context, nevertheless are utterly illogical if you think about them for too long. Here are a few examples:


"Before ... I hadn't ..." When expressing a time period prior to a certain event, it will almost invariably be described as "before one thing had not yet happened" where what is actually expressed is "before one thing HAD happened". Viz., 在我還沒上大學之前，literally "Before I had not gone to college" but meaning "Before I went to college". Or 在他還沒去世之前, literally "Before he had not yet died" but meaning "Before he died". It almost feels like an English double negative, but there is actual only one negative: its the illogicality of the time sequence that throws one off. It is one of those things that native Chinese speakers do not notice, although when you point it out to them, they laugh and acknowledge that there is something a bit off about this particular grammatical structure. The linguistic imperative behind this particular structure, I believe, has to do with the fact that without the negative, it would require the modal particle 了to denote the change in state from one stage to another, but that in itself would be awkward (在我上了大學之前) or ungrammatical (在我上大學了之前), so the combining of a negative (I hadn't gone to college) with the time period manages to get the sense of "the period of time before a certain thing occurred".


"Almost didn't tire me to death". 差點沒把我給累死。This one is self-explanatory: the negative is superfluous but in colloquial speech sometimes gets added in. (It may almost be functioning like the "ne" in French.)


"Beyond the outside of my expectations". This locution, if it were a picture, would have to be drawn by M.C. Escher. 出乎我的意料[or 預料]之外, literally "went beyond the outside of my expectations". There is an abbreviated version of this that actually makes sense and is necessary to understand in order to see why the formulation just cited should make your head spin. The simpler formulation is 出乎我的意料: "It exceeded my expectations." The nonsensical version, if I can put in into properly confusing English, should be "It went beyond the outside scope of my expectations". The desired meaning only requires one of the two qualifiers: "It was outside my expectations" (是在我意料之外）or "It exceeded my expectations" (出了我的意料), but not both. This reflects a certain tendency towards the emphatic in Chinese through repetition. It has a certain illogical or circus-mirror quality, but it is characteristically Chinese.

樂古道 - Le gu dao or yao gu dao?

This street sign reminded me of a minor issue surrounding the classical reading of the character 樂. There are two common readings for this character: yue4 “music” and le4 “happy, pleased, amused”. A passage from Mencius (1.b) illustrates both of these meanings:

獨樂樂，與人樂樂，孰樂？曰：不若與人。Music by oneself, and music with others: which is more pleasurable? “It is better with others.”

The first and third instances of 樂 are yue4 music, while the second, fourth and fifth are read le4 meaning to enjoy or feel pleasure. There is a third, less common reading, yao4, purported to mean “to like, to desire”, which is obviously related to the sense of “to enjoy, happy, pleased”. It is this sense and reading that we wish to analyze here. The mostly commonly cited instance of yao4 “like” is Lunyu (Yongye):

子曰：知者樂水，仁者樂山；知者動，仁者靜；知者樂，仁者壽。The Master said, the wise love water; the humane love mountains. The wise are active; the humane are quiescent. The wise are joyful; the humane are long-lived.

There are very few other instances where 樂 is traditionally read yao4.

民生各有所樂兮, 余獨好修以爲常。Among the people, each has his penchant, only I love the good as my constant pursuit. (Qu Yuan, Lisao)

玩其所樂。 Amuses himself with what he likes. (Liji, “Liyun”) ·

籍平生曾游東平，樂其風土。During his lifetime (Ruan) Ji traveled in Dongping, and he liked their local customs. (Jin shu, Biography of Ruan Ji)

There are some problems and inconsistencies in the way the distinction is applied:

1. The issue of how to read a character only arises if an editor, usually centuries after the formation of the text itself, chooses to comment on it. Thus, the example from Lunyu (Warring States era) is traditionally read yao4 because Xing Bing 邢昺 and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (both Song) pointed it out in their comments. Likewise, Lu Deming 陸德明 (Tang) clarified the reading in the Liji (Han or pre-Han) passage cited, Hong Xingzu 洪興祖 (Song) the reading in the Lisao (pre-Qin) and so forth. If a character appears in an ancient text and no one comments on it, does it really have a reading? Other than in rhymed verse, it will not always be clear. The readings they used were obviously based on a tradition and in turn on the spoken language (even if of an earlier era), but it is not always clear that any useful purpose is being served. To the extent a grammatical distinction was being made (see 3 below), the inconsistent application of the readings (see 2 below) has obscured the grammatical distinction.

2. There are clear inconsistencies in how often the yao4 reading is applied. More often than not, it is read as le4, with most readers taking it to mean “take pleasure in”. For instance:

今惡死亡而樂不仁，是猶惡醉而強酒. Now they hate death and ruin but like inhumane behavior. This is like hating drunkenness but having a penchant for drink. (Mencius, 4.a) In this passage, 惡 wu4 “to hate” is put in apposition to 樂, which, if we are to take the apposition seriously should have strong implications of “to like” thus implying a “proper” reading of yao4.

As is clear from the examples cited above, 樂 very seldom, if ever, is used to mean simply “to like”. It always strongly retains the sense of “take pleasure in”. This can be illustrated by the fact that when the meaning of “to like” is needed in a given context, the character used is usually one with that unambiguous meaning, such as 好 hao4. Thus, the passage of Mencius where the enjoyment of music is discussed opens with the following statement: 王之好樂甚. [If] the king’s love of music were great… Mencius was possibly engaging in wordplay when he drew a connection between music and pleasure, but he could have taken it further with “liking” but did not. Confucius draws a clear distinction in meaning between 好“to like” and 樂 “to delight in” in the following passage of the Lunyu from the same chapter cited above: 知之者不如好之者，好之者不如樂之者。Those who know it are inferior to those who love it, and those who love it are inferior to those who delight in it. If 樂 ever meant simply “to like”, if would be difficult to interpret the words as Confucius means us to without ambiguity. Otherwise, the last clause could simply mean “those who love it are inferior to those who love it.”

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3. In fact, the distinction between the readings le4 and yao4 is not really (or primarily) a semantic distinction, but rather a grammatical distinction, a distinction of usage. When 樂 is a stative verb without an object, it should be read le4 and be taken to mean “to be happy, to feel enjoyment, to be in a state of pleasure”. When it takes an object (really an indirect object) it should be read yao4 and means “to take pleasure in”. If this distinction were consistently applied, the number of instances where the character is read yao4 would greatly increase. The word is in fact frequently used as a verb meaning to take pleasure in, and for purposes of 破讀 or giving different readings to the character depending on its function (e.g. 度 du4 v. duo2, 治 zhi4 v. chi2, etc.), this distinction in the reading of 樂 should be made. In most editions, this has been extremely inconsistently applied at the same time that the word was perhaps burdened with an unwarranted semantic distinction.

So, applying the principle consistently, our street sign 樂古道 should be Yao4gu3 dao4, or the “Street of Taking Pleasure in Antiquity” (Cf. Lunyu, “Shuer”: 信而好古　Trusting and loving antiquity.)

[Note: The Cantonese distinction is between lok6, as in the sign (=le4), and ngok6 (=yao4). For the ancient phonological distinctions, under the Shijing rhyme schemes, all of yue4, le4 and yao4 are under 葯部, although by Middle Chinese, they had diverged to 覺，鐸 and 效, respectively.]

糟魄 Dregs - An Etymological Analysis

An oft-cited tale in the Zhuangzi is the following passage from the “Tian Dao” [天道], “Way of Heaven”, section of the Outer Chapters:

桓公讀書於堂上，輪扁斲輪於堂下，釋椎鑿而上，問桓公曰：“敢問公之所讀者何言邪？”公曰：“聖人之言也。”曰：“聖人在乎？”公曰：“已死矣。”曰：“然則君之所讀者，古人之糟魄已夫！”桓公曰：“寡人讀書，輪人安得議乎！有說則可，無說則死。”輪扁曰：“臣也，以臣之事觀之。斲輪，徐則甘而不固，疾則苦而不入。不徐不疾，得之於手而應於心，口不能言，有數存焉於其間。臣不能以喻臣之子，臣之子亦不能受之於臣，是以行年七十而老斲輪。古之人與其不可傳也死矣，然則君之所讀者，古人之糟魄已矣。

Lord Huan was reading in the upper hall. Wheelwright Flat was cutting a wheel in the lower hall. Dropping his hammer and chisel and walking to the upper hall, [Flat] asked the Lord: “May I ask whose words my lord is reading?” Lord Huan responded, “The words of the sages”. [Flat] asked, “Are they alive?” Lord Huan said, “They are dead.”[Flat] said, “If that is the case, then what my lord is reading is nothing more than the dregs of the ancients!” Lord Huan said, “How dare you, a wheelman, dispute what I, the Rarified One*, read!? If you have a persuasive explanation, you live. If you don’t, you die.” Wheelwright Flat responded, “I look at it from the perspective of my craft. In cutting a wheel, if one does it too slowly, the strokes are smooth but do not run deep, whereas if one does it too hurriedly, one applies excessive force and it will not fit. Cutting neither too slowly nor too hurriedly: I can perform it with my hands and can feel it in my mind, but I am unable to express it in words. There is a trick to it. I am unable to impart it by [explanation] to my son, and my son is also unable to learn if from me [in that way]. This is why, going on seventy years, I am still cutting wheels in my old age. The ancients, and what they were unable to transmit [by their person / physically], are dead and gone. Thus, what my lord is reading is nothing more than the dregs of the ancients.”

As philologists and etymologists, we are of course utterly uninterested in the philosophical content in the passage. (That was a joke …. mostly.) What concerns us is the characters used to write “dregs” (zao1po4). The most common term, and the one still used in modern Chinese, is 糟粕, where both characters have the rice radical directly reflecting the original sense of leftover particles from the making of rice wine. A less commonly occurring formulation although the term that appears in early versions of the Zhuangzi is 糟魄, which shares the first character with the other binome but uses for the second character the po 魄 of hunpo 魂魄, meaning something like soul or spirit. This is, of course, a straightforward phonetic borrowing (假借 jiajie) using the phonetic content of “po” to express the meaning of the bisyllabic word “zaopo”, and is not a combination of the semantic content of “zao” ([dregs]) and “po” (soul)**. While zaopo is not a true binome in that the two sounds need not appear together in order to constitute a single meaning ( 糟 appears twice by itself in the Zhouli 周禮 with the meaning of unfiltered wine), yet po (in the sense of “dregs” whether written 魄 or 粕) as a stand-alone word appears relatively late and usually is defined with direct reference to 糟, indicating that it had no other stand-alone semantic value.

The Shuowen and early glosses treat these characters as follows:

糟 is defined as 酒滓 jiuzi “leftover wine” or “lees”. Zheng Xuan’s gloss to the Liji and Zhouli are informative describing 糟 as “unfiltered wine”. Other glosses offer somewhat circular definitions either expanding糟 as meaning 糟粕 or simply referring back to 粕.
粕 does not appear in the original Shuowen, but was added in the addendum 說文新附 by Xu Xuan 徐鉉 in the Song dynasty, so its definition, unsurprisingly, revolves around the underlying binome itself without any non-self-referential definition: 糟粕, 酒滓.
魄 is defined in its core meaning of “dark, or cloudy, spirit” 陰神。It is only in its appearance in the Zhuangzi passage that it takes the meaning of part of the “dregs” binome. Commentators such as Lu Deming gloss it as “rotten rice” 食爛曰魄, which sound very much like ad hoc definitions to fit the context. The term魄 also appears in the early medical texts 素問 and　靈樞 where it is glossed as “that which, together with the essence, exits and enters” 並精而出入者。

The early commentators do not provide us with clarity as to which term was original: Lu Deming's glosses indicate it was written 糟魄 , although he noted that "originally it was also written 粕" （魄，本又作粕 ）It is unclear which term was used in the version seem by 司馬彪, writing several centuries earlier than Lu Deming. Wang Shumin 王叔岷 analyzes the textual recensions and is unable to conclude in favor of one term or the other （莊子校詮，p. 499). If we look at other texts that contain the same story of Lord Huan and the Wheelwright, both the Huainanzi 淮南子and the Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳, use 糟粕 although these could be later recensions and do not necessarily reflect the earliest version as these texts both frequently borrow parables from Zhuangzi.

So, which formulation is correct, 糟魄 or 糟粕? Familiarity with modern Chinese draws us to 糟粕 as the seemingly more appropriate pair: both characters use the rice radical indicating a clear connection with the meaning of the word and its connection with brewing. This is something of a false friend, however. 糟魄 is the earliest attested usage. More important for purposes of this investigation, 糟魄 is a reminder that written Chinese in its early stages was, like all written languages, a tool for transcribing the spoken language: the character 魄 was used for its phonetic value and provided more than adequate information for a reader to understand the meaning, which was conveyed by its sound value. As with many characters, the later use of a different character with the rice radical was a post hoc revision, an attempt to provide mnemonics, but viewing 粕 as the “correct” character is an anachronistic and post hoc rationalization that attempts to justify the notion of the Chinese written language as “ideographic”. It cannot be impressed enough upon the student of Chinese that the Chinese script is not ideographic and was, from its earliest use, a phonetic script. Let us take the 糟魄 case as a reminder and symbol of this important principle of Chinese philology even if we cannot conclude which was the earliest term to appear in written form.

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Notes:

* The origin and exact meaning of the term gua ren 寡人 is still disputed. My rendering of the “Rarified One” tries to capture the sense of lofty, elevated, grand, noble-minded without sacrificing the sense of “few” or “scarce” in 寡, and follows the interpretation of Lu Yi 鲁毅 who argues against the more common (but still conjectural) interpretations of it as a deferential, self-deprecating term meaning something like “the orphaned one” or “the one without merit” (寡德之人). Lu argues that the context of the earliest uses of the term in the Shangshu and Zuozhuan is hardly one of deference or politeness but on the contrary involves aloofness, augustness and even intimidation. The context of its use here supports Lu’s case. See 左传考释, entries on “寡人” and “且寡人出”.

** In Foundations of Confucian Thought, Yuri Pines (somewhat toungue-in-cheek, I imagine) translates the last line of the Zhuangzi story by giving semantic value to each individual character rather than viewing zaopo as a binome:　"What my lord is reading is nothing but the dregs of the souls of the ancients!” This interesting approach is perhaps too literal, and may not work grammatically: taking each character for its semantic content would yield something like “the dregs-like souls of the ancients”, whereas for Pines’ translation to work the word order of 糟 and 魄 would have to be reversed. Anyway, this is getting a bit too bogged down in the weeds…