Abstract
In Middle Chinese, a new function of QIE as a marker of polite imperative started to appear, and its use gradually increased in frequency until the late Old Mandarin era. This paper proposes a possible path for the development of this function of QIE in Middle Chinese, and suggests that it might have evolved from its use for transient situations with hortative modality in early Chinese Buddhist texts. The contact with Indic languages via translation also seems to have facilitated the development of QIE from temporal adverb to marker of polite imperative.
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- 1.
In this paper, the history of ancient Chinese is divided into three phases: Archaic Chinese (上古漢語), which refers to the language (excluding primeval written texts, such as inscriptions on bone and bronze artifacts) used before the introduction of Buddhist texts during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 ad); Middle Chinese (中古漢語), which is the language used from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the end of the Song Dynasty (960–1279 ad); and Old Mandarin (近代漢語), which is the language used from the end of the Song Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912 ad).
- 2.
In Archaic Chinese, when the character 且 is pronounced as jū, it functions as a sentence-final particle indicating the mood of the sentence. However, this is unrelated to the subject of this paper (QIE), thus is not included in the discussion here.
- 3.
There are also cases where QIE connects two non-contrasting sentences. For example, “宋其興乎! 禹、湯罪己, 其興也悖焉; 桀、紂罪人, 其亡也忽焉。
列國有凶, 稱孤,禮也。《左傳·莊公十一年》” It is basically the same as the coordinating function found in (1). - 4.
All examples of non-Buddhist texts in this article are selected from Academia Sinica Ancient Chinese Corpus while the glossing is basically mine if not otherwise noted. The explanation of this sentence, however, is based on the comments made by Cheng and Jiang (1991).
- 5.
Some regard this kind of QIE as an adverb of manner. This may be caused by the Chinese reading of QIE which can be either “gūqiě 姑且 (tentatively)” or “zànqiě 暂且 (temporarily)” in such contexts. However, both readings imply a temporary situation/activity as a concession. Since there is nìng 寧, which is more apparent for the expression of concession in (3), QIE is better taken as a temporal adverb here.
- 6.
In terms of frequency, there was a general decline in the use of QIE for future marking, probably due to diachronic competition with other future markers, such as jiāng 將, a slight increase in its use for transient situations, and no significant change in its use as a conjunction.
- 7.
In this paper, hortative modality refers to a sub-group of deontic modality, which expresses encouragement and mild request or recommendation/suggestion.
- 8.
The term “deontic modality” in this paper refers to an obligation that should be met, in contrast to an obligation that must be met (“imperative modality”).
- 9.
Although in many world languages, deontic modality is closely related to future marking or future oriented, semantically speaking, the indication of a transient situation can be found in early polite imperatives; thus QIE for the marking of ‘transient situation with hortative modality’ is preferred as the origin of QIE for polite imperatives in this paper.
- 10.
According to the theory of “three domains (content domain, epistemic domain, and speech-act domain)” proposed by Sweetser (1990), hortative modality and imperative modality both indicate a performative act, an encouragement or a supplication, in the speech-act domain which is not the case with epistemic modality or volition/desire.
- 11.
From a cognitive point of view, transient situation and polite manner are both related to the concept of “less” on the calculation of time and the strength of mood. In addition, requesting something to be done for a short duration first, although it is actually preferred to continue doing it for a longer time, seems to be a compromise, thus being a polite way of making a request. Detailed analyses on this issue will be elaborated in a separate paper.
- 12.
Examples used in this research are selected from historical records, narratives and Chinese Buddhist texts in Middle Chinese. Please see Appendix 2 for a full list of sources.
- 13.
Some may argue that this type of QIE is only at the VP level. But other cases of it preceding other higher elements such as the negative deontic markers as can be found in (5) indicates that QIE for polite imperative should rather be regarded as a sentential adverb modifying the modality of the whole sentence. Besides, since the clause is a serial verb phrase, based on Li and Thompson (1973, 1981) and Chen (2002)’s study on Chinese serial verb phrases, and contextual information, QIE modifies both of the two coordinating VPs, thus it should be at sentential level.
- 14.
The context of this sentence is given below:
大王上廳坐下, 叫道:「丈人, 我的夫人在那裡?」
The leader of the bandits entered the hall, sat down and said: “Father-in-law, where is my wife?”
大公道:「便是怕羞不敢出來。」The lord said: “I’m afraid she is too shy to come out.”
大王笑道:「且將酒來,我與丈人回敬。」The leader laughed and said: “Please bring some alcohol, I would like to exchange toasts with my father-in-law.”
那大王把了一杯, 便道:「我且和夫人廝見了, 卻來吃酒未遲。」The leader finished a bottle and said: “Let me first meet my wife in private, and then come back to drink more which should not be late.”
那劉太公一心只要那和尚勸他, 便道:「老漢自引大王去。」Lord Liu only thought about letting the monk persuade him so he said: “I myself guide you to (meet her).”
As can be seen above, the speech in sentence (4) should be an order given from the leader of the bandits to the servants of the lord Liu. Contextual information rules out the possibility of the covert subject being the speaker himself, ensuring that this should be an imperative.
Some tentative or transient indication seems to remain in this early example of polite imperative which distinguishes it from those of later times such as (6) where such readings are not necessary. But this semantic remnant is not sufficient to prove that the qiě-jiāng-jiǔ-lái is not an imperative for request.
- 15.
This is done by using QIE as the keyword and search for its uses in both databases before reaching a rough prediction on its major use in each database.
- 16.
Please see Appendix 2 for the list of texts chosen for analysis.
- 17.
Due to limited time and effort, statistics like this on the frequency of use in this paper cannot be exactly accurate but only show an approximate preference of use.
- 18.
All examples from Chinese Buddhist texts in this article are selected from the SAT database. Each reference is given as Txxnyyyyopzzzzcll, in which:
T: Taisho text
xx: volume number
n: fixed
yyyy: the serial number of the Buddhist text
o: capital A or B indicates that there are different versions of the same text in the Taisho text; lower-case a or b indicates that there are different versions of the same text that are not in the Taisho text; underline _ indicates that there are no other versions of the text
p: fixed
zzzz: the page number in the Taisho text
c: column number—a for the top column, b for the middle column, c for the bottom column, and d for the revision columnll: the row number in the corresponding column
So ‘T10n0279_p0001a01’ refers to the first row of the first top column in text 0279 of volume X in the Taisho texts.
- 19.
Syntactically speaking, the two uses of QIE in (7) and (8) do not present significant difference. But from a semantic perspective, due to the restraints from the context, the interpretation of QIE in (8) does not need and should not contain a transient reading because.
- 20.
Due to the large amount of Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts, this is an assumption on the possible tendency of use based on selected texts.
- 21.
This might have something to do with the language style of the translator as well, which later gradually affected the syntactic position of QIE.
- 22.
Although the reason behind the selection of QIE as the translation of the imperative form remains unclear, based on Karashima (2010, 2012, 2013)’s glossaries, one possible explanation could be that in spoken Chinese or vernacular Chinese of that time, QIE got the feature of expressing “should, ought” and thus is adopted here for the expression of request. Another possibility is that, QIE is a miswrite of the character yí 宜 which means “should, ought” thus it is used for the imperative here. No matter which reason it is, since the other words gě, míng and tīng in the sentence have more concrete meaning and thus are less suitable to function as a grammatical marker, this correspondence between QIE and Sanskrit imperative indicates that QIE was thought as able to express imperative or a similar ideas at least by the time of Dharmarakṣa. However, it does not mean that QIE was already an imperative marker by then.
- 23.
Although imperatives often express unrealized events (irrealis) thus do not have the proper tense marking required in declarative sentences, from the context, we can see that the promptness of the action “to look at” is emphasized by the speaker, asking the listener to look at it at the time of the utterance. The sentence without QIE would be grammatical as well; it simply loses the emphasized promptness. Since all other elements of the sentence have a more concrete meaning, QIE is supposed to be the only candidate, which can express this emphasis thus it is believed to have a present reading.
- 24.
This is a translation done by Dharmarakṣa (Zhu Fahu 竺法護 c. AD 237–316).
- 25.
As is a general concern of all ancient Chinese Buddhist translations, due to the lack of historical evidence, it is in most cases impossible to figure out from which source exactly a Chinese Buddhist text was translated. Thus, we can only compare extant texts in two languages and select sentences, which are supposed to be the counterpart of each other.
- 26.
This does not mean that QIE must express a very clear sense of present at the time of translation as other canonical present markers do. But the choice of QIE in (13) as the counterpart of a Sanskrit verb in present tense (other elements cannot be the counterpart of the present suffix as they all have other concrete meaning, and the deletion of QIE would not cause any grammatical problems, thus explicitly expressing a present sense seems to be the only reason of QIE’s existence in this sentence) does prove that QIE was believed as having a certain ‘present’ sense by the time of translation.
- 27.
This is a work of Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 (c. AD 334–413).
- 28.
Language contact might be a cause of language change but it might not be the only reason. The point here is that the contact with foreign languages via the translation of Buddhist texts may have accelerated QIE’s change into an imperative marker, which might be a sophisticated progress with many other factors involved as well.
- 29.
QIE for transient situation may have another source of origin far earlier in time which does not relate to present. But its use for transient meaning is attested early enough to generate a certain relation with the ‘present’, so it is not really necessary to trace back the very origin of QIE at the beginning of the history of Chinese.
- 30.
In imperatives, the time when the order is issued is also the time of speech and the time of reference, thus the sentence is usually analyzed as in present tense.
- 31.
This is a translation done by Kumārajīva in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
- 32.
According to the Politeness Theory of Levinson (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987), ‘face’ is a sociological concept referring to one's own sense of dignity or prestige in social contexts. ‘Face threat’ denotes an act, which challenges the face wants or dignity of an interlocutor from pragmatic perspectives.
- 33.
The context of this sentence is given below:
大王上廳坐下, 叫道:「丈人, 我的夫人在那裡?」
The leader of the bandits entered the hall, sat down and said: “Father-in-law, where is my wife?”
大公道:「便是怕羞不敢出來。」
The lord said: “I’m afraid she is too shy to come out.
大王笑道:「且將酒來, 我與丈人回敬。」
The leader laughed and said: “Please bring some alcohol, I would like to exchange toasts with my father-in-law.
那大王把了一杯, 便道:「我且和夫人廝見了, 卻來吃酒未遲。」
The leader finished a bottle and said: “Let me first meet my wife in private, and then come back to drink more which should not be late.
那劉太公一心只要那和尚勸他, 便道:「老漢自引大王去。」
Lord Liu only thought about letting the monk persuade him so he said: “I myself guide you to (meet her).
As can be seen above, the speech in sentence (4) should be an order given from the leader of the bandits to the servants of the lord Liu. Contextual information rules out the possibility of the covert subject being the speaker himself, ensuring that this should be an imperative.
Some tentative or transient indication seems to remain in this early example of polite imperative which distinguishes it from those of later times such as (6) where such readings are not necessary. But this semantic remnant is not sufficient to prove that the qiě-jiāng-jiǔ-lái is not an imperative for request.
- 34.
Zutang ji or the Patriarch's Hall Anthology is a collection of teachings of Chan master compiled in the state of Southern Tang (the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms); it is closely related to Buddhism and Buddhist texts in both content and writing styles.
- 35.
The gloss of this sentence is based on Zhang (2003).
- 36.
Temporal readings in content domain are in brackets because the transient reading of QIE might be possible in the context when used for polite imperatives in Old Mandarin but it is usually not necessary in interpretation; and the present sense is generally implied in imperatives not specifically marked by QIE.
列國有凶, 稱孤,禮也。《左傳·莊公十一年》” It is basically the same as the coordinating function found in (1).References
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Appendices
Appendix 1: List of Abbreviations
1 | First person |
2 | Second person |
3 | Third person |
ACC | Accusative case |
ACT | Active |
CONJ | Conjunction |
DEO | Deontic modality |
GEN | Genitive |
HORT | Hortative |
IND | Indeclinable |
IMP | Imperative |
ModP | Modal phrase |
NEG | Negative marker |
NegP | Negative phrase |
NOM | Nominative |
OPT | Optative |
PART | Particle |
PASS | Passive |
PERF | Perfect |
PIPV | Polite imperative marker |
PL | Plural |
PREP | Preposition |
PRES | Present tense |
PRO | Pronoun |
Q | Question particle |
SG | Singular |
VOC | Vocative case |
Appendix 2: List of Primary Sources
Historical records
hànshū; 漢書 by Ban Gu 班固 (ad 32–92).
sāngguózhì; 三國志 by Chen Shou 陳壽 (ad 233–297).
hòuhànshū; 後漢書 by Fan Ye 范曄 (ad 398–445).
jìnshū; 晉書 by Fang Xuan-ling 房玄齡 (ad 579–648) et al.
zīzhìtōngjiàn; 資治通鑑 by Sima Guang (ad 1019–1086).
Narratives
lùnhéng; 論衡 by Wang Chong 王充 (ad 27–c. 100).
shìshuō xīnyǔ; 世說新語 by Liu Yi-qing 劉義慶 (ad 403–444).
Buddhist texts
Reliable works of Lokakṣema 支婁迦讖 (ad c. 147–?), Zhi Qian 支謙 (ad c. 222–252), Dharmarakṣa 竺法護 (ad c. 237–316), Fa Xian 法显 (ad c. 337–422), Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 (ad c. 344–413), Xuan Zang 玄奘 (ad 602–664) and Yi Jing 義淨 (ad 635–713).
Texts related to Buddhism
zǔtángjí; 祖堂集, produced during the Southern Tang Dynasty (ad 937–975).
dūnhuáng biànwén xīnshū (The New Collection of Dunhuang Bianwen) 敦煌變文集新書, composed by various authors during the Tang Dynasty (ad 618–907) and Five Dynasties (ad 907–960).
Other
zhūzǐ yǔlèi 朱子語類, completed by Li Jingde 黎靖德 around ad 1270.
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Mu, Y. (2019). The Development of 且 QIE as a Polite Imperative Marker. In: Meisterernst, B. (eds) New Perspectives on Aspect and Modality in Chinese Historical Linguistics. Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics, vol 5. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1948-8_5
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