4 Lesson 3- 攫金

Commentary to lesson 3:

1.1:  Often nouns can be turned into verbs; in such cases, their tones often change. Hence, 衣 yī (first tone) means “clothes” while衣 yì (fourth tone) means “to wear clothes,” “to put clothes on.”

其 is usually used as a general third-person possessive: “his, her, its, their.” It is also a general demonstrative: “this, that.”

1.2: Note that the use of 之 here as a general third-person pronoun(“him, her, it, them”). You know the three meanings of 之: 1) as the verb “to go;” 2) as a particle indicating possession; 3) as a pronoun. Meaning number one is the most uncommon.

Since 曰 is almost always used to introduce a direct quote (remember classical texts did not have punctuation), it can become monotonous. Classical writers often modify 曰 with other verbs. Strictly speaking, 問曰 means “he asked, saying,” but you may prefer to translate simply as “asked.”

焉 is often used as a “locative object pronoun,” i.e., a pronoun replacing a noun indicating where an action occurred. “There” is usually the best translation.

Grammar Note 2 : More (but not all) about 者 zhě

In lesson 2 we have 耕者 gēng zhě “plow-er” and in lesson 3 鬻金者 yù jīn zhě “sell gold-er”, i.e. “seller of gold”. It might strike you that these expressions seem interchangeable with 耕之人 “person who plows” and 鬻金之人 “person who sells gold.” Moreover the sounds of 之 zhī and 者 zhě seem close to one another . The logical conclusion is that 之 zhī and 者 zhě are related words, 者 zhě being short for之人 zhī rén . Actually, 者 zhě in this sort of usage is a short form of之 zhī plus something, although that something need not be 人 rén. For instance, 觸株者 chù zhū zhě “the stump-bumper”, would not have to stand for 觸株之人 chù zhū zhī rén, “the man who bumps into the stump” but could equally stand for 觸株之兔chù zhū zhī tù “the rabbit that bumps into the stump”. But in any case 者 zhě stands for之 zhī [something], 之 zhī X. A somewhat similar locution is common in Mandarin where 賣書的人 mài shū de rén “person who sells books” shortens into 賣書的mài shū de “bookseller”. But here the de 的 is equivalent to both 之 zhī and 者 zhě – to之 zhī in the longer form and to 者 zhě in the shorter.

All these expressions are built upon verbs, such as gēng 耕 “to plow” yù 鬻 (or 賣) “to sell”, chù 觸 “to knock against”, the verb in some instances being followed by an object such as 金 jīn or 株 zhū. Adding a 之人 zhī rén or 之兔 zhī tù or者 zhě to these verbs or verb-object expressions turns them into noun phrases: “to plow” becomes “plower”, “to sell gold” becomes “gold-seller”. So conventionally we refer to the nominalizing function of之 zhī and 者 zhě, and call 者 zhě a nominalizing pronoun.

(Eventually, though, you will come upon other uses of which do not nominalize and are not pronouns).

ADDITIONAL NOTE on lesson 3: observe, in example吏捕得之 lì bǔ dé zhī, our first instance of之 zhī is in its other main “empty” use, namely, as the third-person “him, her, it, them”. We have already had the third-person attributive or possessive 其 qí “his, her, its, their”. Note that THERE IS NO third-person subject pronoun “he, she, it, they.”