Ancient Chinese Punctuation

[Nina]


I'm trying to read the Dao De Jing from the ancient texts discovered at Mawangdui and Guodian, and one of the most difficult things is finding where the punctuation marks are. The Wang Bi version and later texts placed commas and periods where they thought they should be, but the older texts just run one character after the other. 

These are the punctuation marks I've located: 

矣 yǐ (i) (final particle denoting one has finished speaking)

呵 hē (ho) breathe out, sigh, (ah!, oh!, whew!)

乎 hū (hu) ? (a question mark) (used as a suffix)

兮 xī (hsi) a pause in sound showing emotion

邪 xié (hsieh) ? (a question mark)at the end of a sentence (sarcastic and humorous)

哉 zāi (tsai) alas!, too bad!

也 yě (yeh) (a pause)


Can anyone help me - have I got them right? 

Also, can a question mark be placed at the beginning of a sentence, or does it always appear at the end of a sentence? 

Any help or suggestions would be great! 

Thanks- 
Nina 




[Nina]

I don't know why I keep having trouble with words overlapping!

I'll try this again


I'm trying to read the Dao De Jing from the ancient texts discovered at Mawangdui and Guodian, and one of the most difficult things is finding where the punctuation marks are. The Wang Bi version and later texts placed commas and periods where they thought they should be, but the older texts just run one character after the other.



These are the punctuation marks I've located:



矣 yǐ (i) (final particle denoting one has finished speaking)



呵 hē (ho) breathe out, sigh, (ah!, oh!, whew!)



乎 hū (hu) ? (a question mark) (used as a suffix)



兮 xī (hsi) a pause in sound showing emotion



邪 xié (hsieh) ? (a question mark)at the end of a sentence (sarcastic and humorous)



哉 zāi (tsai) alas!, too bad!



也 yě (yeh) (a pause)




Can anyone help me - have I got them right?



Also, can a question mark be placed at the beginning of a sentence, or does it always appear at the end of a sentence?



Any help or suggestions would be great!



Thanks- 
Nina 




[Claw]

These characters aren't punctuation marks. They actually serve a grammatical purpose. But because they often occur at the end of a phrase or sentence, they are sometimes indicators of where a phrase or sentence ends. However, they are not always reliable.

矣 is a sentence final particle that closely resembles the usage of the modern Mandarin 了 and indicates a change in situation.

I'm not very familiar with the usage of 呵 in Classical Chinese.

乎 is a final question particle, but it sometimes occurs as a variant of 於, meaning in or at.

Yes, 兮 is used as an exclamatory pause marker.

邪 (also written 耶) is a question particle equivalent to 也乎. 歟 (sometimes written as 與) also serves the same purpose.

哉 is a final exclamatory particle.

也 has several uses. It can indicate the predicate noun in a sentence. It can also come after a nominalized verb phrase that is the topic of a sentence. In addition, it can indicate a continuing state at the end of a sentence, serving as like an opposite of 矣.

There are other particles as well... you should get a book on Classical Chinese grammar if you don't have one already. I recommend Edwin Pulleyblank's "Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar."

[yonglan]

也 is one particle in particular that English textbooks completely miss out the primary use ascribed to it by Chinese sources. Chinese always seem to say it's simply for emphasis. I'm no genius, so I'm just reporting.

I don't know why I keep having trouble with words overlapping!

Nina, yeah, I keep getting tons of question marks in your posts, mostly in pairs, and mostly before Chinese characters. Is that what you meant in the above quote?

I like Pulleyblank, too. If you're good with modern Chinese, I also recommend _Language of the Dragon_ vols. 1 & 2 by Gregory Chiang. The latter are textbooks, the former a reference book.

[Nina]

Thank you, Claw, for the clarification.

I looked up Pulleyback's book on amazon.com, but there is no way to look inside the book to view some of the pages. The price is about $35 American dollars, so I wish I could see a little bit of what he's written about to know whether I want to spend that much money right now. Do you have that book?

Thanks for the help-

Nina

[Nina]

Hi yonglan-

I know what you mean about the character ye. Quite confusing! It was originally a drawing of an ancient utensil, which gives no help with figuring out just what it could be used for in the written language. I guess one would have to look at the sentence structure to determine just how it is used?

I'm sorry the characters I post come up as question marks for you. I was told at one of my Daoist forums that I should say which encoding I'm using. I'm not very computer-knowledgeable, so this is new to me. The encoding I use is Unicode UTF-8. Please let me know if that helps. Or is there another encoding I should use instead at this forum?

No, I don't read Chinese very well, but thanks for the suggestion of the Chiang book. I've done so much research into the ancient characters that I find I can read the Seal characters better than the Traditional or Simplified! Hah! Maybe some day...........

Thanks-

Nina

[Claw]

Yes, I have Pulleyblank's book. It's a pretty good book, but like yonglan says, it's more of a reference book so it's really not something you can read from cover to cover. If you want a book that walks you through how to read Classical Chinese, I suggest Michael Fuller's "An Introduction to Literary Chinese." Its various lessons introduce new grammatical concepts a little at a time so it's not as overwhelming. Together with Pulleyblank's book, they make a great combination.

[sandra_49202@yahoo.com]

Claw

I'm looking for some books by Bernard Read they out dated books serier

about turtle, snake,herbs,etc I would love get these books canyou help me find them,

shene

[yonglan]

Nina, I don't know anything about encoding either. But you're the only person here I've seen so far where the post has some problem. Hmm. Are you using a really old operating system? On the Daoist forums are you the only one, too? I don't know. It's no big deal

As for the price of Pulleyblank and other books, maybe you could get online and find a uni library near you that has it? If you're in some way attached to a uni they ought to be able to get it for you from another library. Your local library may even do this for you.

If you're not comfortable with the modern language, I would agree with Claw's recommendation of Fuller.

[Claw]

I'm looking for some books by Bernard Read they out dated books serier about turtle, snake,herbs,etc I would love get these books canyou help me find them,

I am not familiar with these books.

[Nina]

Thanks, Claw.

I looked up Fuller's book on amazon.com and read through the pages available for viewing. Everything I read I had already read elsewhere.

There are some great internet sources for learning about Classical Chinese punctuation, and I'm going through all of them. The main consensus seems to be that you have to 1) read those texts as though through a different lens than the English language allows, and 2) since there are no "rules" to follow you can read them in a variety of ways.

You're so kind to try to help me, and I really appreciate it.

BTW - whay did you choose that photo under your name on the left?

-Nina

[Claw]

You're very welcome.

BTW - whay did you choose that photo under your name on the left?

If you click on my profile, you'll see an explanation for the photo.

[Nina]

Hey, yonglan-

The only forums I seem to have trouble with in posting Chinese characters are Chinese forums! Haha! I'm using Mac OSX, so I think I'm in the 21st century? I'm going to ask the kind people at the Mac Chinese forum what could be the problem, and hopefully I'll have a solution soon.

I have no connection with a uni. I live pretty close to UCLA, but I'm not a student. As I told Claw, there is all sorts of information on the internet about the Chinese language. It's wonderful! Without the internet I'd be missing so much - like you incredible people who answer my mundane questions with kindness.

I'm thinking - "It's a small world after all...."

-Nina

[yonglan]

Nina, what are the web resources??

[Nina]

Claw-

It's a wonderfully inspiring photo! Thank you for using it.

-Nina

[Nina]

Yonglan-

I've just been reading through lots of sites that come up on a google search. Heere are a couple of them that I bookmarked:

http://www.johnjemerson.com/introductory.htm

http://www.johnjemerson.com/chap-one.htm

-Nina