“虚词” / The Independent Reader

[Guest realmayo]

In another topic I said focusing on certain grammar words helped make reading much easier for me, because these words play an important role in written Chinese, one that’s different from English, and that I think of them as signposting to the reader what direction the sentence is going to take and how the different nouns and verbs are going to relate to one another.

 

I thought it might be interesting to provide part of the introduction to a textbook called 從精讀到泛讀 (English title: The Independent Reader) which explains better than I can:

 

Mastering the use of “语法词”

 

台湾商人对独立国协不抱希望，我们可以肯定的说，苏联一亡，要再恢复世界第二强的地位已渺茫无期，要回到一个稳定局面，让经济有一个持续成长的机会，下世纪再见了。

 

[独立国协: Federation of Independent States]

[渺茫无期: 又远又不清楚，无法预期]

 

At first glance this passage is quite comprehensible; one might even call it eloquent. But quite a few “语法词” have been deleted from it. The deletions are indicated by the squares in the following version:

 

□□台湾商人对独立国协不抱希望，我们可以□□肯定的说，苏联□一亡，□要□再恢复世界第二强的地位已渺茫无期，□□要回到一个稳定局面，□□让经济有一个持续成长的机会，□□□□下世纪再见了。

 

If you can fill in these squares correctly, pat yourself on the back, for this means you have a good grasp of an important element of Chinese prose writing which I will call语法词 for want of a better word. Otherwise, you will need to pay special attention to the 练习 section at the end of each article in this book. Now read the passage below and compare it with the stripped-down version:

 

如果台湾商人对独立国协不抱希望，我们可以相当肯定的说，苏联这一亡，不要说再恢复世界第二强的地位已渺茫无期，就是要回到一个稳定局面，以便让经济有一个持续成长的机会，也恐怕要下世纪再见了。

 

Use of a sophisticated vocabulary consisting of “substantive” words is just one characteristic that marks the speech or writing of a well-educated Chinese; the other is the use of conjunctions, pivotal words, discontinuous frames, and phases that set the stage or the background. In Chinese, these are sometimes called 连接词语、副词、常用词、or simply 句构. The term语法词, literally “way-of-saying-things words,” is just about as colourless as one can find, but it does have the virtue of being generic enough to catch all of the different types. What they have in common is that they frame the relationships among the inter-related “substantive” parts of the written or spoken unit. In Chinese, they are sometimes called 虚词 “empty words.” But these words are neither totally nor equally 虚; they actually differ in degrees of 虚-ness, some of them in fact have quite a bit of substantive meaning. As seen in the illustrative passage, a segment of text devoid of 语法词 has substance, but lacks the coherence and richness shown in the final version. The role of 语法词 in a linguistic context is comparable to that of the round linking pieces in Tinker Toys. They define the position of the “stick” pieces and thereby determine the structure of the unit, and some of them also provide substance.

 

To be sure, there are 语法词 in English as well, but they are not nearly as abundant and diverse as in Chinese. A distinguishing characteristic of many Chinese语法词 is that they operate in tandem in two’s and three’s, such as “不要说---就是---也---” in the example above. Such “discontinuous frames” are rare in English, therefore one must “think in Chinese” in order to have them flow out naturally.