General Literary Chinese from Scratch/One, Two, Left, and Right with Gongsun Long

thumb|200px|Yuan dynasty portrait of Gongsun Long Gongsun Long 公孫龍 is perhaps one of the most intriguing individuals in the Literary Chinese canon. A fierce logician, he debated one of the descendants of Confucius during the Warring States period...and seemingly won! He can be seen as one of the earliest-known linguists, dealing with paradoxes of language that can't be readily explained outside of the language proper. The dialogue we are going to be reading today is a debate between Gongsun Long and an unnamed individual. The concern is about whether 2 contains 1, before qualifying whether lefts and rights can be a part of it. When summarised in this way, it sounds as though it doesn't make sense, but you have our assurance that there is a legitimate conversation to be had when read in Literary Chinese. Pre-Reading This section aims to equip you with all the necessary information to tackle Gongsun Long's conversation head-on. It is recommended to practice all of these points mentioned in your own time - try to form sentences with them yourself using characters from previous lessons, or whatever you find interesting! To form a question or suggestion, you simply add 乎 to the end of the sentence. 有人乎？ Is there a person? If you want to ask if there isn't a person, you add 無 before the verb. It is sort of like "no," but it is more like "there is no," expressing that there is none of a thing. In a way, it is the opposite of 有, to have. 無人乎？ Is there not a person? If you want to say something is possible, you answer 可. It can be added to verbs to say something is X-able. A common verb for this is 謂, meaning "to refer to something as". You can negate 可 with 不, which is a way of saying "no" - this is different to 無, and the nuance will be demonstrated here. 土可謂中國 The ground can be called Zhongguo (China, the Middle Kingdom) 土無可謂中國 There is no ground that can be called Zhongguo 土不可謂中國 The ground cannot be called Zhongguo Next, we have our lefts and rights, our 左右. On their own, they are exactly as we see them in English: 左 is your left, 右 is your right. When put together, it expresses an indeterminate amount. 左有人 右有人 There are people on the (left/right) 左右人 There are people on the left and right / There is some amount of people. You will run into ambiguity fairly often in this regard, but context rules all here. You will also run into 與 in this dialogue, which is simply "and" in the sense of "left and right." It connects them. It has more complex uses, which you will run into as time goes on. With that, you are now ready to tackle Gongsun Long. On the Laws of Change Today, we are going to look at his On the Laws of Change dialogue. You are going to learn how questions are formed, how to negate them, and the basics of your lefts and rights. 曰：「二有一乎？」 曰：「二無一。」 曰：「二有右乎？」 曰：「二無右。」 曰：「二有左乎？」 曰：「二無左。」 曰：「右可謂二乎？」 曰：「不可。」 曰：「左可謂二乎？」 曰：「不可。」 曰：「左與右可謂二乎？」 曰：「可。」 Questions What do you think Gongsun Long was talking about here? Does 二 have 一 in it? What relation does left and right have to the question? Was Gongsun Long talking about the numbers, or the characters themselves? If you want to challenge yourself, here are some questions in Literary Chinese as well. 二有一。可乎？ 二無一。可乎？ 左可謂一乎？ 右可謂一乎？ There is no right or wrong answer here - only your understanding of what Gongsun Long was setting out to do. Further reading Gongsun Long - The man, the myth, the...sophist? Do you think he was a sophist? Kong Chuan - The 6th descendant of Confucius whom Gongsun Long debated. School of Names - The philosophical school Gongsun Long was a part of. Cangjie codes 公: 金戈 (CI) 孫: 弓木竹女火 (NDHVF) 龍: 卜月卜尸心 (YBYSP) 乎: 竹火木 (HFD) 有: 大月 (KB) 無: 人廿火 (OTF) 可: 一弓口 (MNR) 謂: 卜口田月 (YRWB) 不: 一火 (MF) 國: 田戈口一 (WIRM) 左: 大一 (KM) 右: 大口 (KR) 與: 竹難卜金 (HXYC) 二: 一一 (MM) 通: 卜弓戈月 (YNIB) 變: 女火人大 (VFOK) 論: 卜口人一月 (YROMB) References 公孫龍. 通變論. Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/gongsunlongzi/tong-bian-lun Kroll, P. W., Baxter, W. H., Boltz, W. G., Knechtges, D. R., Lien, Y. E., Richter, A., Richter, M. L., & Warner, D. X. (2017). A student’s dictionary of classical and medieval Chinese (S. F. Teiser, M. Kern, & T. Brook, Eds; Revised edition). Brill.