On Syntactic Characteristics of Jinwen Shangshu

Jinwen Shangshu consists of the earliest documents handed down in China, and it is the classic of political history compiled no less than 2600 or 2500 years ago. The article makes a thorough analysis on object-preposed sentences, passive sentences, judgment sentences, and double-object sentences in Jinwen Shangshu (《今文尚书》). By comparing various sentence patterns and investigating them systematically combining with the development and the changes of the documentation language, it sums up some syntactic characteristics of Jinwen Shangshu as well as the the evolution law of syntactic forms in the documentation language, and it is of reference value to the study of the history of Chinese grammar.


Introduction
Most documents in Jinwen Shangshu are credible ancient texts of Shang (商) and Zhou (周) dynasties. Besides some narrative and descriptive texts, these documents mainly record words, and they belong to colloquial written language reflecting the language styles of Shang and Zhou dynasties relatively systematically.
In the documentation language, preposed objects of interrogative pronouns are very common, while preposed objects of demonstrative pronouns can be seen occasionally as in (4) below: In sentence(4), "是以(shì yǐ)" is "以是(yǐ shì )". It is relatively rare that a non-pronoun object is preposed.
The above special language forms in Jinwen Shangshu are not isolated phenomena. For example, there are 21 cases of preposed objects that are without structural auxiliary words between objects and verbs in narrative sentences. It seems that the rule has been formed, and such cases are mostly in Zhou Shu which is considered a more authentic part in Shangshu.
In sentence pattern "pronoun object + verb predicate", the pronoun object is mainly the demonstrative pronoun "是(shì , "this/these") ", and there are a total of 8 cases which are all sentences with 4 words as in (9) below: shì chóng shì zhǎng, shì xì n shì shǐ (Zhou Shu· Mu Shi) them honor them exalt them trust them employ "to exalt and honor them, to trust and employ them" There are also a lot of such forms as "是(shì ) + verb predicate" in Shi Jing (《诗经》). Many scholars believe that the pronoun "是(shì )" as the object must be preposed. The study shows that this may be the omitted form of "惟(wé i) + pronoun object + verb predicate", and the reason for the omission is that the word number of the pattern is limited. "惟(wé i) + noun object + verb predicate" is the main form of the object-preposed narrative sentences. This form has already appeared in Oracle texts. For example, "惟(wé i)"is written as "叀(huí )" or "隹(wé i)" in Oracle texts. There are 10 such cases in Jinwen Shangshu, so this should be the regularization of such an object-preposed form. Later, this structure developed into "惟(wé i) + noun object + 是(shì )/之(zhī) + verb predicate". During Han and Wei dynasties, it evolves into "惟(wé i) + verb predicate + noun object" which is a structure with post-posed object. "惟(wé i)" in the object-preposed structure is a scope adverb, which can be placed before the preposed object, indicating that the object is single, exclusive and strongly designated. Such a preposed-object form may derive from the colloquial language in which the object is emphasized and preposed out of some need of rhetoric, and this is common in modern spoken Chinese. However, written languages lack specific contexts that spoken languages have, such as expression, gestures and other non-verbal expressing methods, and object-preposed forms may lead to obscure sentences, so structural particles as "之(zhī)" and "是(shì )" are added as the marks of the preposed objects during the language development. When the object post-posed forms appear, "之 (zhī)" and "是(shì )" etc. disappear accordingly.
Zeng Yunqian (1964:182) points out: "the inverted forms in early Zhou dynasty are different from those after it in their expressing. There are lots of such cases in Shangshu. If you do not understand such inverted forms, you will feel they are obscure and not smooth". It seems that these special object-preposed sentence patterns in Jinwen Shangshu are "obscure, not smooth and difficult to articulate", and they are found in Bronze inscriptions and Oracle texts mostly. The forms of preposed pronoun objects in negative sentences in Jinwen Shangshu are not very strict, as the post-posed objects forms also exist. It is the case with those in Bronze inscriptions and Oracle texts. This situation is due to the fact that negative sentences are influenced by the analogy of the word order of affirmative sentences; The object-preposed forms of negative sentences have disappeared in the oral language of Han dynasty. The interrogative pronouns as preposed objects have not yet appeared in Bronze inscriptions and Oracle texts, and they may originate from Jinwen Shangshu. The pattern of "惟(wé i) + noun (noun phrases) object + 是(shì )/之(zhī) + verb predicate" in narrative sentences can not be found in Bronze inscriptions and Oracle texts, but it is already a very common pattern in Jinwen Shangshu. The pattern of "惟(wé i) + noun (noun phrases) object + verb predicate" is common in Bronze inscriptions, Oracle texts and Jinwen Shangshu, but it is quite rare in the documents of later times. These series of linguistic phenomena reveal the alternate process of the initial forms and the stereotyped structures of the object-preposed forms in classical Chinese.

Passive sentences are in the transitional stage from semantic styles to formal ones
There are two methods expressing passive in the documentation language: the first is to employ the words that express passive specifically, and the second does not. Sentences with the first method are generally called passive sentences, and also called grammatical passive sentences or explicit passive sentences. As the passivity of the subjects can be identified by their own sentence forms, they are called formal passive sentences; Sentences using the second method have different names: conceptual passive sentences or implicit passive sentences. They are called semantic sentences because the passivity of their subjects can be understood according to the meaning of whole sentences only.
There is no formal passive sentence in Oracle texts. The passive idea in ancient Chinese is manifested in the form of the active sentence, so there is no difference between the active and the passive in their forms. Zhou Fagao (1959) believes that "no mark is used in a passive sentence, and it is identified by the meaning of the text, so it may be the earlier way for the passive sentence ". Jin Zhaozi (1980:19) thinks that "the agent and the patient are not distinguished in ancient language, and this is really inevitable when the language has not been complete." Formal passive sentences begin to appear in Bronze inscriptions of Western Zhou Dynasty in only two forms: "于(yú, "by. PREP") + the agent" and "见(jià n, "by. ADV") + verb + 于(yú, "by", PREP) + the agent". The former is common, and the latter is rare. The formal passive sentences in the documents of Pre-Qin dynasty and the two Han dynasties developed into four large sentence patterns: passive sentences with "于(yú)", "为(wéi)", "见(jià n)" and "被(bèi)". During these periods, formal passive sentences with syntactic marks increased largely while semantic passive sentences reduced relatively.
Passive sentences in the system of sentence patterns in Jinwen Shangshu are related to those in Bronze inscriptions, Oracle texts and other documents of Pre-Qin dynasty, but they are different from each other. There are a total of 57 passive sentences in Jinwen Shangshu. Among them, there are 11 formal passive sentences of which 10 cases are in Zhou Shu. For example: not frighten PREP hardship "Don"t be frightened by misery and hardship." wé n yú shà ng dì ( Zhou Shu· Kang Gao) hear by Lord of Heaven "It is known by Lord of Heaven." shěn yuē qí shà ng xiǎn wé n yú tiān (Zhou Shu· Kang Gao) let along MP their even manifestly hear by Heaven "Let along what they are doing is also known manifestly by Heaven." Zeng Yunqian explains (20) as (21). There are 46 cases of semantic passive sentences which can be specifically divided into 4 types. The first type includes sentences with Can-Wish verbs like "可"(kě, "may"), "能"(né ng, "can") and "克"(kè , "can") as in (22) all not can advance "All the things can not be advanced." The second includes sentences with adverbs before the behavior verbs expressing scope, time, degree etc. as in (25), (26) and (27)  The third is to use a form of an active sentence to express the passive mood directly as in (28)-(30)  The last one: the explicit form of the active sentence expresses the implicit semantic content of the double-object sentence. The patient subject is the near object of the double objects as in (31) below: Yǔ xī xuá n guī, gà o jué ché ng gōng (Yu Xia Shu· Yu Gong) Yu present black jade tell them achieve governance "Yu was presented a black jade telling people that the governance had been achieved." The ratio between the formal passive sentences and the semantic passive sentences is about 1:4, and that between Zhou Shu, Shang Shu and Yu Xia Shu is 10:1:0. Compared with the Oracle texts, formal passive sentences have appeared in Jinwen Shangshu; compared with other Pre-Qin documents, Jinwen Shangshu has only one type of passive sentence marked with the word "于(yú)". These facts indicate that passive sentences in Jinwen Shangshu are in the developing and transitional phases from semantic passive sentences to formal ones. Meanwhile, it also shows that the passive form in Jinwen Shangshu is unitary.
Many of the semantic passive sentences in Jinwen Shangshu need judging through the contextual information mostly, and this leads to ambiguity easily. Therefore, the formal passive sentence are promoted to develop and enriched fully by the communication function of the language after Western Zhou dynasty.
Through examining the passive sentences and their characteristics in Jinwen Shangshu, the following conclusions can also be made : (1) The real formal passive sentences in Chinese have appeared before Spring and Autumn period. The 11 cases of passive sentences with "于(yú)" in Jinwen Shangshu and the passive sentences in Bronze inscriptions indicate that formal passive sentences have already been used in Western Zhou dynasty.
(2) Neither Oracle texts nor Yu Xia Shu of Shangshu has formal passive sentences, and this is not a coincidence. Jinwen Shangshu only has one type of formal passive sentence with passive mark "于(yú)". In the inscriptions of the Western Zhou, there are two kinds of passive sentences: sentences with "于(yú)" are common, and sentences with "见(jià n)" are rare. This indicates that the sentence with "于(yú)" is the earliest form of Chinese formal passive sentences. At the same time, the comparative study of passive sentences in Oracle texts, Bronze inscriptions, the documents of the Pre-Qin dynasty and the two Han dynasties shows that the formal passive sentences in Jinwen Shangshu are in a transitional developing stage from semantic passive sentences to formal ones.
(3) The direct motivation that leads to Chinese formal passive sentences may be out of the need of rhetoric, as the narrator intends to highlight the agent through the form and the structure of the sentence. In Jinwen Shangshu, except for "negative adverb + Verb + 于 (yú) + the agent" and "于(yú) + verb", there are a total of 7 cases of passive sentences employing "Verb + 于(yú) + the agent". The agents introduced by "于(yú)" are all words meaning "上天"(shà ng tiān, "Lord of Heaven"): "上帝、天、帝、皇天" ( shà ng dì , tiān, dì , huá ng tiān, "Lord of Heaven"). In the inscriptions of Western Zhou dynasty, besides "上天", the agents introduced by "于(yú)" are also "王"(wá ng, "king"), "公"(gōng, "great officer" ) and "侯"(hóu, "great officer"). This linguistic phenomenon inspires us to decipher the causes for Chinese passive sentences. The ancient people lived in extremely rugged natural environments, and they somehow held infinite fear and revered Heaven when facing the irresistible natural force that they could not explain, hence they naturally highlighted the power of Heaven in their language. Generally, "于(yú)" is used to introduce "天(tiān, "lord of heaven")" and acts as a visual mark.
(4) After formal passive sentences tend to mature, the continued use of semantic passive sentences is mainly due to following the syntactic and the language potential of the context as in (37a)  Zhuangzi is the work of the late Warring States period when the formal passive sentences have been perfected. The reason why the author didn"t use (37b) is that the expression "鲁 酒薄(Lǔ jiǔ bá o, "thin wine of Lu")" consists of three words, so does "邯郸围(Há ndān wé i, "Handan was besieged")", and they read smoothly, fit for the rhythm, and go with the language potential of the context.

The definiteness of predicates in judgment sentences and the syntactic factors of "是(shì )" evolving into a judgment word
The study shows that the predicates of the judgment sentences in Jinwen Shangshu are definitive, and they are restricted only to nouns, pronouns and noun phrases. There are logical relations of equality, generic, or resemblance among the person, the thing, and the object that are indicated by the subject and the predicate. Except for the external form and the logic relation between the subject and the predicate, a judgment sentence in Jinwen Shangshu is mainly judged by the nature of its predicate. Judgment sentences, descriptive sentences and narrative sentences are all in a complementary sentence system. The classification standard for them is the nature of their predicates.
Yi Mengchun (1989:111) has ever cited the interpretation in Ma Jianzhong (1898) as the evidence to show that the predicate of the judgment sentence can be a verb phrase or a subject-predicate phrase as in (38) and (39)  In fact, the verb phrase "绝物(jué wù)" and the predicate phrase "天下之父归之(tiān xià zhī fù guī zhī)" are not expressing judgment. Yang Bojun (1989:205,208) translated the above two sentences respectively as follows: "since I can not order others, and don"t want to obey others" orders, what I am facing is only a blind alley." "The two old men are the world"s most prestigious men, so their turning to Xibo(西伯)indicates that fathers in the world all turn to Xibo". The explicit forms of the predicates of some judgment sentences in the documentation language are verb phrases or subject-predicate phrases, while their implicit forms are omitted noun phrases. Such cases are not rare in Jinwen Shangshu as in (40)  Zhou Bingjun (1990) explains (40) as "this is what you"ve heard of". The explicit form of (40) is the subject-predicate structure "尔攸闻(ěr yōu wé n)" meaning "you"ve heard of", but its implicit form is the omitted noun phrase which means "what you"ve heard of". Similarly, some explicit forms in documentation language are judgment sentences, and the noun or noun phrase is in the position of a predicate, but its implicit form is actually a narrative sentence. The noun or the noun phrase is not a predicate, but an object, and the verb predicates are implied as in (41a) and (42)  The implicit form of (41a) is (41b), and "凭借(pí ng jiè )" is omitted here. The explicit and implicit forms of (42) and (43) are all judgment sentences, and (42) is equal to (43).
There is no "也(ye)" in Jinwen Shangshu, and there"s only one case of "者(zhě)" in the book. The basic form of the judgment sentence is "subject + noun predicate" with a total of 22 cases. This type of sentences can be seen mostly in Yu Xia Shu· Yu Gong as in (44) The form is also the main form of the judgment sentences in the inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it is perhaps the earliest form of Chinese judgment sentence. In addition, there are also five forms derived from the basic sentence pattern in four is gold five is soil "Five elements: one is water, two is fire, three is wood, four is gold, five is soil." In the last two forms above, "乃(nǎi)" and "则(zé )" are adverbs which are used between the subject and the predicate to confirm that the judgment made by the predicate or the situation expressed by the predicate is true and reasonable. Although there is only one case respectively for the two forms in Jinwen Shangshu, such cases are more common in other documents of Pre-Qin dynasty and two Han dynasties. The cases of "曰(yuē, "is")" used in judgment sentences are mainly in Zhou Shu · Hong Fan. Wang Yinzhi (1956:30) believes that "曰(yuē)" is like "为(wé i, "is")". In Jinwen Shangshu, there are a total of 36 cases of "惟(wé i, "is")" used in judgment sentences. It is in high frequency, and it is so widespread that such cases can be found in Yu Xia Shu, Shang Shu and Zhou Shu. "Subject + 惟(wé i) + noun predicate" is the main form of judgment sentences in Jinwen Shangshu, and there is only one case of "是(shì )" used in judgment sentence, that is "乃并是吉(nǎi bìng shì jí)" in Zhou Shu· Jin Teng, but this might be the earliest case of "是(shì )" used as a judgment word in the documents.

Verbs and objects in double-object sentences present complex word order, and verbs all have the agentive properties of transfer, continuation and bidirectionality
In Jinwen Shangshu, double-object sentences are very rich. The word orders of verbs and their two objects are complex, and they can be divided into two main patterns generally: the first is the basic pattern "the subject + verb predicate + indirect object + direct object" as in (58) The pattern is the same basic syntactic form of the double-object sentences in ancient Chinese as those in modern Chinese, and it can be found that the direct or indirect objects are omitted in Jinwen Shangshu as in (61) and (62)  (67) is cited as (68) in Shi Ji· Wu Di Ben Ji. These double-object sentence patterns all meet two conditions: first, there is a clear relationship of agent and patient between verb predicates and double objects; Second, the indirect objects parallel with the direct objects rather than modify them.
The changed sentence pattern of double objects in Jinwen Shangshu is due to the emphasis on the semantic focus of the patient. When emphasizing the direct objects, type(1) and type(2) are formed, and when emphasizing the indirect objects, type(3) and type(4) are formed. There are two ways of emphasizing: one is changing the word order, and the other is adding a preposition before the semantic focus.
As to the four changed types from the basic pattern of double-object sentences in Jinwen Shangshu, when analyzed from an angle of explicit grammatical form, "subject + verb predicate + indirect object + 于(yú) + direct object" and "subject + verb predicate + direct object + 于(yú) + indirect object" can be analyzed as " the subject + verb predicate + object + complement of preposition-object structure", and it seems that the pattern "subject + 以(yǐ) + direct object + verb predicate + indirect object" can be analyzed as "subject + adverbial of preposition-object structure + verb predicate + object", and "indirect object + verb predicate + direct object" can be analyzed as "subject + verb predicate + object". But the implicit grammatical content of these changed patterns is still the double-object sentence. The relationship between the transitive verb predicate and the double objects is very clear, and it is significantly different from those with the complement of preposition-object structure and the adverbial of preposition-object structure.
The double-object sentence of "subject + 以(yǐ) + direct object + verb predicate + indirect object" presents an immature state clearly in Jinwen Shangshu. First, they are less in quantity; second, they have a small range of distribution, only in Zhou Shu; Third, their syntactic structures are not complete. For example: The sentence above is an incomplete form of the changed sentence pattern, in which a direct object behind "以(yǐ)" is missing. In the double-object sentence "subject + verb predicate + direct object + 于(yú) + indirect object", "于(yú)" introduces the indirect object, and is placed after the direct object with the pragmatic function of emphasizing the indirect object. Such changed pattern of double-object sentences has occurred in Bronze inscriptions, and is also very common in Pre-Qin documents.
All the double-object verbs in Jinwen Shangshu have two properties: one is the transfer and continuation of the action, and the other is the bidirectionality of the action. The action of any double-object verbs must be conducted from one to another. There is a transitional point in the middle of the action before moving to the real target, and it must be a person close to the active verb. This transition point is sometimes omitted in the explicit syntactic form, but the implicit syntactic content always exists. The action or behavior of a double-object verb must involve two aspects: one is the person, and the other is the thing. The former is the object of the active verb, and the latter is the content of the action. That is to say, the verb must be with two objects, but the two objects are neither coordinate nor compound. The bi-directional property of the double-object verbs in Jinwen Shangshu is also shown as the positive and negative relation to the verb itself. For example, "问(wè n, "ask")" in (70) and "告(gà o, "tell")" in (71) are semantically opposite. In fact, any double-object verb always implies a semantically opposite one. The semantic content and scope also have an influence on the choice of the verbs for the double objects. The objects of "问(wè n)" and "告(gà o)" are generally single, but the contents of "问(wè n)" and "告(gà o)" are complicated. Therefore, the semantic range of double-object verbs like "问(wè n)" and "告(gà o)" is much larger. For example, the direct object of the verb "告(gà o)" in Yu Xia Shu· Gan Shi (《虞夏书· 甘誓》) is almost the whole text of the oath. The contents of "锡(xī)" and "降(jià ng)" can only be specific or abstract things, therefore, they have a smaller semantic range as the double-object verbs.