Pragmatic Functions of First Person Singular Pronouns in Classical Chinese

Vicky Tzuyin Lai

Abstract for paper presented at
39th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea
Universität Bremen
August 30-September 2, 2006

The present paper examines the functions of the first person pronouns in Classical Chinese (BC479 - AD220). In Classical Chinese, there were five different means to code the first person pronoun: yu2 "I", yu3 "I", wu2 "I", wo3 "I", and zero pronoun. Pulleyblank (1995), in "Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar", pointed out that the syntactic distributions and semantic denotations of these pronouns overlap, but did not investigate any difference in pragmatic functions. Other works looked at pragmatic functions, but in more recent Chinese. Lee (1999) found that in 18th-century Chinese, the variation between singular and plural first person pronouns could convey social meanings. Xiong (1998) suggested that zero pronoun in modern Mandarin was used to express modesty. The present work shows that the overlap in pronouns found by Pulleyblank can be explained by differences in social pragmatic functions.

The data used are the electronic text of Lunyu "Confucius' Book" from Academia Sinica Corpus of Classical Chinese. Lunyu is a written record of the conversation between Confucius and his disciples in BC479. Because the data were available electronically, in addition to qualitative analysis, this study examines the quantitative distribution of the different pronouns.

The analysis shows that yu2 is a subject pronoun with register function used in pre-Classical Chinese only by kings, and used in Classical Chinese direct speech when people of a higher social status address people of a lower social status. For example, King Shuen (BC1600) uses yu2 in the phrase yu2 yi1 ren2 "I one man". Yu3 is a subject and object pronoun, used in discourse topics related to heaven, kings, and death. For example, Confucius uses yu3 in the sentence Yu3 si3 yu2 dao4-lu4 hu1 "Would I die beside the road?" Wu2 is primarily a subject pronoun and occasionally an object or possessive pronoun, and is used to make reference to the concept of self and bring self back to subject position when the discourse has drifted. Wo3, on the other hand, occurs in either subject or object position and contrasts the self with other existing referents. For example, after Confucius mentions the names Jishi and Minziqian, he uses wo3 to contrast the self with the various names. After establishing the contrast by using wo3 twice, he returns to using a subject position wu2. Finally, zero pronoun is used in Classical Chinese by the speakers in lower social status or who want to present themselves as having a lower social status than the addressee.

In conclusion, the overlapping syntactic and semantic distribution of the first person pronouns in Classical Chinese can be explained in terms of their social pragmatic functions, which were so important in Chinese culture that they required overt marking in the language.

References
Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1995. Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Xiong, Xueliang. 1998. First person zero anaphor as a cognitive unit in Chinese. Word 49:3.

Lee, Cher Leng. 1999. The Implications of Mismatched Personal Pronouns in Chinese. Text 19: 3.

Vicky Lai is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado. She can be reached at vicky.lai@colorado.edu.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 19, Issue 1 - June 2006