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The Verb “to say” as an Auxiliary in Africa and China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. Waley  and
C. H. Armbruster
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Extract

It is well known that the verb yen to “say” has some very peculiar usages in early Chinese. In about forty instances in the Book of Odes it obviously has not its normal meaning “to say” (or “what is said”, i.e. words). For example (Legge's edition, p. 62), does not mean “The duke says he bestows a goblet”, but simply “The duke bestows a goblet”.

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , October 1934 , pp. 573 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1934

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References

1 Hu Shih Wên Tsun, vol. ii, p. 1.Google Scholar See also Shih-ch'ang, Wu, “A new interpretation of the word yen in the Shih Ching,” Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies, No. 13 (06, 1934), pp. 153–170.Google Scholar

1 2nd ed., 1925. p. 71: “He broke a stick so that it said poqo.” i.e. snapped. Also the same writer's The Bantu Languages, 1919, p. 158: “The cloth which says red,” i.e. red cloth.Google Scholar

2 A sign of grief. Legge says, “We must cast about surely for some other meaning.” But there is no getting round the fact that people who have been crying do snivel.