Notice a change in argument structure
A familiar noun or property word can function as a predicate. Some uses mean making someone be or do something; others describe treating something as having a property. These are interpretations of an actual construction, not arbitrary new definitions.
使 · 王 · 衣
A reading procedure
- Identify the participants and the predicate.
- Check whether an object is caused to act or change.
- Compare a simple predicative reading before selecting a causative interpretation.
Do not label every noun used verbally as causative, or infer a pronunciation from the label alone.
Compare
Search finds spelling; it does not automatically label every occurrence with this construction.
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes · Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Evidence and further study
Linked passages below provide the primary-text evidence for these editorial examples. The readings are not borrowed from, or endorsed by, the further-study references.
Kanseki Repository · pinned primary text witnesses
Textual evidence. Individual examples link to exact source files and lines.
Edwin G. Pulleyblank · Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar
Further study: word order, predication, nominalization, negation and complex sentences. Book content is not reproduced.
Robert Eno · Introduction to Literary Chinese, Part I
Further study: an academic primer with annotated readings and exercises. Not imported.
Introduction to Classical Chinese · Schonebaum and contributors
Further study: function words and reading lessons. CC BY-NC-SA material is not imported into this dataset.
Thesaurus Linguae Sericae
Further research: contextual historical senses and syntactic analysis. No TLS annotation import in this release.
10 examples in context
使民以時
Employ the people at appropriate times.
使 has 民 as its object, while 以時 gives the timing or governing basis. The agricultural and political setting matters for “appropriate”; it is not simply a literal instrument held by the people.
Check your reading · What relation does 以時 add?
The basis or timing governing the employment of the people.
君子不器
The exemplary person is not a mere implement.
器 is a noun functioning in a predicative statement. The familiar rendering “mere implement” makes the contrast with a narrowly fixed use explicit, but that evaluation is interpretive. This is not a causative use merely because a noun is predicative.
Check your reading · Must a predicative noun be causative?
No. Here it describes what the person is not.
舉直錯諸枉，則民服
Raise the upright over the crooked, and the people will submit.
舉 and 錯 describe placing or raising people. 諸 is conventionally analysed here as incorporating a relation to the following group. The reciprocal next clause reverses 直 and 枉, which helps test the interpretation.
Check your reading · What changes in the following parallel case?
The upright and crooked groups exchange positions.
苟為後義而先利
If one puts righteousness behind and profit ahead.
苟 opens a condition. 後 and 先 are used relationally with objects: assigning lower or higher priority. The clause is not merely a statement about chronological order; the contrast concerns political values.
Check your reading · What objects receive the contrasting priorities?
義 and 利.
五十者可以衣帛矣
People of fifty can then wear silk.
者 identifies people characterized by the stated age. 衣 takes 帛 as its object and functions as a verb meaning wear or be clothed in. This is a lexical conversion in context, not evidence that every noun has a causative reading.
Check your reading · How does 衣 function here?
As a verb taking 帛 as its object.
然而不王者，未之有也
There has not been someone who acts in this way and still fails to become a true king.
王 functions as a predicate. 者 packages the described person or case, and 未之有 denies its existence with a preceding object. The claim belongs to Mencius’s political argument; the interface does not certify it as a historical law.
Check your reading · Which expression denies the existence of the described case?
未之有也.
不尚賢，使民不爭
Do not elevate the worthy, and the people are made not to contend.
使 explicitly introduces an affected participant 民 and the following predicate 不爭. The first clause supplies the proposed condition or policy. The text’s political recommendation should not be confused with a neutral dictionary definition of 賢.
Check your reading · Which word explicitly marks the causing relation?
使.
故令之有所屬
Therefore give these something to which they belong.
所屬 denotes what the preceding items should be attached or directed to. The following paired instructions spell out that orientation. The referent of 之 depends on the prior three formulas; it is not recoverable from the isolated graph alone.
Check your reading · What does 所屬 denote?
The object or basis of belonging or attachment.
不戰而屈人之兵，善之善者也
To bring another's army to submission without battle is the best form of excellence.
屈 takes 人之兵 as its object in a causative reading. 而 connects the absence of battle with the achieved result; it need not imply a temporal sequence. The sentence ranks strategies in a military argument and is not a categorical rejection of every use of force.
Check your reading · What does the object after 屈 show?
The action makes another's army submit rather than describing the speaker's own submission.
富貴不能淫，貧賤不能移，威武不能屈
Wealth and rank cannot corrupt such a person; poverty and low status cannot shift them; force cannot bend them.
The affected person is left unstated in each clause and identified by the surrounding description of 大丈夫. Parallel predicates test constancy under different pressures. The sentence describes an ethical ideal rather than asserting that material circumstances never affect actual people.
Check your reading · What omitted participant is shared by all three clauses?
The steadfast person being characterized in the passage.