Locate the unknown
Question words can ask about a thing, person, choice, place, reason, or manner. Their syntactic position may differ from modern Chinese. Some questions are arguments rather than requests for information.
何 · 誰 · 孰 · 安
A reading procedure
- Find the question word and its governing expression.
- Ask which constituent an answer would replace.
- Check whether the speaker expects an obvious or negative answer.
English “why” may translate more than one Classical structure. Do not infer the parse from the English question alone.
Compare
Find other occurrences of 何 · 誰 · 孰 · 安 ↗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.
18 examples in context
其斯之謂與
Might this be what the words are speaking of?
斯 is placed before 謂 in an emphatic construction associated with 之. This is distinct from the negative-object pattern 未之有. The phrase asks whether the quoted imagery applies to the lesson just discussed.
Check your reading · Is this the same environment as 未之有?
No. It is an emphatic object construction, not a negative clause.
不敬，何以別乎
Without respect, by what could one distinguish the cases?
何 is the interrogative object associated with 以. The question challenges whether mere provision of food distinguishes filial care from feeding animals. Its intended answer is supplied by the contrast with 敬.
Check your reading · How should 何以 be bracketed?
As an interrogative object with 以: by what means or on what basis.
曾是以為孝乎
Can this really be counted as filial conduct?
The question tests whether material service alone is enough. 是 points to the conduct described just before it. The line’s rhetorical force should remain visible instead of being flattened into a neutral definition of 孝.
Check your reading · What does the speaker challenge?
Whether the described material service suffices as filial conduct.
何必曰利
Why must you speak of profit?
Mencius redirects the king’s initial question by challenging its premise. 何必 asks why something should be necessary; 曰 introduces the subject of discussion. The rhetorical question begins the argument rather than asking for a definition of 利.
Check your reading · What does the question challenge?
The necessity of framing the discussion in terms of profit.
雖有臺池鳥獸，豈能獨樂哉
Even with terraces, ponds, birds, and beasts, how could one enjoy them alone?
雖 concedes the possessions while 豈…哉 challenges the possible result. The preceding account of alienated people supplies the political reason. This is a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer in context.
Check your reading · What answer does the rhetoric invite?
That such isolated enjoyment is not possible in that situation.
吾不知誰之子
I do not know whose child it is.
誰 asks for the possessor or source linked by 之 to 子. The object of 知 is the unresolved question. The metaphor of parentage leaves the discourse referent unstated; it does not identify a historical human parent.
Check your reading · What noun does 誰之 modify?
子.
能無離乎
Can you avoid separation?
能 sets up ability, 無離 the relevant state, and final 乎 asks the question. The preceding phrase supplies what is to be held together. Read the sequence of questions as a series of challenges, not as supplied factual answers.
Check your reading · What marks this clause as a question?
Final 乎, together with the interrogative context.
大道廢，安有仁義
When the great way is abandoned—how then do benevolence and righteousness stand?
This witness writes 安有, where familiar editions may have other wording. Whether 安 is interrogative or belongs to another textual interpretation is consequential. The reader preserves the witness and flags the issue instead of silently repairing it to match a familiar quotation.
Check your reading · Why should a familiar wording not replace 安 here?
That would conceal a substantive textual and interpretive issue in this witness.
其正色邪
Is that its true color?
The preceding 天之蒼蒼 establishes the blue appearance under discussion. 其 can be read in relation to the sky and the interrogative frame; the next alternative raises distance as an explanation. The short question is part of a comparison of perspectives.
Check your reading · What question does the following alternative raise?
Whether distance rather than an intrinsic color explains the appearance.
奚以知其然也
By what can one know that it is so?
奚 is the interrogative object related to 以. 其然 refers to the preceding contrast between smaller and greater perspectives or lifetimes. The question opens a demand for evidence rather than supplying it.
Check your reading · Which following material answers the question?
The examples of organisms with different spans of experience.
彼且奚適也
Where is that one going?
彼 points to the other bird from the small bird’s perspective. 奚 supplies the questioned destination associated with 適. The repeated question dramatizes the limit of the speaker’s frame of reference.
Check your reading · Whose perspective supplies 彼?
The small bird speaking in the quotation.
人何以能群？曰：分。分何以能行？曰：義。
How can people form a community? Through distinctions. How can those distinctions operate? Through what is right.
In both questions 何 precedes 以: by what means or basis? The very short answers require the reader to supply the relation asked about. 分 concerns differentiated roles in the surrounding argument; translating it simply as division can hide the claim about cooperation.
Check your reading · Which relation do the one-word answers complete?
The means or basis introduced by 何以.
人何以知道？曰：心。心何以知？曰：虛壹而靜。
By what do people know the way? By the heart-mind. How does it know? By being receptive, unified, and still.
The repeated 何以 first asks for a faculty and then for its manner of operation. 而 joins qualities rather than narrating a sequence of actions. The following sentences complicate what emptiness and stillness mean; they should not be reduced to having no memories or no mental activity.
Check your reading · How does the second question deepen the first?
It moves from identifying the knowing faculty to asking how that faculty works.
二柄者，刑德也。何謂刑德？曰：殺戮之謂刑，慶賞之謂德。
The two handles are punishment and reward. What do these mean? Killing is called punishment; celebratory rewards are called beneficence.
The text supplies its own local definition of 德 through 慶賞. That administrative sense must not be replaced automatically by the virtue sense common elsewhere. The 何謂 question and following definitions are part of the argument, not a modern dictionary entry applying to every occurrence.
Check your reading · What local wording determines the sense of 德?
The explanation 慶賞之謂德 identifies it with rewards here.
以子之矛陷子之楯，何如？
What happens if your spear pierces your shield?
以 introduces the instrument; 子 is respectful second-person address, and the two 之 phrases identify the seller's objects. The question tests two universal sales claims against each other. The example concerns incompatible claims, not an etymological proof about every later use of 矛盾.
Check your reading · What makes the question a test rather than a request for product information?
The preceding claims say that nothing pierces the shield and that the spear pierces everything.
奇正相生，如循環之無端，孰能窮之？
The extraordinary and the regular generate one another, like a circle without an endpoint; who could exhaust them?
相 makes the generation reciprocal; the question expects no finite completion. 之 resumes the transformations just described. 奇 and 正 are contrasting tactical categories here, so modern everyday glosses such as strange and correct obscure the argument.
Check your reading · What does 相 add to 生?
Reciprocity: each mode gives rise to the other.
無衣無褐，何以卒歲？
Without garments or coarse clothing, how can we get through the year?
何 is placed before 以 in a question about means. The repeated 無 names material lack, and the surrounding seasonal labor supplies the practical setting. 卒 is the predicate complete or get through here, not the noun soldier familiar from military texts.
Check your reading · What does the question ask the reader to supply?
The means by which the year could be endured without clothing.
子非魚，安知魚之樂？
You are not a fish; how do you know the fish's enjoyment?
子 addresses Zhuangzi from Huizi's speech. 安 challenges access to the claimed knowledge, and the later exchange turns on how that question is understood. Reading this line alone as the narrator's final verdict would erase the dialogue's shifting positions.
Check your reading · Whose challenge is this, and to whom?
Huizi challenges Zhuangzi.