Format of the couplet Requirements

1. The number of words should be equal

The number of words in the first couplet is equal to the number of words in the second couplet. In long couplets, the number of words in each clause of the first and second lines is equal.

There is a special case, that is, the number of words in the upper and lower couplet is not equal on purpose, such as in the Republic of China, someone satirized Yuan Shikai a couplet: "Yuan Shikai a thousand years; long live the Chinese people." The three words 'Yuan Shikai' in the first line and the four words 'Chinese people' in the second line are "sorry", meaning that Yuan Shikai is sorry for the Chinese people.

Couplets are allowed to have superimposed or repeated words, and superimposed and repeated words are commonly used rhetorical devices in couplets, but when overlapping, attention should be paid to the consistency of the upper and lower couplets. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, Gu Xiancheng wrote a couplet about the Wuxi Donglin Academy: "The sound of wind and rain, the sound of reading, the sound that enters the ear; family affairs, national affairs, world affairs, all matters of concern".

But the couplet should try to avoid "isotopic heavy words" and "the same heavy words". The so-called heterogeneous heavy word, is the same word appears in the upper and lower couplets in different positions. The so-called same position, is the same word in the same position in the upper and lower couplet relative.

However, there are some imaginary words in the same place is allowed, such as the West Lake in Hangzhou Ge Ling couplet: peach blossom and flowing water of the song; green shade between the grass.

The word "之" in the upper and lower couplets is repeated in the same place, but because it is an imaginary word, it is allowed. However, there is a more special form of "isotropic mutual repetition" is allowed (called "transposition"), such as Lin Sen to Dr. Sun Yat-sen: a man of a thousand years; a man of a thousand years.

2. Lexical equivalence

In modern Chinese, there are two main types of words, real words and imaginary words.

The former includes six categories: nouns (including locatives), verbs, adjectives (including color words), number words, quantifiers, and pronouns.

The latter includes six categories: adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries, exclamations, and figures of speech.

Lexical equivalence means that the words or phrases in the same position in the couplet should have the same or similar lexical properties. The first is the rule of "real to real, virtual to virtual", which is the most basic and broadest rule.

In some cases this is all that is needed. Secondly, the rule of correspondence between words, that is, each of the 12 categories of words mentioned above corresponds to each other. This rule should be followed in most cases. The second rule is the rule of the correspondence of righteousness categories, which refers to putting the same type of things expressed in Chinese characters together in counterpoint. The ancients noticed this rhetorical method very early.

In particular, the noun part was divided into many sub-categories, such as: astronomy (sun, moon, wind and rain, etc.), seasonal (yearly festivals, morning and evening, etc.), geography (mountain winds, rivers, etc.), official rooms (buildings, platforms, portals, etc.), grass and trees (grass, trees, peaches, and plums, etc.), birds and birds (chickens, birds, phoenixes, and cranes, etc.) and so on.

Neighboring class correspondence rule, that is, the door class is close to the words can be mutual pairs. Such as astronomy to seasonal, astronomy to geography, geography to the palace and so on.

3, structural proportionality

The so-called structural proportionality refers to the grammatical structure (or the structure of phrases and sentences) should be the same as far as possible, that is, the subject-predicate structure of the subject-predicate structure, the verb-object structure of the verb-object structure, the partial-positive structure of the partial-positive structure, the parallel structure of the parallel structure, and so on.

For example, Li Bai wrote a couplet on Yueyang Tower in Hunan province: "The water and the sky are of one color; the wind and the moon are boundless".

Both the upper and lower lines of this couplet are subject-predicate structures. Among them, "water and sky" and "wind and moon" are both parallel structures, and "one color" and "boundless" are both partial-positive structures.

These are all juxtapositions.

But in the case of lexical equivalence, some of the more similar or more special sentence structure, the requirements can be appropriately relaxed.

4, the rhythm of the corresponding

that is, the top and bottom of the pause must be consistent.

Such as: don't let the spring and autumn pass by; the most difficult wind and rain, the old man came.

This is a seven-character short couplet with the exact same rhythm of "two - two - three". For longer couplets, the rhythms must also be appropriate.

5, level and oblique harmony

What is level and oblique? The Mandarin categorization of level and oblique, in short, yinping and yangping are flat, and the upper and lower tones are oblique. In the ancient four tones, the flat tone is flat, and the upper, going and entering tones are oblique. Harmonization includes two aspects:

(a) The upper and lower lines are opposite. Generally speaking, it is not required that the words are opposite to each other, but it should be noted that: the end words of the couplet should be opposite to each other, and the upper couplet should be oblique, and the lower couplet should be flat; the last word of the phrase or the rhythmic point should be opposite to each other; and the end words of each clause of the couplet (the foot of the sentence) should be opposite to each other.

(2) Alternation of level and oblique tones within the respective sentences of the upper and lower couplets. Contemporary Chinese writers such as Yu Dequan have summarized a set of rules for "Horseshoe Rhyme".

6, content-related

Couplets are both "right" and "joint". Equal number of words, word equivalent, the same structure, the rhythm of the corresponding and the level of harmony are "right" "United" is to be content-related.

A pair of couplets between the upper and lower couplets, the content should be relevant, if the upper and lower couplets write an irrelevant thing, the two can not reflect, through, echo, can not be counted as a qualified couplets, and even can not be counted as a couplet.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Couplets