Basic principles of sentence breaking in classical Chinese

Sentence breaking in classical Chinese is also called "reading sentences". Sentence breaking in classical Chinese is based on the reality of classical Chinese, which clearly and accurately reproduces the structure, pause and tone of the original text with punctuation marks. Sentence-breaking in classical Chinese is not a small skill. It is necessary to master some knowledge of ancient Chinese and common sense of ancient culture, and at the same time, to be able to integrate and apply these knowledge flexibly, that is, to understand the rules and skills of sentence-breaking in classical Chinese.

The following rules should be followed:

1 and. 1 must be able to make sense and keep the integrity of the sentence meaning.

According to "Fu's argument and Su Shi's argument occasionally overlap", "His argument coincides with Su Shi's" should be disconnected, so as to be consistent with the meaning of the following sentence and make sense. Sentences are often broken because the sentence breaker ignores that the whole classical Chinese is unified, can not be taken out of context, and the sentences are closely related; Or it is because the sentence breaker doesn't understand the meaning of some words and lacks some common sense of ancient culture.

2. The content must be reasonable after the sentence is broken.

The structure and meaning of "tribute" is complete, and it should be disconnected before "envoy", and "regulating the husband to govern the ship" is done by the envoy, so it should be disconnected. Sentence breaking is easy to cause confusion or inconsistency in semantic direction.

3. After sentence breaking, it must conform to the grammar and phonology of ancient Chinese and maintain the overall language style.

Ancient Chinese has its own grammatical rules and special phonological characteristics, especially in sentence patterns, there are typical inverted sentences or neat sentences, and some even rhyme. Therefore, you must also pay attention when you break sentences. For example, "Korea Tribute/Messenger Pass/Fu Cha Ship Management/coquettish Trouble Fee" has a neat sentence structure, all of which are four characters. If it is verse or parallel prose, it is more distinctive in rhyme and sentence pattern. Grasping this feature makes it easier to break sentences.

Especially, while mastering the law of sentence break, we should also explore the reasons for sentence break and understand the reasons for sentence break errors, so as to make mistakes continuously. There are three reasons for wrong sentences: first, the meaning is unknown, second, the grammar is unknown, and third, the phonology is unknown. The third volume of Ancient Chinese edited by Wang Li has a detailed explanation, so I won't repeat it here.