The four uses of 之 in Literary Chinese
If you look at a Literary Chinese text, you’ll almost certainly see the character 之 (zhī) all over the place. This character has four main functions in the classical language.
1. As a particle to mark modifiers
This if just a fancy way of saying that 之 is a possessive particle. If you’re familiar with modern Mandarin, then you can understand the literary 之 in exactly the same way as the modern 的 (de). Remembering the key rule of “what precedes modifies what follows", have a look at these examples:
- Here, 之 is acting like apostrophe s in English: “Confucius’ Way”, or “The Way of Confucius”.
- Again 之works like “of” in English with the positions reversed: “The overall aim of understanding education”.
2. As a direct object pronoun
The second most common use of 之 in Literary Chinese is as a generic direct object pronoun, i.e. things like “it”, “him”, “her” and “them” in English. Examples:
- This is a straightforward verb plus pronoun construction. As [Weird Al](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Al_Yankovic#Band_and_fame ““Eat It” by Weird Al Yankovic - Wikipedia”) said, “Eat it".
- Here 之 is the object of the sentence, taking the action of the verb: “To study and in time master it".
3. As a demonstrative pronoun
This is almost the same as function #2: 之 can express meanings like “this”, “these” and “those”. Some examples:
- We can actually re-use this example, as it’s a bit ambiguous. It could also mean “Eat this".
- Two examples in one! Here, the first 之 is a demonstrative pronoun, and the second is a particle. The phrase reads “The king of this country”.
4. As a verb meaning “go to”
A slightly more unusual use of 之 is as a verb. It always means to go to a location or arrive somewhere; it can’t express " to leave” or “going away”.
- This phrase could be translated as “to go to the capital to see the king”.
Other resources
- Chinese Text Project entry for 之 - many good examples but little direct explanation
