Abstract

In light of Hsün Tzu’s account of drawing distinctions in support of certain pragmatic ends, one might say there are three classes of readers of A. S. Cua’s book. The first is of those who are at home in Literary Chinese; the second is of those, like this reviewer, who read very little of the language; and the third is of readers with no Chinese. The first class will doubtless be engaged by the linguistic studies conducted, for example, in Chapter 3. This work seems useful to me and I benefited from a discussion of wei-constructions.