Проблемы китайского и общего языкознания. К 90-летию С. Е. Яхонтова

 582  David Sehnal   The adjective “be bitter”, “be hard” has the following typical constructions: 夫良藥苦於口 “In fact, an excellent medicine is bitter for the mouth.” ( Hanfeizi , 32) 苦其生 “[He himself] makes his life hard.” ( Zhuangzi , 4) 雖臣虜之勞不苦於此矣 “Even the labour of slaves or captives is not harder than this.” ( Hanfeizi, 49) If the adjective “be bitter”, “be hard” carries out the function of a nominal element of sentence, it obtains the meaning “something bitter”, “something hard”, “bitterness”: 少嘗苦曰苦。多嘗苦曰甘 “If one tastes a little of bitterness, he calls it ‘bitter’. If one tastes a lot of bitterness, he calls it ‘sweet’.” ( Mozi , 17) For the verb “suffer from something” the following constructions are typical: 國民苦 [於]盗 (法、兵) “...the people suffered from robbery (law, war)” The causative transformation of this construction generates the meaning “make somebody to suffer”, but not “make something to become bitter or hard”(!). 獨秦能苦趙 “Only Qín can make Zh o to suffer.” ( Shiji , 70) The verb “suffer from” can be used in the passive construction: 蓬萊之藥可得。然常為大鮫所苦 “The medicine of the P ngl i island is possible to obtain, but we are still suffering from big sharks.” ( Shiji , 6) The nominal meaning which corresponds to the verb “suffer from some- thing” will be “suffering”, but not “bitterness”: 人胥知生之樂。未知生之苦。 “Everybody understands the joys of life, but no one does understand the sufferings of life.” ( Liezi , 1) Different nominal meanings have different antonyms. The antonym of 苦 k “something bitter” is 甘 g n “something sweet”, while the antonym of 苦 k “suffering” is 樂 lè “joy”. In construction with the relative pronoun 所 su