以 meaning "to"

[Zbigniew]

The following is taken from the New York Times (26.7.17):

20年前回归中国的统治时，曾是英国殖民地的香港被许以高度的自治，包括保留自己的法律、政治和经济制度。

 

The New Century Chinese-English Dictionary's explanation for 以 in this kind of context is that it means "to"; the first of the two examples it gives to illustrate this use is 给敌人以沉重打击。

 

Clearly 许 and 给 in these two sentences involve a recipient, so the idea that 以 means "to" doesn't on the face of it seem unreasonable. However, in both these sentences I'm at a loss to see how 以 can in fact be translated as "to", and why that is the way the dictionary wants us to see it. I'm also curious to know how obligatory this 以 is in the dictionary's example. Would it be permissible to leave it out in that sentence, and, if so, what is it adding when present?

 

How would you translate 许以 and 给...以 literally? I'm trying to hang this kind of 以 on a more satisfactory peg than the dictionary does, but failing at the moment.

[lips]

58 minutes ago, Zbigniew said:

translate 许以 and 给...以 literally

There's no figurative usage here, it is literal.  If by "literally" you mean translate into an equivalent English word, then it's the wrong question to ask.

 

BTW, try "with" instead of "to".

[Zbigniew]

Thanks for your answer. 

 

I wasn't intending to say that I understood the expression to be figurative; my request for people's literal translations was simply an attempt to understand the basic structure, which I'm afraid I still don't understand.

 

 To put things more simply, what is the function of 以 in the examples? It's not redundant, I think, so it presumably has a definable, or at least explicable function.

 

14 minutes ago, lips said:

 

  If by "literally" you mean translate into an equivalent English word, then it's the wrong question to ask.

 

BTW, try "with" instead of "to".

 

 It's hard not to see substituting "with" for "to" as giving me what I shouldn't be asking for, i.e. an equivalent English word. Unfortunately, substituting "with" doesn't really get me out of my impasse of incomprehension.

[lips]

4 minutes ago, Zbigniew said:

function of 以 in the examples

A preposition?

[evn108]

This usage is common in classical/literary Chinese

[lips]

It's like asking about the "to" in "give to" or "with" in "provide with" in English.

[陳德聰]

Rather than giving an English substitute, an actual explanation of the mechanics of the sentence would be helpful.

 

Think of it this way perhaps:

 

Verbs of the "give" variety will have the recipient and the object that is being transmitted to the recipient. 以 can be used to clearly mark the object that is being transmitted to the recipient.

 

From your examples:

 

給[敵人]以[沈重打擊]

"deal the enemy a heavy blow"

 

In a literal translation into English, the 以 does not correspond to any overt word because we don't mark the object being transmitted with anything. In fact, only in the opposite English order does the "to" I think you found in your dictionary appear: "deal a heavy blow to the enemy". But the "to" in the English is clearly marking the recipient of the action, whereas the 以 is not. So tsk tsk on whoever put that entry in the dictionary.

 

For 香港被許以高度的自治, you should note that this is the exact same thing happening, just now you have a passive added to the mix so the word order has shifted. If we shift it to the active voice we get something like:

 

許[香港]以[高度的自治]

"permit/promise Hong Kong a high level of autonomy"

 

If you are unsure how to get there, you will need to note that 被 plucks 香港 out and drags it to the front to make a passive construction.

[Zbigniew]

Thanks, Chen, that's very useful, and thanks to everyone else for their contributions.

 

So I should think of 以 as a direct object marker. I'm not sure yet exactly what circumstances it's used in, but hopefully with experience I'll get a better feel for it.

 

On the subject of its obligatoriness, I asked a native speaker yesterday whether the 以 could be dropped in either of the two examples, and I was told that it can be dropped in the dictionary's example but not in the NYT one. If this is correct, is it the passivity of the NYT construction that makes the 以 there more indispensable?

[roddy]

The ABC actually lists 以 as an "empty" verb suffix, with 加以/给以 as examples. Might be helpful here.

 

Model question asker here by the way - tells us the source, explains what's been done to try and understand it, then says thanks. Keep 'em coming!

[陳德聰]

4 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

So I should think of 以 as a direct object marker. I'm not sure yet exactly what circumstances it's used in, but hopefully with experience I'll get a better feel for it.

 

When used in conjunction with give/bestow-like verbs, yes. But it can also be used in other ways with verbs that have nothing to do with direct objects so keep in mind this is just one of its possible meanings.

 

4 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

On the subject of its obligatoriness, I asked a native speaker yesterday whether the 以 could be dropped in either of the two examples, and I was told that it can be dropped in the dictionary's example but not in the NYT one. If this is correct, is it the passivity of the NYT construction that makes the 以 there more indispensable?

 

Well 許香港高度自治 doesn't work either so I don't know that I'd go so far as to say it's cause of the passive. It's maybe related to how obligatory the different objects are for whichever verb. With 給 it's kind of given there will be a direct and an indirect object, but with 許 the use with an indirect and direct object is pretty limited to this sort of higher register, with it's more colloquial and other potentially more tangible meanings being a lot more common, so it's likely the 以 is more needed to cement this particular meaning.

[Zbigniew]

1 hour ago, 陳德聰 said:

When used in conjunction with give/bestow-like verbs, yes. But it can also be used in other ways with verbs that have nothing to do with direct objects so keep in mind this is just one of its possible meanings.

 

Sorry, yes, I should have specified "So I should think of 以 in these sorts of examples as a direct object marker."

1 hour ago, 陳德聰 said:

It's maybe related to how obligatory the different objects are for whichever verb. With 給 it's kind of given there will be a direct and an indirect object, but with 許 the use with an indirect and direct object is pretty limited to this sort of higher register, with it's more colloquial and other potentially more tangible meanings being a lot more common, so it's likely the 以 is more needed to cement this particular meaning.

That's very interesting, and certainly more plausible than my stab in the dark about passive constructions making the 以 more obligatory.

 

I'll be on the lookout in future for other verb/object combinations that employ 以 in this way. I've got to say that having a discrete word like this as a direct object marker is new and eye-opening grammatical territory for me; my experience of object marking up till now has been limited to word order (most notably in English), and terminal inflection in English (to a very limited extent) and various other IE languages.*

 

Thanks again.

 

3 hours ago, roddy said:

The ABC actually lists 以 as an "empty" verb suffix, with 加以/给以 as examples. Might be helpful here.

Thanks. The native speaker I consulted actually went for the empty [suffix] explanation, citing 可以， but obviously that isn't a verb of giving/bestowing or one that can involve grammatical objects, unlike 加以 and 给以.

 

*I should add that I have of course already met 把。

[evn108]

I do not know many grammatical terms but if I had to translate it directly I would use "with" or "by means of" instead of "to," but if you were translating the sentence to English it wouldn't be necessary to use either of those.

[Jon Long]

I think @lips and @evn108 are right, the usage of 以 stems from classical Chinese (for example see definition 1, 4, and 8 in this dictionary entry).  以 can mean "with" to indicate the instrument/method of an action (like 用), or it can mark the direct object of an action (like 把).  被许以高度的自治  means "provided WITH high degree of autonomy".  I also found this very thorough explanation of 以 in classical Chinese in 百度文库， note number 1 under 介词“以” on page 4.