The Old Chinese Particles Yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]‪.‬

In a brilliant article published in this journal over sixty years ago, George A. Kennedy (1901-1960) laid out, for the first time in English, the sense and usage of the clause-final particle yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (1) Briefly put, his conclusion was that the word represents a fusion of the preposition yu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and an unidentified pronoun an, with a variety of resulting meanings, such as "in it," "on it" "from him," etc. Kennedy called this pronoun an "hypothetical," implying that it was not otherwise attested in the ancient Chinese language (with the exception of another productive fusion, ran [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], made up of ru [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and the same an). This paper will show that the mysterious word is either an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--or yan itself. In his search for the "hypothetical an" Kennedy erred at the outset of his study by electing to discriminate between clause-initial and clause-final yan. Had he considered the various functions of clause-initial yan, he might have observed that the clause-initial particle an can be used to the same effect and with virtually the same meaning, as in the chart below: (2)