Spring and Autumn Use of jí 及 and Its Interpretation in the Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng Commentaries

The Spring and Autumn (Chūnqiū 春秋) is the only extant text in the preimperial corpus that uses the word jí 及 as the primary (and indeed, only) comitative marker, ‘and, with’. The first part of this study analyzes the four basic patterns using jí in the Spring and Autumn. The second part examines the use of jí in the Gōngyáng 公羊 and Gǔliáng 穀梁 commentaries. Although jí typically functions as a simple comitative marker in the Spring and Autumn, Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng struggle to make sense of this word, which in their language is not a grammatical particle, but a full verb. These language differences influenced commentarial readings of jí, resulting in new interpretations of certain Spring and Autumn records that departed subtly from the original sense. The evidence explored in this paper lends additional support to the accepted view that multiple dialects were spoken in ancient China, and underscores the importance of recognizing such differences not only for linguists, but for all of us who strive to read and understand ancient Chinese texts.