Active vs stative verbs in Classical Chinese

[linguistcat]

I'm using Introduction to Literary Chinese: Part One and Two by R. Eno to acquaint myself with Classical Chinese and its grammar for a project I'm working on. It's possible the text didn't go over if there is a strategy in writing/grammar to distinguish the use of a verb with both "active" and stative meanings, or that I overlooked a portion where it did. I'm assuming for now that it was left to context as opposed to a specific grammatical formation.

But for those of you who have studied Classical Chinese in more depth: Was there a way to distinguish these uses even if it wasn't always used? Like that a sentence in the form SV tended to be stative, where VO was active with an implied subject. Or the reverse, for whatever reason, or some other strategy? It's fine if it was mostly left to context, but I'd just like to know before I move ahead with some grammar tweaks in the project I'm working on.

Thank you for any help or info

[zompist]

If I understand it, there's really no help but context. E.g., you could say

直木先伐 Zhí mù xiān fá
straight tree first chop
Straight trees are chopped down.

You can reinforce a passive meaning with 见 jiàn, but it's not at all necessary.

[willm]

This is mostly based on Edwin G. Pulleyblank’s Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar.

To some extent they were distinguished by derivational affixes; Pulleyblank mentions reconstructed *-n for imperfect/durative and *-t for perfective/punctual, though this was probably no longer productive by the Classical period.

Sentence-final particles are used somewhat similarly to in Putonghua, with 矣, for example, equivalent to modern 了 in the sense of indicating a change of state. This contrasts with 也, which (after a sentence including a verb) indicated a continuing state.

If you mean the difference between stative and causative uses of adjectives, I think that is entirely left to word order. Adjectives used statively follow their subject; adjectives used causatively follow their agent and precede the patient. Here are some of Pulleyblank’s examples of causatives (the use of the causative to mean “consider to be” in the second is fairly common, I think):

王請大之
“I beg Your Majesty to make it great.” (Mèng 1B/3)
叟，不遠千里而來
“You have come, sir, not regarding 1,000 li as too far.” (Mèng 1A/1)

I hope this answers your question and that I’ve correctly interpreted what you’re asking!

[linguistcat]

Thank you both. This does help since I know where I'm working from.

The part about sentence final particles is maybe a bit tangent to this but definitely related. I think most of what my pdf has listed as "stative verbs" are ALSO listed as adjectives, and a number of these are also listed as being a verb, which seems to mean just a transitive verb or non-stative verb.