Above poem shows only two characters namely 生 and 死. As you can probably infer from the translation (which is relatively freely done, so as to add some poetical cachet to the English rendition), both these characters, which, as nouns, have the basic meanings of “life“ or “birth“ and “death,“ respectively, can be used also as verbs “to die,“ and even be used in adverbial phrases, as the first line of the English translation rightly suggests.

Above poem is by the hand of the famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh, who passed away in January 2022.

Without even claiming the following would be of any poetical or even remotely literary value (I originally intended to refer to it as a “poem,“ but even with quotation marks that would be a stretch), this set of sentences consisting of 5 characters each further illustrates the different syntactical and semantic functions a single character may have.

是非是是非

是非非是非

非是非是非

是是是是非

非非是是非

Now, in order to translate1 these sentences, we need to know the different syntactic functions of the two characters (是 shì, and 非 fēi) appearing, as well as what the compounds present are and what they mean. We thus list them here:

是 - 1. this (demonstrative, mostly used substantively, not adjectivally)

2. to be (copula)2

3. what is right, right, to be right (noun, adjective, and stative verb, that is a verb which describes a state rather than an action)

Related to 3 are:

4. to make right, to set straight, to rectify, etc. (a factitive verb, a verb signifying an action to make something or someone (its direct object) in the state which the character signifies)

5. to find something/someone correct, right, upright (a putative verb, meaning that it signifies the opinion that someone or someone (again the verb’s direct object) is in the state which the character signifies)

非 - 1. not to be

2. what is wrong, fault, crime, wrong, to be wrong (noun, adjective, and stative verb)

3. to make something (its direct object) wrong (factitive verb); to treat something / someone (direct object) wrongly, to wrong (someone)

4. to consider something wrong / a sin / a crime (a putative verb)

Compound 是非: Ethics, (understanding of) right and wrong

Given that Literary Chinese shows the Subject-Verb-Object sequence (i.e. it is an SVO language), and the third character in all of the sentences is to be taken as the copula (positive if 是, negative if 非), we can, instead of further schematically present the sentences, go straight to the translations proposed by me:

是非是是非

“The concept of ethics is rectifying wrongs.“

是非非是非

“The concept of ethics is not considering wrongs right.“

非是非是非

“To make what is right wrong is not ethics.“

是是是是非

“To consider right things right is ethics (or ethical).“

非非是是非

“To consider what is wrong wrong, is ethical.“

So there you have it, some other examples which show great flexibility in syntactical and even semantic functions of a couple of Chinese characters!