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I apologize for being negative, but in my humble opinion, this article could use a lot of work. Having said that, I don't want to discount the hard work that has been made and all the great effort that has been put in by all the contributors of this article thus far. There is certainly some very good content in this article and all the individuals who have contributed to this article deserve thanks. But I think this article can be a lot better. I wish I could do something to improve this article, but I do not have sufficient expertise; I am only an elementary to pre-intermediate learner of Chinese. Perhaps this article could use some good clean up. Also, I wonder a bit about the quality and accuracy of some parts of this article. For example, I noticed one blatantly false statement, which said, "'Monkey' (and certain other animals) and 'pencil' are both '隻/只 zhi' nouns." In other words, the statement said that the words for monkey and pencil both take the same measure word. This is blatantly false. The measure words for monkey and pencil merely have the same pronunciation. They are not the same word. I have since deleted that sentence, but I am a bit concerned by it because it is a mistake that only a very novice learner of Chinese would make. Can we solicit the help of some experts for feedback on the article as a whole? I think this article has the potential to be great, but I think a lot of work will be needed. 61.229.104.25 15:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I have a problem with the Mood section. 呢 does not mean or imply "pending", but rather is an interjection similar to the Japanese yo — in the example sentence provided, the idea of "pending" is provided by 還 rather than 呢, which would more likely indicate that the speaker is providing information. It is possible, for example, to say "發生什麽事?" (what happened) - "他撞倒了燈柱呢!" (he knocked over the lamppost!), where 呢 could not possibly mean pending, but rather providing the new information that he had knocked over the lamppost, and even with an overtone of surprise, shock, disbelief, or more generally exclamation. That bit needs editing, IMO. --Denihilonihil 14:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
呢 is often used as you say, but it can also mean pending. Two possible usages. JMCorey (talk) 23:25, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I am preparing to edit this soon... Colipon 04:58, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
May I suggest that those slashes just before the simplified versions don't look very good -- well, at least on my browser, the slash comes out too close to the initial simplified character (I don't know if it is a problem with my browser). I might suggest including also pinyin after each sample sentence, probably done most easily if someone knows a webpage to produce it automatically :)
I added a little information but failed to find the secret of how to input Chinese characters correctly. P0M 06:26, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
P0M: I erased my last remark. Now that I can see the Chinese I see how Taoster modified the text. Wouldn't it make sense to have the traditional as well as simplified "ma"? Kou3+ma2 is definitely wrong, and I had replaced it with the correct traditional form at one point, but that disappeared too,
I don't know if it improves the readability, but I put characters on top of the pinyin. I think doing this is useful, but would like some feedback before attempting more.
I am afraid this is not the case.. For instance, Cantonese and Mandarin grammar differs significantly from each other. — Instantnood 22:21, Jan 28 2005 (UTC)
Your comments come with two problems. The sentence in the article imples Chinese languages is an exception. Are Germanic languages another exception? How much should we accept for similar? Are German and English grammars similar tho there are some differences? — Instantnood 09:26, Jan 29 2005 (UTC)
But in my opinion I think it is necessary to write something about the differences in grammar among different languages. — Instantnood 17:19, Jan 29 2005 (UTC)
Sure, go ahead. -- ran (talk) 17:51, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
Should it be changed to all Chinese spoken varieties? — Instantnood 09:27, Jan 29 2005 (UTC)
I am not exactly sure what Instantnood is trying to say. As with a very large number of other phenomena, languages are related together on a tree structure. Languages are different from lots of other things like the genetic connections among all human being in that it is at least not clear that Chinese and the Indo-European languages did not spring from totally different origins. I.e., some people say that there is no proof that humans didn't invent language more than once. Researchers are currently trying to puzzle out whether there is some innate structure in the human brain that ensures that all languages will follow some basic rules (even though they may play with those rules in such different ways that it is hard to see how they could be the same at some root level). What is pretty clear is that languages like German and English are twigs on a common branch -- even though they do some things in ways that are irritatingly different for speakers of one language who must learn the other language. Similarly, all of the spoken languages of Chinese share many commonalities even though they do some things differently. I'm told, for instance, that in Cantontese one says "I give money you," rather than "I give you money." Little differences like that are nothing compared to the fact that no Chinese language has tense as that concept is understood in English, German, Latin, French and the other Indo-Europeans languages. Instead, they use aspect. To find parallels to aspect that are even remotely helpful, people look to Russian, a language that is viewed by most English speakers as much "different" from English than is German. But all of the Chinese languages have that way of marking -- not time-- but answers to questions like, "Did you do it (as you were expected to)?" "Have you done it (within some time period, implied or explicit)." Zhao Yuan-ren has written a great deal about aspect as used in various Chinese languages/dialects (whatever you prefer to call them).
To me it would make sense to say something about the ways in which all forms of spoken Chinese are similar, e.g., that they all use two basic sentence formats: Topic-Comment and Subject-Predicate, that Subject-Predicate sentences position their verb after the subject and before objects, predicate nominatives, etc., and so forth.
Then it would be interesting to catalog some of the main differences. Knowing Mandarin fairly well and having only a smattering of Taiwanese I couldn't do more than mention the hearsay evidence I have on "subject + verb + indirect object + object" vs. "subject + verb + object + indirect object" mentioned above. Offhand, I can't think of any way in which Taiwanese sentence structures depart radically from Mandarin sentence structures. But listing whatever differences are to be found (and about what percent of the Chinese population uses the less common form) would give the general reader some idea of both the degree of similarity and the degree of dissimilarity among the tongues of various places and groups in China.
Some commonalities among all Chinese languages trace all of the way back to wen yan wen, e.g., the use of zhi1 (e.g., "Wu2 zhi1 you3 Kung3 Ming2 ru2 yu2 zhi1 you3 shui3.") in wen yan wen and the use of "de" in Mandarin, "eh" (not sure how to romanize it) in Taiwanese, etc. That grammatical item makes a good context with English in which the "stacking order" of modifiers goes the other way, and it would be easy to demonstrate graphically why speakers of one language may have difficulties adapting to the rules of the other language. P0M
"Swim[ming] I am the best." This translation to a sample grammatical sentence is imprecise. It should be something like "Swimming, it is my forte."
I think we should have it:
Doing it this way shows the distinctive sentance structure of mandarin Chinese comparing with romantic languages.
Also, a lot of sentances sound funny in chinese as well. Take the previous posting on 游泳我是最拿手 for example. The sentance is more rounded and complete if it is said 我最拿手是游泳, couple with the full translation: "Swimming is my forte." and the translation by characters I mentioned. The sentance contrast will be so much better. If no one objects, I would like to go ahead and change all the sentances translations. --Ndhuang (talk) 11:22, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I was mistaken in my question, silly me. That's not what I was looking at! Laundrypowder 02:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Citation: Another category of devices unique to Chinese are the modal particles, used to express mood, or an expression of how a statement relates to reality and/or intent.
This statement is not correct. German language uses modal particles frequently as well, so Chinese language is not unique in this aspect. See German modal particle for more information. --Abdull 20:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
This article lists both types of characters (in almost all cases), but the order is not very consistent. I'd suggest putting everything in simplified and traditional characters in brackets behind. Simplified is most used in China itself (at least as far as I have been able to see, so unless someone has a good reason to do it the other way around, let's make that default here.
I feel a much more precise title for this article is Chinese Syntax, not grammar. A redirect from this article there would be in order, too. I'm Linguist, though, so the titles may a bit pedantic.
Clay 16:19, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
In the mood section, the example for 2 meanings of 了(le) isn't appropriate, because the 2 alternative explanations for the phrase "妈妈来了!/Māma lái le!" aren't correct. The phrase "妈妈来了!/Māma lái le!" only mean that "Mother has come", and is definitly different from "妈妈要来了!/Māma yào lái le!", which only means "Mother will come". As no definition of "perfective le" or "inceptive le" is given, it wouldn't be possible to understand any difference between the two. As much as I know, 了(le) does either indicate the end in a phrase or slightly modify the tone of the phrase. In either way, it is not possible, in most cases, for 了(le) to alter the meaning of the phrase significantly. su88 06:04, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Another bad example, and this time in the Topic prominence section. The last sentence there, ie. the one glossed as meaning "I'm the best at swimming" does not exemplify the topic-prominence principle. As the word "swimming" comes first, it's clear that this is not meant to be given information that is commented in the sentence but instead, it is an example of focusing a part of the sentence in order to, for instance, to contrast it to other implied options, which in this case would be other hobbies or sports the speaker does. I am no expert of Chinese languages (but I am a student of linguistics and am familiar with the cross-linguistic notions of topic prominence and focus fronting) so I've left the text as it is, but I hope someone would look at it. -Oghmoir 19:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
AgreeRiskiest (talk) 19:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
According to an editor, there were incorrections in this section, so I'm hiding it until someone else can fix it. FilipeS 01:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Are these words (referring, as far as I know, to grammatical cases) really appropriate for Mandarin? All varieties of Chinese are almost completely isolating languages. Are these terms used in reputable Chinese grammars? Strad 03:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I dimly recall I've read something about being able to use subject-predicate pair as a predicate for a sentence to describe property of a component of an entity. Something like 'I eyes-are-blue'. Can someone elaborate on that? Sorry, if this is only a misunderstanding from my part.
Just wanted to show my appreciation to those who worked on this article. The information there is very informative and helpful. You certainly manage to explain the subtleties of word order and perfectives/imperfectives better then my Chinese prof does. Basser g 06:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
The article doesn't really cover a common perception held by Chinese people that Chinese language does not have grammar. This is somewhat covered in the Chinese version of this page. --Voidvector (talk) 20:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't think thats necessary. Maybe there can be a separate section on the Chinese language page about the perceptions of the language. But "old-wives tales" about the grammar don't deserve a mention in this section. 118.122.88.158 (talk) 12:54, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
moon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.218.106.129 (talk) 03:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
I as a non chinese speaker have trouble understanding the mood section. The two examples give -le and -ne endings which appear to be different words. But the article says: "The perfective le and the inceptive le are two different words. ... The fact that they are now written the same way in Mandarin can cause confusion." This does not match the example given of "inceptive -ne". --Pepsi Lite (talk) 01:04, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
The comparison is not between -le & -ne, but between the perfective -le in the "Aspects" section and the inceptive -le in the "Mood" section.Riskiest (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Regarding these edits [1][2][3]: Let's have a quick discussion here about whether or not to include these translations, before this becomes an edit war. I am also going to leave notes at WikiProject China and WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics.
Anyway, my stance is that they're unnecessary (as per Voidvector's edit summary; they're not even terms unique to Chinese) and that an individual wanting to know how to say these terms in Chinese can look them up (the better online dictionaries, such as nciku.com and dict.cn, have most of them) or can use the interwiki links at each of the respective pages on topic-prominent language, serial verb construction, etc.; the 中文 interwikis on those pages all go to Chinese WP articles that have those terms (that's how I learned a lot of the Chinese grammar terms when I first started being interested in Chinese linguistics). Politizer talk/contribs 22:12, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
--Anatoli (talk) 23:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
--Anatoli (talk) 23:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
The current disambiguation at the top of the page isn't very useful; being told to "look at so-and-so page" without being told exactly where isn't very helpful. I suggest moving this page to "Standard Mandarin grammar" or "Grammar of Standard Mandarin", having "Chinese grammar" redirect there, and having a "Chinese grammar (disambiguation) page. Alternatively, "Chinese grammar" could be the disambiguation page branching off into the rest of the grammar articles. Thoughts?– DroEsperanto(t / c) 01:41, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Can someone with a better understanding of Chinese grammar add some more detail to the examples? Interlinear glosses as seen in e.g. bǎ construction are very helpful in understanding how each part of the sentence fits together. By contrast, the examples here simply jump from Chinese to the idiomatic English translation, which isn't much help to someone who isn't already familiar with the language. 67.87.115.207 (talk) 06:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
This article should be retitled to become "Mandarin grammar".Cheezexyz (talk) 01:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
See the above discussion under Disambiguation. JMCorey (talk) 23:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
In the Aspects section, re imperfectives, one finds the following sentence:
The two imperfectives may both occur in the same clause, e.g. 他正在打电话 tā zhèngzai dǎ diànhuà "He is in the middle of telephoning someone".
Am I missing something? It seems to say the will use both forms (正在 and 着), but the sentence doesn't actually do that. JMCorey (talk) 23:35, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
What does this phrase in the lede mean? --JWB (talk) 23:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
'给我' is something like Japanese's 'くれる'(...てくれる) , but with stronger tone (something like Japanese's 'てくれ') . It is unrelated to 'to me'. Here it is just like a simple order.
In this case (A speaks to B) , A could be either flattered by B or not. So, the translation is not right.
Rethliopuks (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
The word '被' doesn't simply show passive voice, but also a passive mood (not only passive in grammar, but also in meaning) . In some cases, the passive sense it shows can be very strong. 222.248.137.120 (talk) 09:57, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Baihua and may fourth
http://books.google.com/books?id=dNVihjQVQNIC&pg=PA96#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=h5e8Za8sEJAC&pg=PA153#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=tB3zbSCY-zUC&pg=PA750#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=1SWaAAAAIAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=ey2sAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA320#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=wKMZmdxVj9gC&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=pCIaAQAAIAAJ
Rajmaan (talk) 07:05, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
This is perfect acceptable. --刻意(Kèyì) 20:54, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Okay so given that I'm basically an ABC, I feel like ba and ma have other usages. Either that or my understanding of Mandarin is wrong. Ex. 吧 in response to a question or debate 就用红色的油漆吧? Let's just use red paint, yes? If you reply 好 vs 好吧 I feel the connotation is different. 好 is closer to the English of "Yes" while 好吧 based on my understanding would be closer to "Fine". There is a bit of reservation in the second case. (Although this also depends on the inflection used while pronouncing 吧。 A lower tone represents reservation, while a shorter quick tone represents eagerness.)
Similarly for 啊. It can be used in response to a question to demonstrate uncertainty. 我听所你生病了 I heard you got sick. 我没生病啊? I didn't get sick [to the best of my knowledge]?
Or incredulity 他没生病啊? "He wasn't sick?!"
Although in this case that's somewhat covered by the 'forcefulness' part, but I tend to understand forcefulness differently than what it achieves in this case. I suppose it also has to do with the inflection used when saying the statement. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 11:29, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
What's with this sentence? 土匪把我杀了父亲 tǔfěi bǎ wǒ shā le fùqīn. People keep "correcting" it, but the book I found it in makes a big deal of this sentence and its various transformations. Does it really sound ungrammatical to native speakers? (At least, the version in the book has ta "his" instead of wo "my" - does that make a difference?) Obviously it's not being claimed that this is the normal way of translating "the bandits killed my father", but has the author got it completely wrong about the sentence being grammatically acceptable? W. P. Uzer (talk) 00:11, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
In any case, another native speaker has essentially confirmed the replies above, so I'll make the necessary changes to the article - again, those with better knowledge are invited to review, expand, etc. W. P. Uzer (talk) 17:16, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Is the example with "eat vinegar = be jealous" (following a ba object) definitely wrong as well? The same book that I mentioned above (this time on pages 194-195) gives examples like this. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:57, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
This sentence sounds extremely weird to me, given the gloss that accompanies it. Besides just being weird to start with, if I had to translate it, I would say it meant something more like "yesterday was his/her grocery-buying day" -- it answers "when does s/he buy groceries?" (habitual), not "when did s/he buy the groceries?". Any other native speakers to weigh in? Perhaps it's simply regionalism on my part? -104.129.194.84 (talk) 20:02, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
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I'll be concise for those knowledgeable, and refer to brief and basic bibliography for those who are not.
The Chinese elasticity/flexibility is a lexical property of chinese terms, two sides of the same coin, which must be reflected in the very same entry for a certain lemma.
Therefore, for example the fifth version of the prestigious XDHYCD (Xiandai Hanyu Cidian) applies mutual annotations in the respective entries, so that the entry for 煤 mei ‘coal’ reads "noun, … also called 煤炭 mei-tan ‘coal-charcoal’", and the entry for 煤炭 meitan ‘coal-charcoal’ is annotated as "noun, 煤 mei ‘coal’".
Unfortunately, currently in wiktionary this is wrongly reflected in the broadly termed 'compounds' section, as a synonym or after 'see also', and only for the monosyllabic version.
Please, before commenting read the following brief article (and if necessary further references within it); if you still have any questions, I'll be glad to try and answer them.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~duanmu/2014Elastic.pdf
Finally, elasticity from Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 2005 has been tabulated in the following open access thesis
deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116629/1/yandong_1.pdf
I hope an enriching discussion ensues for this critical lexicograhical issue --Backinstadiums (talk) 02:38, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
By saying "To understand something you hear", does it mean "To understand something one hears" ? 2A01:CB0C:38C:9F00:D196:EBEE:8A6C:34AB (talk) 21:07, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
“我把橘子皮剥了” is given as an example of an inner and an outer object. The citation is to Li (1990), which instead has: “我把橘子剥了皮”, which seems to me to be a better and more obvious example of a sentence with inner and outer objects, since in the example in the article, 橘子皮 “tangerine/orange skin” could be viewed as a noun phrase constituting single direct object. Indeed, the more idiomatic “alternative” provided in footnote [d] is identical to the sentence in the main text, so it can’t be a “more common way to express this.” Guan (talk) 17:23, 18 July 2020 (UTC) ok
In the hatnote, why is the second "Pinyin" treated like ruby text? 64.203.187.122 (talk) 14:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Much of this section is general information about tense theory (not specifically relevant to Chinese), or duplication of information already given under aspect. There seems to be only one source cited claiming that Chinese has tense in some way, and the purported justification for this is not clear to me; nor can I access the full article referenced. I would remove the whole section on tense and give just a footnote in the Aspects section, mentioning that some authors argue for the existence of tense. Any other views? W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:41, 25 December 2020 (UTC)