A Linguistics Workbook, 4th Edition

Name

Section

8.77 Major Moods 3: Mandarin Chinese

The following sentences illustrate the form that the major moods take in Mandarin

Chinese. Analyze the sentences, and answer questions A-D.

Chinese is a tone language; that is, each word is uttered at a characteristic pitch

level or with a characteristic pitch change. The tones are indicated with diacritic

marks over the vowels. The diacritic - over a vowel indicates a high tone; the

diacritic ' indicates a rising tone; the diacritic indicates a falling-rising tone; the

diacritic ' indicates a falling tone.

Mandarin Chinese sentence English gloss

1. 4i!L@%fiO
   Tg shi jiaoyuan. "He is a teacher."


2. ($3) %=B!
   (Ni) miii shti! "Buy the books!"


3. i$mtk?
   Ni yao shkn-mo? "What do you want?"

4- 4&6F!J%E%o

TB bu dao MCi-guo lai. "He is not coming to America."

5- Z%+%E$?

Wang-Xisnsheng 1ai ma? "Is Mr. Wang coming?"

6. z%*%o
   Wang-XiBnsheng lai. "Mr. Wang is coming."


7. $%G+q?
   Ni ybu shii ma? "Do you have any books?"


8. i-*%%?
   Shei mai bi?

9- %G#o

W6 ybu sha.

"Who sells pens?"

"I have books."

10. ($3) B4&m!
    (Ni) kin tg-men! "Look at them!"


11. &wtk?
    Zhe shi shen-mo? "What is this?"