Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar

AcTIOn verbS 13.4 13.3.2 Indicating that an action did not occur in the past To indicate that an action did not occur in the pas ...

Open-ended action verbs 13.5 13.4.2 verb-not-verb yes–no questions To ask a yes–no question about whether an action generally oc ...

AcTIOn verbS 13.5 13.5.2 Open-ended action verbs and obligatory objects Open-ended action verbs are typically followed by an obl ...

change-of-state action verbs 13.6 ‘to read’ is 看书/看書 kàn shū ‘to read a newspaper’ is 看报/看報 kàn bào and not *看书报/看書報 kànshū bào ...

AcTIOn verbS 13.6 13.6.2 change-of-state verbs and stative verbs Many change-of-state verbs also function as stative verbs. Chan ...

14 Prepositions and prepositional phrases Prepositions occur before a noun phrase and indicate some relationship between the nou ...

PrePOSITIOnS And PrePOSITIOnAL PhrASeS 14.2 Adverbs occur before the prepositional phrase. They do not occur between the prepos ...

basic functions of prepositions 14.2 14.2.3 Prepositions that indicate joint performance of an action 跟 gēn ‘with’ 她每天跟他朋友吃午饭。 她 ...

PrePOSITIOnS And PrePOSITIOnAL PhrASeS 14.2 跟 gēn ‘from’ 他跟我借书了。 他跟我借書了。 Tā gēn wǒ jiè shū le. He borrowed a book from me. 向 xià ...

basic functions of prepositions 14.2 note the preposition is part of the following fixed expressions: 跟 (someone) 开玩笑 跟 (someone ...

PrePOSITIOnS And PrePOSITIOnAL PhrASeS 14.3 14.3 Prepositions that also function as verbs Many prepositions also function as ver ...

15 adverbs Adverbs are words that modify the verb or verb phrase. 15.1 General properties of adverbs In Mandarin, adverbs occur ...

AdverbS 15.2 Question Respond with this Not this 你已经吃了吗？ 对。 *已经。 你已經吃了嗎？ 對。 已經。 Nǐ yǐjing chī le ma? Duì. Yǐjing. Have you alrea ...

Adverbs with logical function: 也 yG, 都 dDu, 还/還 hái, 就 jiù, 只 zhH, and 才 cái 15.2 Since 也 yě introduces additional information i ...

AdverbS 15.2 都 dōu can occur before or after negation. The relative position of negation and 都 dōu reflects a difference in mean ...

Adverbs with logical function: 也 yG, 都 dDu, 还/還 hái, 就 jiù, 只 zhH, and 才 cái 15.2 还/還 hái may introduce additional information a ...

AdverbS 15.2 就 jiù is also used to link two verb phrases and to signal a relationship of sequence between them. 我看了报以后就睡觉。 我看了報以 ...

Adverbs with logical function: 也 yG, 都 dDu, 还/還 hái, 就 jiù, 只 zhH, and 才 cái 15.2 When 才 cái is used to link two verb phrases as ...

16 Conjunctions Conjunctions are words that join phrases belonging to the same grammatical category and in- dicate a relationshi ...

conjunctions that indicate a disjunctive or ‘or’ relationship 16.2 16.2 conjunctions that indicate a disjunctive or ‘or’ relatio ...