Chinese grammar
The grammar of Standard Chinese shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number and verb tense are often not expressed by grammatical means, but there are several particles that serve to express verbal aspect and, to some extent, mood.
The basic word order is subject–verb–object, as in English. Otherwise, Chinese is chiefly a head-final language, meaning that modifiers precede the words that they modify. In a noun phrase, for example, the head noun comes last, and all modifiers, including relative clauses, come in front of it. This phenomenon, however, is more typically found in subject–object–verb languages, such as Turkish and Japanese.
Chinese frequently uses serial verb constructions, which involve two or more verbs or verb phrases in sequence. Chinese prepositions behave similarly to serialized verbs in some respects, and they are often referred to as coverbs. There are also location markers, which are placed after nouns and are thus often called postpositions; they are often used in combination with coverbs. Predicate adjectives are normally used without a copular verb and so can be regarded as a type of verb.
As in many other East Asian languages, classifiers are required when numerals are used with nouns. There are many different classifiers in the language, and each countable noun generally has a particular classifier associated with it. Informally, however, it is often acceptable to use the general classifier in place of other specific classifiers.
Word formation
In Chinese, the difference between words and Chinese characters is often not clear; this is one of the reasons the Chinese script does not use spaces to separate words. A string of characters can be translated as a single English word, but these characters have some kind of independence. For example,, meaning 'to dance', can be used as a single intransitive verb, or may be regarded as comprising two single lexical words. However, it does in fact function as a compound of the verb and the object. Additionally, the present progressive aspect marker can be inserted between these two parts to form.Chinese morphemes are mostly monosyllabic. In most cases, morphemes are represented by single characters. However, two or more monosyllabic morphemes can be translated as a single English word. These monosyllabic morphemes can be either free or bound – that is, in particular usage, they may or may not be able to stand independently. Most two-syllable compound nouns often have the head on the right, while compound verbs often have the head on the left.
Some Chinese morphemes are polysyllabic; for example, the loanwords is the compound of and, but this compound is actually simply a transliteration of "sofa". Many native disyllabic morphemes, such as, have consonant alliteration.
Many monosyllabic words have alternative disyllabic forms with virtually the same meaning, such as for. Many disyllabic nouns are produced by adding the suffix to a monosyllabic word or morpheme. There is a strong tendency for monosyllables to be avoided in certain positions; for example, a disyllabic verb will not normally be followed by a monosyllabic object. This may be connected with the preferred metrical structure of the language.
Reduplication
is common in modern Chinese.Noun Reduplication
- Family members: ex. ; ' ; mèi-mei
- Fixed expression: In modern Chinese, some nouns are necessarily replicated, but their morphemes in Classical Chinese are often directly used without any replication. ex. ', from '. The Classical Chinese expressions often become modern Chengyu, such as '
- Diminutive or childish expression: treating the noun as cute or endearing; often used with animals. ex. ', from ' ; ', from '.
Adjectives and Adverb Reduplication
ABB reduplication: to emphasize the state described by the adjective/adverb.
Verb Reduplication
To mark the delimitative aspect or for general emphasis – see the section:Reduplication of Chinese classifier
means "every":means "many":
Prefixes
- — "-able"
- * — "reliable"
- * — "respectable"
- — "anti-"
- * [] — "anti-terror"
- * [] — "anti-clerical"
- * [] — "anti-fascist"
Suffixes
- — "-ize" — used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives
- * [] — "internationalize", from
- * [] — "worsen", from
- — "-ness" — for attributes
- * — "safety", from
- * — "effectiveness", from
Infixes
- — "can" and — "cannot"
- * — "can understand", from
- * — "cannot understand"
Sentence structure
Chinese can also be considered a topic-prominent language: there is a strong preference for sentences that begin with the topic, usually "given" or "old" information, and end with the comment, or "new" information. Certain modifications of the basic subject–verb–object order are permissible and may serve to achieve topic-prominence. In particular, a direct or indirect object may be moved to the start of the clause to create topicalization. It is also possible for an object to be moved to a position in front of the verb for emphasis.
Another type of sentence is what has been called an ergative structure, where the apparent subject of the verb can move to object position; the empty subject position is then often occupied by an [|expression of location]. Compare locative inversion in English. This structure is typical of the verb , but it can also be used with many other verbs, generally denoting position, appearance or disappearance. An example:
Chinese is also to some degree a pro-drop or null-subject language, meaning that the subject can be omitted from a clause if it can be inferred from the context. In the following example, the subject of the verbs for "hike" and "camp" is left to be inferred—it may be "we", "I", "you", "she", etc.
In the next example the subject is omitted and the object is topicalized by being moved into subject position, to form a passive-type sentence. For passive sentences with a marker such as, see the [|passive section].
Adverbs and adverbial phrases that modify the verb typically come after the subject but before the verb, although other positions are sometimes possible; see [|Adverbs and adverbials]. For constructions that involve more than one verb or verb phrase in sequence, see [|Serial verb constructions]. For sentences consisting of more than one clause, see [|Conjunctions].
Objects
Some verbs can take both an indirect object and a direct object. Indirect normally precedes direct, as in English:With many verbs, however, the indirect object may alternatively be preceded by [|prepositional] gěi ; in that case it may either precede or follow the direct object.
To emphasize the direct object, it can be combined with the accusative marker bǎ to form a "bǎ + direct object" phrase. This phrase is placed before the verb. For example:
Other markers can be used in a similar way as bǎ, such as the formal jiāng :
and colloquial ná
To explain this kind of usage, some linguists assume that some verbs can take two direct objects, called the "inner" and "outer" objects. Typically, the outer object will be placed at the start of the sentence or introduced via the bǎ phrase. For example:
Noun phrases
The head noun of a noun phrase comes at the end of the phrase; this means that everything that modifies the noun comes before it. This includes attributive adjectives, determiners, quantifiers, possessives, and relative clauses.Chinese does not have articles as such; a noun may stand alone to represent what in English would be expressed as "the..." or "a[n]...". However the word yī, followed by the appropriate classifier, may be used in some cases where English would have "a" or "an". It is also possible, with many classifiers, to omit the yī and leave the classifier on its own at the start of the noun phrase.
The demonstratives are zhè, and nà. When used before a noun, these are often followed by an appropriate classifier. However this use of classifiers is optional. When a noun is preceded by a numeral, the use of a classifier or measure word is in most cases considered mandatory.
The plural marker xiē is used without a classifier. However jǐ takes a classifier.
For adjectives in noun phrases, see the [|Adjectives section]. For noun phrases with pronouns rather than nouns as the head, see the [|Pronouns section].
Possessives are formed by adding de —the same particle that is used after relative clauses and sometimes after adjectives—after the noun, noun phrase or pronoun that denotes the possessor.
Relative clauses
Chinese relative clauses, like other noun modifiers, precede the noun they modify. Like possessives and some adjectives, they are marked with the final particle de. A free relative clause is produced if the modified noun following the de is omitted. A relative clause usually comes after any determiner phrase, such as a numeral and classifier. For emphasis, it may come before the determiner phrase.There is usually no relative pronoun in the relative clause. Instead, a gap is left in subject or object position as appropriate. If there are two gaps—the additional gap being created by pro-dropping—ambiguity may arise. For example, chī de may mean "[those] who eat" or "[that] which is eaten". When used alone, it usually means "things to eat".
If the relative item is governed by a preposition in the relative clause, then it is denoted by a pronoun, e.g. tì tā, to explain "for whom". Otherwise the whole prepositional phrase is omitted, the preposition then being implicitly understood.
For example sentences, see Relative clause → Mandarin.