Modern Chinese: 句子成分

Showing posts with label 句子成分. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

The passive voice of Chinese sentences

中文被动句

Dr Youxuan Wang (王友轩)

First draft: 2011-03-12

Second draft: 2012-05-02

The passive voice in modern Chinese should not pose any special difficulty to students whose first language is English. Most of the scenarios that would evoke the use of passive voice in English would also call for the construction of passive sentences in Chinese. However, there are a few grammatical and stylistic idiosyncrasies in modern Chinese that merit the student’s attention.

The Chinese language is not overtly inflected in the sense that the form of a character does not undergo any modification in order to reflect number, tense or voice. Therefore, the verb used in a passive sentence would still look the same as if it is used in active voice. This makes the student’s life a lot easier.
However, the word order in a language like Chinese is very significant. The passive voice is often expressed by a “被”-prepositional phrase which functions as adverbial. Unlike English, Chinese adverbs are to be placed before the verbs that they modify. (By contrast the “by”-prepositional phrase in an English passive sentence usually appears after the verb. Be aware of this difference!)
Moreover, the preposition “被” can be interchanged with some synonyms in some contexts. (By contrast, the “by” in the same contexts does not have corresponding synonyms.) Even more idiosyncratic is the fact that, in many cases, the noun phrase following the preposition “被” and the even the entire “被”-prepositional phrase can be (often preferably) omitted.

In what follows, we will consider all these grammatical and stylistic features by looking at some authentic sentence examples. For ease of syntactic analysis, we will mark up the different constituents of a sentence in red. For a legend of the conventional mark-up symbols, please go to the article “How Chinese Grammarians Mark up Sentence Constituents (句子成分的标识方法)” (URL: <http://intensive-chinese.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/marking-up-sentence-constituents.html>) or click here.

>> View the full article （阅读全文）

Monday, 23 January 2012

Marking up sentence constituents

Share: <http://goo.gl/Z0IvP9>

How Chinese Grammarians Mark up Sentence Constituents

句子成分的标识方法

Youxuan Wang

2012-01-23

When analysing the structure of a Chinese sentence, grammarians usually follow the convention of using some markup symbols. They would use underlines, wavy underlines, brackets etc instead of writing down the grammatical terms. They don't have to use words to name a particular type of constituents.

Here is a list of the most commonly used markup symbols.

Using these symbols, we can now mark up the constituents of the sentence "星期天, 我有时在宿舍读书，有时去球场打球" as follows:

Thus,what these brackets and underlines etc. reveal to us is that, in the first clause "我有时在宿舍读书", the adverb "有时" (which is square-bracketed) and the prepositional phrase "在宿舍" (also square-bracketed) as adverbials of time and location, and they serve to bring out a temporal and spatial dimensions in the meaning of the predicate "读"; the pronoun “我” (double-underlined) is the subject of the sentence, and the noun “书” (marked up by a wavy underline) is the direct object of the transitive verb "读" (single-underlined). The second clause omits the pronoun "我" ， which is normal if the subject of the second clause is identical with that of the first clause. The structure of the second clause "(我) 有时去球场打球" is different ,as it employs two verb phrases in a serial construction, i.e., “去球场” and “打球”. At the beginning of the entire sentence is the adverbial of time "星期天" (square-bracketed). Since it precedes all the three verbs (i.e., “读”、“去” and “打”) in this sentence, the time which the term "星期天" denotes is the same time when the actions recounted by all the three ensuing verbs take place.

In what follows, you are given examples of a variety of sentence patterns. Please try to translate these sentences into English - as a token that you understand their meaning. (They are all taken from the short allegorical tale that you have already read 《“马虎”背后的血泪故事》 . Click here for a review.) When you think that you understand the meaning of these sentences, please proceed to consider the reasons why various parts of the sentences are marked up the way they are marked up. The ability to do the same is a safeguard of a good intuitive as well as rational sense of Chinese syntax.

Exercises:

Use a pencil to mark up the constituents of the following sentences:

(1) 我正在听音乐。

(2）我在厨房做饭。

(3) 我每个星期天给爸爸、妈妈写信。

(4) 这个箱子很重。里面只有书。

(5) 现在是早晨九点。

(6) 再过十个小时，我们的工作就要完成了。

(7) 我在跟我的爷爷学习太极拳。

(8) 我喜欢听我妈妈唱歌。

(9) 两座大山之间有一个很深的山谷。

(10) 今天下午，我们学校的球队跟政法大学的代表队比赛。
(11) 今天晚上礼堂有舞会。我们一起去跳跳舞吧。

References:

Wang, Youxuan. "Key concepts and technical terms in Chinese grammar (汉语语法术语)". <http://intensive-chinese.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2012-01-23T07:33:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=4&by-date=false>. 2012-01-22.

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Key concepts and technical terms in Chinese grammar

汉语语法术语

Youxuan Wang

2012-01-22

This short article will first give two short lists: a list of terms which designate word classes and a list of terms which name sentennce constituents. The first list falls into the domain of lexicology and the second pertains to the terrain of syntax.

The last section of this article introduces a method for marking up various sentence constituents in syntactical analyses. This method has been practised by Chinese grammarians, and it is often used in textbooks and exams.

We do not study jargons for jargons' sake, but use them to facilitate learning.

A. Word class (or part of speech) 词性

01	名词	míngcí	noun – a term signifying an concrete or abstract entity, e.g.: 山，水，记忆.
02	代词	dàicí	pronoun – a substitute for a noun, e.g.: 我，你，他，她，它.
03	形容词	xíngróngcí	adjective – a qualifier or modifier of a noun, e.g.: 好，高，大，小.
04	数词	shùcí	numeral, e.g.: 一，二，两，十，百.
05	量词	liàngcí	measure word, e.g.: 个，件，把，张.
06	动词	dòngcí	verb – a part of speech used to narrate an action or process.
06a	能愿动词	néngyuàn dòngcí	operative verb – a part of speech signifying the intention or capability, e..g.: 能够，可以，会，要，愿意, etc.
07	副词	fùcí	adverb – a part of speech used to qualify the meaning of a verb, e.g.: 很，一会儿，有点儿，慢慢地.
08	介词	jiècí	preposition – a part of speech placed before a noun (or noun phrase) to establish a relation or a context, e.g.: 在，于，把，用，以，从，自从，和，跟，同etc..
09	助词	zhùcí	particle – a morpheme in verb construction, enabling the verb to express tense, mood, attitude etc, e.g.: 了，过，着，吗，呢，吧.
10	连词	liáncí	conjunction – part of speech used to make explicit the logical relation between two or more otherwise indenpendent sentences. 和，与，因为……所以……; 虽然…….但是……;如果……那么…….
10	叹词	tàncí	interjection, e.g.: 啊，哦, 喂。

See also Hanyu Jiaocheng, part 1of book 1, page ix

B. Sentence constituents 句子成分

1	主语	Subject – the thematic focus of a discourse, or that which is being talked about. Words used to form this constituent: Nouns, pronouns etc.
2	宾语	Object – the recipient of an action.
3	谓语	Predicate – the characterisation of the subject.
4	述语	Predicative verb – the main verb in the predicate.
5	定语	Attributive – the qualification or modification of a noun.
6	状语	Adverbial – the modification of a verb.
7	补语	Complement – additional words attached to the end of the sentence, used to complete the expression of the meaning of the sentence.

C. Marking up sentence constituents 句子成分的标识方法

Here is a list of the most commonly used markup symbols:

When analysing the syntax of a Chinese sentence, instead of spelling out the grammatical terms, grammarians would often use these markup symbols. For instance, when conducting a syntactical analysis of the sentence “星期天, 我有时在宿舍读书，有时去球场打球”, they can put square brackets around the adverbials, a double-underline beneath the subject, single underlines beneath the predicative verbs etc.:

For more explanation about the use of these markup symbols, please click here.