| CHINESE VERBS |
Chinese is an uninflected language. It means that Chinese verbs have no conjugation. Chinese verbs do not indicate tense. Whether they are used in the past, present or future, the form of the verb remains the same. Chinese verbs do not indicate person or number. Whether the subject is in first, second or third person, singular or plural, the form of the verb remains the same. Chinese verbs may be used as nouns without changing their morphological form, particularly when disyllabic. Chinese verbs include what in other languages would be recognized as adjectives. These can be used attributively or predicatively. (English prepositional expressions are verbal expressions in Chinese.) Chinese verbs have no voice distinction. The forms of both active and passive voices are the same. Only the context makes the intended meaning clear. The indication of person, number, tense, voice and aspect is given by the position of the verb in the sentence, by the context, or by a suffix. Aside from purely grammatical considerations, other differences, like unequal ranges of meaning with lexical items and different cultural setting for usage often appear when we compare Chinese to other languages (as English or Italian). Cultural differences usually dictate different responses to similar stimuli under similar situations. An American accepts a compliment with Thanks, whereas a Chinese tries hard, apparently at least, to deny it by saying (哪里, 哪里, which literally is Where, where?) What then is a Chinese verb? A Chinese verb has been defined as a syntactic word which can be modified by the adverb 不 (except for the verb you, to have, which takes 没) and can be followed by the aspect suffix 了. Without going into the finer divisions of the Chinese verb, the following major types may be recognized: 1. Action verbs: including transitive and intransitive verbs. 2. Quality verbs: transitive and intransitive verbs or adjectives. 3. Status verbs 4. Classificatory verbs 5. Auxiliary verbs 6. To be and to have (是, 有) Verbs may be discussed in terms of their behaviour with aspect markers, adverbs, reduplication, compounds. An action may be described in its progressive, continuous or perfect state which is shown by either an aspect marker or an adverb. Aspect Markers The aspect marker stresses whether the action has or has not been completed, whether the action is taking place, or whether the action happened in the past. Aspect suffix (了) Aspect suffix le added after a verb shows the completion or realization of an action. It is wrong to assume that completed action is the same as a past tense, in some sentences it can also indicate an action that will take place in the future. Only transitive verbs of types 1. and 2. may be followed by the suffix le without any restrictions. Intransitive verbs take the suffix le only before cognate objects or quantified objects. Negative sentences show that a completed action is not the same as in the English past tense. While the affirmative uses le, the negative uses (不), usually considered the present negative, instead of (没), usually considered the past negative. Very often the completed action is used in a dependent clause that would begin with after in English, whilst the negative form of completed action is often used in a dependent clause that would begin with before in English. Aspect suffix (过) Aspect suffix guo is added after a verb to indicate a past experience of doing something at least once up to a certain point of time or an action that took place in the past. Aspect suffix (着) The aspect suffix zhe can be added after a verb to show the continuous aspect of an action. It is usually translated as the -ing of English, however this is not a rule. To indicate that an action is taking place, zhe is suffixed to the verb. A zhe phrase may be used as a setting for another action. In any event, the English gerund should not always be translated into the Chinese verb+ zhe. Adverbs The progressive aspect of an action The adverbs (正在, 正, 在) The adverbs zhengzai, zheng or zai placed in front of the predicative verb can be used to indicate the progressive aspect of the action. Adverbs (才, 就) The adverb cai indicates that an action happens late or is interrupted; the adverb jiu indicates that an action happens early or proceeds smoothly. Cai can also indicate the result obtained under specific conditions. Jiu can also indicate that a given action takes place immediately after another action. Adverb (在) The adverb zai can indicate that an action is going to take place under certain conditions in the future. Adverb (刚) The adverb gang denotes the immediate past and indicates that an action has just taken place. Construction (要......了) The construction yao...le is used to indicate that an action will take place shortly; yao means will or to be going to and le is the modal suffix. The transitive, intransitive, passive or reflexive form is deducible from the context. The passive can be indicated by participles such as (被),(让) and (较).
被 sentences
Reduplication of verbs
Compounds |
