Grammar by Word

Because Mandarin Chinese is a non-inflecting language, it feels to native English speakers as very much a language of words, rather than strict rules. Is Chinese grammar nothing more than the proper arrangement of words? We wouldn't go that far, but the study of Chinese grammar is often much more word-focused than for other languages such as Spanish. In Spanish, you obsess over tenses; in Chinese you don't have tenses. Instead, in Chinese, you obsess over 了, which may be an aspectual particle, but it's also a word.

Studying Chinese grammar "by word" is effective. Throughout this wiki, you'll notice a focus on words. Classification of these words is, unsurprisingly, by part of speech.