Affirmative-negative questions
A common way to form questions in Chinese is to repeat and negate the verb. The structure is:
Verb + 不 + Verb
It can also be done with adjectives (adjectives often behave like verbs in Chinese):
Adjective + 不 + Adjective
For example:
- 你 是 不是 大人？
This is something like adding tag questions in English, in this case "Are you an adult or not?" If you wanted to translate it very literally, it would be "Are you or are you not an adult?" In any case, the structure is a very common way to ask questions in Chinese. The general sentence structure is:
Subject + Verb + 不 + Verb + Object
Some examples:
| Subject | Verb | 不 | Verb | Object | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 她 | 是 | 不 | 是 | 中国人 | ？ |
| 他 | 吃 | 不 | 吃 | 肉 | ？ |
| 你 | 想 | 不 | 想 | 我 | ？ |
有 in positive-negative questions
Because 有 is negated with 没 and not 不, the structure for positive-negative questions with 有 is:
Subject + 有没有 + Object
This could be for sentences about the present and possession, or to ask about verbs in the past. For example:
- 你 有 没有 我的 钱？
- 你 有 没有 看过 那 部 电影？
Two-character verbs in positive-negative questions
All of the verbs used so far have been single-character verbs. Using two-characters verbs in positive-negative questions is slightly trickier. You usually put 不 after the first character, then put the entire verb. For example 喜不喜欢 is the usual question form of 喜欢. You can repeat the whole two-character verb twice, but it's more common (and more elegant) to insert 不 after the first character. For example:
- 喜欢 不 喜欢 (the whole word is repeated)
- 喜 不 喜欢 (only the first character is repeated)
- 高兴 不 高兴 (the whole word is repeated)
- 高 不 高兴 (only the first character is repeated)
