Chinese word order

Revision as of 09:23, 28 July 2011 by Lucas.simons (talk | contribs)

"Word order" in Chinese is 语序 (yǔxù) or 词序 (cíxù). You may have heard that word order in Chinese is very similar to that of English, and compared to a language like Japanese, it is. Fairly quickly, though, you'll start to realize that there are quite a few ways that the word order of even relatively simple sentences simply don't match in Chinese and English. The honeymoon is over; you're going to have to work just a little bit to master Chinese word order.

The Basic SVO Sentence

On this level, Chinese word order very closely matches English word order. "SVO" stands for "Subject-Verb-Object" [1]. For extremely simple sentences like "I love you" or "he eats glass," the word order of Chinese matches that of English, literally, word for word. Keep in mind that "SVO" doesn't include little details like articles (a, the, etc.) or prepositions (to, for, etc.).

SVO word order
Subject Verb Object
我 爱 你
你 吃 饭
他 踢 足球

This concept shouldn't take long at all to master. This makes sense "by default" for English speakers.

Placement of Time Words in a Sentence

Time words, the WHEN part of a sentence, have a special place in Chinese. They usually come at the beginning of a sentence, right after the subject. Occasionally you'll see them before the subject, but the place you won't be seeing them is at the end of the sentence (where they frequently appear in English).

Placement of Time Words
Subject Time when Predicate
我 今天 工作
你们 每天 洗澡
他 星期二 来到

Placement of Place Words in a Sentence

When you want to tell WHERE something happened in Chinese (at school, at work, in Vegas, on the bus, etc.), you're most often going to use a phrase beginning with 在. This phrase needs to come after the time word (see above) and before the verb. Pay attention to this last part: before the verb. In English, this information naturally comes after the verb, so it's going to be difficult at first to get used to saying WHERE something happened before saying the verb.

Placement of Place words
Subject Time when Place Word Predicate
我 在上海 工作
你们 星期六 在家 看电影
她 1980年 在美国 出生

Exceptions to the Normal Placement of Place Words

There are some special verbs which seem to be allowed to break the rules. For these special verbs, the WHERE information comes after the verb rather than before. It's important to remember that these verbs are exceptions. If you're not sure where the place phrase should go, it's usually safer to put it before the verb. This is the normal way to modify a verb in Chinese.

Exception to Place Word Location in Sentences
Subject Time when Place Word Verb *Place word
我们 住 在中国
你 现在 走 到浦东
他 后天 拿 给你的妈妈

Placement of Duration in a Sentence

Whenever you talk about FOR HOW LONG, you're getting into duration. It's not the same as a regular time word; it has its own rules.

Placement of Duration
Subject Time-duration Place Word Verb(object) *Place Word Time-duration
我 住 在中国 三年
你 去年 在北京 学中文 三个月
他 每个星期 在家里 看电视 二十个小时

Placement of Manner in a Sentence

Manner refers to HOW you do something, as in quietly, quickly, angrily, drunkenly, etc. The adjectival verb that describes the manner of the action verb is preceded by 得 and occurs after the action verb. If the action verb is a verb-object the verb should be repeated immediately after the verb-object.

Placement of Manner
Subject Time-duration Place Word Verb(object) Manner *Place Word Time-duration
我 跳舞 跳得奇怪
你 作天晚上 在家 做饭 做得好 两个小时
他们 每天 在阵雨 唱歌 唱得可怕 一个半小时

Placement of Instrument in a Sentence

OK, now we're getting a little out there. Rarely are you going to want to cram so much information into a simple sentence, but for the sake of argument, we're going to give it a go. This is the USING WHAT part of a sentence.

Sub-pages - possible titles

  1. 汉语她说得很好
  2. 她汉语说得很好
  3. 她说汉语说得很好

Potential content

  • Basic order: topic + subject + predicate
    • SVO language, but unusually has modifiers preceding the modified
      • e.g. 那两个喝醉的人打起来了。
      • In many cases uses many postpositions rather than prepositions
  • English vs Mandarin word order
    • English: Who, What, Where, When
    • Mandarin: Who, When, Where, What
  • Mandarin biggest to smallest units sequence
  • In-situ question words
  • Topic-comment structure
  • Topic and subject can sometimes be omitted
  • Time, manner place (TMP) adverb sequence
  • More detailed word order:
    • Subject, verb, direct object
    • Subject, verb, indirect object, direct object
    • Subject, prepositional phrase, verb, direct object
    • Subject, location phrase, verb phrase
    • Subject, time, manner, place, predicate

References

  1. ↑ For more information on the SVO concept, see the Wikipedia article Subject–verb–object.

Sources and further reading

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