Direction complement "-qilai"

Revision as of 04:25, 14 November 2011 by Jonathan.pope (talk | contribs)

起来 (qǐlái) comes up very frequently in Chinese and has a variety of meanings. One common use is to talk about how something seems or appears after an action is performed on it. The structure is:

Subject + Verb + 起来 + Adjective

This expresses that the subject seems adjective when the action of the verb is performed. This structure is frequently used with perception verbs such as 看, 听, 尝 etc.

Some examples:

  • 他 看 起来 很 友好。
  • 那 听 起来 不错。
  • 这 个 啤酒 尝 起来 是 比利时的。

See also


Sources and further reading

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