Chinese word order

"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" . 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 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.

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 after comes after them rather than before them. 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.

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 Manner in a Sentence

Manner refers to HOW you do something, as in quietly, quickly, angrily, drunkenly, etc.

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

• SVO word order
• Time, manner place word order
• Placement of?
  • Placement of prepositions
  • Placement of attributives
    • Attributives preceding the subject (ASVO)
    • Attributives preceding the object (SVAO)
    • See also: Structural particle de
  • Placement of adverbials
    • Negative adverbs
    • See also: 地
    • Adverbial order
      • Time, place, scope, degree, manner, instrument, target
  • Placement of particles
  • Placement of complements
    • Repetition of object with degree complement
    • 3 ways to arrange degree complements (Placement of 得):

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

• Subject and predicate
  • Non SP sentences?
  • Topic + subject + predicate
• Single and double objects (indirect then direct)

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

Sources and further reading

• Grammar book: Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (pp. 17 - 22)
• Grammar book: 中文语法快易通:句型结构1 (pp. 1 - 27) (needs Amazon code)
• Grammar book: Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar (pp. 19 - 23)
• Grammar book: 外国人实用汉语语法(中英文对照) (pp. 228 - 329)
• Wikipedia: Chinese grammar