Vocab Party: Grammar Nerd/Ling Things
So this is potentially not that useful unless you’re into linguistics, but I think as language learners you’ve hopefully encountered some of these in figuring out the machinery of your lang vs. mandarin. If not, maybe do some googling, might find a new helpful 语法 (語法 : yǔfǎ : grammar) concept!
及物动词 (及物動詞) jíwù dòngcí : transitive verb. Verbs that require an object/predicate, e.g. “I bought potatoes.” You can’t say “I bought”
不及物动词 (不及物動詞) Bù jíwù dòngcí: intransitive verb. No object/predicate required, e.g. “I ran.” and you’ll note you can’t say “I ran road,” but you could say “I ran on the road,” or “I ran fast;” things to think about when you learn new verbs.
形容词 (形容詞) xíngróngcí : adjective
量词 (量词) liàngcí : measure word!!! everyone’s favorite
介词 (介詞) jiècí : preposition. this includes things like 給 & 用 that we dont think of this way in English really
助词 (助詞) zhùcí : particle, those lil function/tense/mood words like 的 , 過 , 呢, or 了
代词 (代詞) dàicí : pronoun (of which there are reflexive, possessive, interrogative, etc.)
係詞 (繫詞) xìcí : copula. sorta linking verb special thing, doesn’t really “mean” anything. In Standard English it’s is/are/was/were (and carries tense info), notice in AAE (and many langs) copula deletion is pretty standard—Mandarin doesn’t need it for linking nouns and adjectives. There is of course 是.
Sometimes coming from English we get tripped up because say Mandarin adjectives kinda seem like stative verbs—她很帥, not 她是很帥—but their distribution and behaviors are not the same. So knowing the names of things is only one part of knowing how they work. Also if you get to classical like forget it anything can be anything woo 活用!!! (huóyòng : to use a word flexibly)
主语 (主語) zhǔyǔ : subject. semantically messy but yr basic grammar knows what this is.
宾语 (賓語) bīnyǔ : object. the thing receiving the action
谓语 (謂語) wèiyǔ : predicate. basically everything not the subject, the verb phrase. Has it’s own requirements like one-place predicate or two-place predicate.
小句 xiǎojù : clause. a clause is like a chunk below sentence level but is sometimes technically a sentence. So in the utterance, “I told Juan that I bought potatoes.” “I bought potatoes” is an embedded clause.
I’ll leave the details out, but if you want here’s another post I did on parts of sentences that then goes with this. (haha oh syntax)
叙述句 (敘述句) xùshù jù : declarative/narrative sentence
描写句 (描寫句) miáoxiě jù : descriptive sentence
判断句 (判斷句) pànduàn jù : determinative sentence
疑问句 (疑問句) yíwènjù : interrogative sentence (question)
符合句 (複合句) fùhé jù : compound sentence, of which there are maaany kinds:
平行 píngxíng : parallel. Chinese fucking loves parallel structures srsly
比较 (比較) bǐjiào : comparative
Not always that useful except when they are so here.
Hope this has been some kind of helpful, if you’re ever learning full-immersion style you’ll definitely want to know at least parts of speech. Let me know if something’s unclear, I didn’t want to go full linguistics vs. traditional grammar or anything~ (also I’m socioling this is not my jam) if you are into more linguistics, Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction is a good place to start. (full pdf download!!! hit the blue 下载 button under the preview)
