Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Answering a "yes or no" question with single words meaning yes or no is by no means universal. About half the world's languages typically employ an echo response: repeating the verb in the question in an affirmative or a negative form. Some of these also have optional words for yes and no, like Hungarian, Russian, and Portuguese.
tā He 打 dǎ hit 人。 rén person 他 打 人。 tā dǎ rén He hit person He hits someone. Chinese can also be considered a topic-prominent language: there is a strong preference for sentences that begin with the topic, usually "given" or "old" information; and end with the comment, or "new" information. Certain modifications of the basic subject–verb–object order are permissible and ...
Often, yes–no questions in Mandarin are expressed in the A-not-A form, and are answered with either A or not-A. [12]: pp.558–563 For example, where Q stands for question, A for affirmative, and N for negative:
Moon blocks or jiaobei (also written as jiao bei etc. variants; Chinese: 筊杯 or 珓杯; pinyin: jiǎo bēi; Jyutping: gaau2 bui1), also poe (from Chinese: 桮; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: poe; as used in the term "poe divination"), are wooden divination tools originating from China, which are used in pairs and thrown to seek divine guidance in the form of a yes or no question.
In general, no two Mandarin-speaking areas have exactly the same set of tone values, but most Mandarin-speaking areas have very similar tone distribution. For example, the dialects of Jinan, Chengdu, Xi'an and so on all have four tones that correspond quite well to the Beijing dialect tones of [˥] (55), [˧˥] (35), [˨˩˦] (214), and ...
A simple list of yes or no questions may be just what is needed to spur on more conversation. These funny and deep questions are also great for getting to know your friends or even your partner ...
nǐ you 去 qù go 不 bù not 去 ？ qù go 你 去 不 去 ？ nǐ qù bù qù you go not go Are you going? AB-not-AB form Example (4) illustrates the AB-not-AB pattern, where AB is the constituent consisting of the verb rende, 'know', as A, and the complement zhe ge ren, 'this CL man', as B, combining to form the AB constituent rende zhe ge ren 'know this CL man'. This produces rende zhe ...
In Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, mu is translated as "no thing", saying that it meant "unask the question". He offered the example of a computer circuit using the binary numeral system , in effect using mu to represent high impedance :