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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 ...
In the tables, the first two columns contain the Chinese characters representing the classifier, in traditional and simplified versions when they differ. The next four columns give pronunciations in Standard (Mandarin) Chinese, using pinyin; Cantonese, in Jyutping and Yale, respectively; and Minnan (Taiwan). The last column gives the classifier ...
Chinese varieties generally indicate the roles of nouns with respect to verbs using prepositions derived from grammaticalized verbs. [ 185 ] [ 186 ] Varieties differ in the set of prepositions used, with northern varieties tending to use a substantially larger inventory, including disyllabic and trisyllabic prepositions. [ 187 ]
In syntax, Classical Chinese words are not restrictively categorized into parts of speech: nouns used as verbs, adjectives used as nouns, and so on. There is no copula in Classical Chinese; 是 (shì) is a copula in modern Chinese but in old Chinese it was originally a near demonstrative ('this'), the modern Chinese equivalent of which is 這 ...
Loanwords have entered written and spoken Chinese from many sources, including ancient peoples whose descendants now speak Chinese. In addition to phonetic differences, varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese often have distinct words and phrases left from their original languages which they continue to use in daily life and sometimes even in Mandarin.
Scholars of Classical Chinese grammar notably disagree on how to further divide these two categories exactly, but a classification using word classes similar to those of Latin (noun, adjective, verb, pronoun, etc.) has been common. [10] However, this remains debated, as many words can be used as multiple parts of speech. Examples shown below.
In Chinese, a numeral cannot usually quantify a noun by itself; instead, the language relies on classifiers, commonly also referred to as measure words. [note 2] When a noun is preceded by a number, a demonstrative such as this or that, or certain quantifiers such as every, a classifier must normally be inserted before the noun. [1]
Lin's main claim "to have solved at one stroke the problem of Chinese grammar by classifying words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions, would need some justifying, since it is ultimately based on the premise that Chinese is the same as Latin", and a scheme that is only a "pis-aller should not be presented as a revelation". [24]