Understanding

the Chinese Language

Understanding the Chinese Language provides a vibrant and comprehensive
introduction to contemporary Chinese linguistics. Combining an accessible style
with an in-depth treatment of the topics at hand, it uses clear, full descriptions
and vivid, modern examples to systematically take students through the
phonology, vocabulary, grammar, discourse structures and pragmatics of modern
Chinese. No prior knowledge of Chinese or linguistics is required.
Features include:

• Six detailed chapters covering the core linguistic aspects of the modern Chinese
language, such as words, content units, sentences, speech acts, sentence-final
particles and neologisms.
• User-friendly comparisons and contrasts between English and Chinese
throughout the text, helping to clearly explain important complexities and
nuances of the Chinese language.
• Clear, accessible explanations and insightful analysis of topics and linguistic
devices, supported by many helpful examples, diagrams and tables. Lively and
relevant examples drawn from real-life contemporary sources such as internet
news reports, social networks like Sino Weibo, online forums and TV reality
shows, offering fascinating perspectives on modern Chinese media, culture and
society.
• Pioneering coverage of new Chinese words and the social phenomena they
reveal.
• Additional exercises and four supplementary chapters covering Chinese
syllables, idioms, discourse and culture are available for free download at
www.routledge.com/9780415634885.

Written by a highly experienced instructor, researcher and linguist,

Understanding the Chinese Language will be essential reading for undergraduate
and postgraduate students taking courses in Chinese linguistics. It will also be of
interest to anyone interested in learning more about Chinese language and
culture.

Chris Shei is Associate Professor at Swansea University, UK.

‘Understanding the Chinese Language is an excellent introductory textbook for
Chinese linguistics. This book provides a systematic, in-depth, and seminal
explanation of Chinese linguistics and its efforts in comparing English and
Chinese using vivid and authentic examples make it very accessible.’
Han Luo, Northwestern University, USA ‘Teaching Chinese linguistics can be
very challenging but this book has made the task a lot easier. Dr Shei’s use of
authentic data (language used on TV reality shows and messages on social
networks) to illustrate how the Chinese language really works is highly effective.
He skilfully adopts various linguistic frameworks to examine Chinese sentence
types. He also proposes new approaches, which include using concepts to define
Chinese lexical items (i.e. words). Anybody who is interested in understanding
how the Chinese language works will benefit from reading this book.’
Kan Qian, The Open University, UK
Understanding the Chinese Language
A comprehensive linguistic introduction

Chris Shei
First published 2014
by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Chris Shei
The right of Chris Shei to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Shei, Chris, 1956– Understanding the Chinese
language / Chris Shei.
pages cm
1. Chinese language–Textbooks for foreign speakers–English. 2. Chinese language–Grammar. 3. Chinese
language–Syntax. 4. Chinese language–Study and teaching–English speakers. I. Title.
PL1129.E5S54 2014
495.182′421–dc23

2014000294
ISBN: 978-0-415-63486-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-63488-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76722-2 (ebk) Typeset in
Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Contents

List of figures
List of tables
Foreword
List of abbreviations

Introduction
1 Chinese sounds
2 Chinese words
3 Chinese sentences
4 Speech acts
5 Sentence-final particles
6 Chinese neologisms on the web

Bibliography
Index
List of figures

0.1 Intersections between Chinese and English consonants and vowels

1.1 A rough comparison of English and Chinese syllabic structures
1.2 The 21 syllable-initial Chinese consonants (in Pinyin)
1.3 Chinese syllable structure with all possible sounds in each level/group
1.4 Chinese syllable structure with possible CV combinations
1.5 Chinese syllable structure based on the Zhuyin system
1.6 The pitch tracks of ma1, ma2, ma3 and ma4 spoken by the author of this book
1.7 Tonal differences
1.8 The pitch tracks of ma1ma5 spoken by the author of this book
1.9 A male and a female saying the same syllable with the same tone
2.1 The syllable at the intersection of sound and meaning in Chinese
2.2 A Chinese morpheme consisting of sound, character and meaning
2.3 A short text illustrating the prevalence of disyllabic units
2.4 Another text illustrating the prevalence of disyllabic units
2.5 The syntactic structure of a four-character idiom
2.6 The syntactic structure of a quadrisyllabic unit with VP replaced by AP
2.7 A sentence-like structure embedded in a quadrisyllabic unit
2.8 A quadrisyllabic unit consisting of two coordinate sentences
2.9 The different positions of relative clauses in English and Chinese
3.1 English active, passive and ergative sentences
3.2 Chinese active, ergative and object-fronted sentences
3.3 Transforming an active sentence into a passive sentence
3.4 Transforming a passive sentence back into an active sentence
3.5 An adjective clause with omitted subject
4.1 The different locations of the wh- word in English and Chinese
6.1 New terms evolving from the word ‘fans’
6.2 The three phases of media catchphrase adaptation
List of tables

0.1 Chinese consonants and vowels in both IPA and Pinyin systems
0.2 Different vs. identical Chinese characters across the two systems
0.3 The Zhuyin and Pinyin symbols for consonants and vowels used in Mandarin
1.1 Chinese consonants shown with English equivalents (where available)
1.2 Chinese vowels in Pinyin shown with English vowels (where applicable)
1.3 Different tones of the syllable ba and some examples for each tone variety
2.1 Disyllabic units classified on the basis of overall and constituent parts of
speech
2.2 Trisyllabic units created by adding different disyllabic units to the same head
noun
2.3 Trisyllabic units created by attaching disyllabic units to the head verb
2.4 Examples of multisyllabic units
2.5 English and Chinese pronouns
2.6 Comparison of an English and a Chinese noun phrase
4.1 Comparison of the frequency of question words for place and time
5.1 The primary Mandarin SFPs currently in use
Foreword

This book aims to introduce the Chinese language in an understandable way. It

uses simple English and abundant examples to explain Chinese phonology,
vocabulary, grammar and discourse. Linguistic theories are kept in the
background, guiding the development of knowledge about the language and
familiarity with the use of the language.
The book is written with the following readers in mind:

• university/college level students using the book as a Mandarin course/reference

book
• undergraduate or postgraduate students taking a course in Chinese linguistics
• anyone interested in learning Mandarin and knowing how it works in society
• researchers in arts and humanities requiring a working knowledge of Chinese
• Chinese or English-speaking researchers looking for fresh ideas in Chinese
linguistics or Chinese media and political studies.

This book takes a discourse functional approach and draws on the web for
hundreds of examples to illustrate the contemporary usage of the Chinese
language. Spoken language samples are transcribed from unscripted talks from
current TV reality shows; written data are selected from online news reports and
messages posted on social networks.
For convenience, the term ‘Chinese’ or ‘Chinese language’ used in this book
refers exclusively to Mandarin – that is, Putonghua ( ) in China, Guoyu ( )
in Taiwan, or the more general Hanyu ( ) worldwide – bearing in mind that
there are at least seven major dialect groups in Chinese, each of which is worthy
of a book-length introduction.
The book offers an accessible overview of the Chinese language and its
functions in society (notably, in the TV media and the web). Chapters 1–3
introduce the fundamental linguistic components, including Chinese sounds,
lexical units, functional items, and sentences. Chapter 4 discusses how Chinese is
used to perform speech acts; that is, to give commands, offer promises, assert
opinions, express feelings, and so on. Chapter 5 offers a comprehensive survey of
sentence-final particles (SFPs) which play an important role in Chinese discourse.
Finally, an up-to-date introduction to Chinese neologisms since the end of the
twentieth century is offered in Chapter 6.
The key concepts in Chinese linguistics are introduced in relatively
understandable ways, often using corresponding parts in English for comparison
and contrast. The large number of authentic examples help establish the
credibility of the theory, increase learning interest, and are valuable data for
content studies in their own right.
List of abbreviations

Linguistic terms

* (ungrammatical) or (unacceptable)

AD de5 as adjective marker

AM aspect marker
Aux auxiliary
CFP constituent final particle
Cla classifier
Com complement (of verb)
Conj conjunction
Dem demonstrative
ED de5 as emphatic marker
Hon honorific item
IP independent particle
Mea measure word
Neg negation word
Num number word
OB object marker ba3
OD ordinal morpheme di4
PB passive marker bei4
PD de5 as possessive marker
PF pause filler
PoS
part of speech
Pos possessive case
Pro pronoun
PM plural marker
QM question marker
QN quantity word
SFP sentence final particle

Media programs

aqllk Ai Qing Lian Lian Kan

aywdm Ai Yao Wo De Ma
fcwr Fei Cheng Wu Rao
ggbbm Guo Guang Bang Bang Mang
jwsdj Jin Wan Shei Dang Jia
kxll Kang Xi Lai Le
mrthk Ming Ren Tai Hui Kao
SSxyzy SS Xiao Yan Zhi Ye
wmyhb Wo Men Yue Hui Ba
WOWhmj WOW Hou Ma Ji
ylbfb Yu Le Bai Fen Bai
zsydt Zhuan Shen Yu Dao TA
Introduction

This chapter briefly introduces Chinese phonetics, morphology and syntax. There
is also a discussion of the relationship between China and Taiwan as background
knowledge for understanding the linguistic differences between the two Chinese
communities referred to in this book.

0.1 CHINESE PHONETICS

The phonemic inventory (i.e. all the vowels and consonants used in a language)
of Chinese is not dramatically different from that of English. While English
makes use of 24 consonants and approximately 12 vowels, Chinese uses 25
consonants and 10 vowels. Chinese and English roughly share 14 consonants and
7 vowels, so there are only 11 Chinese consonants and 3 Chinese vowels, at most,
that are unfamiliar to English speakers. Figure 0.1 shows the consonant sets and
vowel sets, encoded in IPA (International Phonetic Association) symbols, used by
Mandarin and English respectively and their intersections.
As Figure 0.1 shows, there are 14 consonants which Chinese and English share.
The three voiceless aspirated stops [ph] [th] [kh] are enclosed by a dotted
rectangle to show their special status in this intersection. That is, although they
are used to distinguish meanings in Chinese (i.e. saying [ph] means something
different from saying [p]), they do not have such functions in English. In other
words, although [ph] [th] [kh] are independent sounds (or phonemes) in Chinese,
they are not treated as such in English, but are phonetic variants of [p] [t] [k]
respectively – sounds that are pronounced in different ways under different
conditions which do not result in a difference in meaning. That is why we say
there are 13 + 11 = 24 consonants in English, rather than 13 + 14 = 27 if
interpreting the consonant intersection in Figure 0.1 incorrectly. However, these
three sounds are indeed separate phonemes in Chinese, which means there are 11
+ 14 = 25 consonants in Chinese, including the three semivowels [j], [w] and .
Among the 25, there are 11 Chinese consonants which are not normally used in
English and which may cause difficulties for English speakers learning Mandarin.
Figure 0.1 also shows the intersection of vowels between Chinese and English,
which is a set consisting of seven members. There are only three Chinese vowels,
[y], and , which are not found in English, among which only the first two
may be difficult for English speakers to pronounce.

Figure 0.1 Intersections between Chinese and English consonants and vowels

All of the Chinese 25 consonants and 10 vowels will be explained in Chapter 1,

which also discusses how sounds combine to form Chinese syllables and how
tones are added to syllables to represent meaning.
 ‘Syllable’ is an important concept in the Chinese language. In English, a
syllable is an intermediate structure between sound and word. For example, the
word ordinary consists of four syllables – [ɔ.dı.nə.ri] – none of which makes
sense when standing alone. Syllables in English normally become meaningful
when they combine together to form words (with the exception of monosyllabic
words such as bed, cat and so on). In Chinese, however, each syllable can stand
alone and mean something. For example ‘computer’ consists of two
characters, [tjɛn] ‘electric’ and [naʊ] ‘brain’; each character is exactly one
syllable long and has its own meaning. Therefore, each syllable in Chinese is a
‘brick of meaning’. They either carry out their semantic function individually or
combine with other syllables to form larger meaningful units.
Phonetic transcription is another important factor to consider when learning
the Chinese language. In the case of English, there is usually a certain degree of
resemblance between the alphabet-based orthographical form of a word (e.g.
singer) and the standard phonetic transcription of the spoken form, i.e. [sıŋə]. In
Chinese, however, there is no connection between the logographic system and
the phonetic symbols normally used to transcribe Western languages. Although
IPA has developed a set of symbols which aim to describe all human languages
including Chinese, many symbols for the Chinese sounds are difficult to learn
and inconvenient to type (i.e. most of the 11 Chinese consonants in Figure 0.1
which do not exist in English). This is where the Pinyin system comes in.
Pinyin is a Romanized system which represents Chinese sounds in a
convenient way. Pinyin is also used to type Chinese characters as it is compatible
with the English-based computer keyboard. Heselwood (2013) calls Pinyin a
‘pseudo-transcription’. It is not a ‘real’ phonetic transcription system, nor is it a
‘real’ orthographic system, but it does carry out both functions in a partial sense.
Pinyin is currently the most popular tool for encoding Mandarin sounds for
language learners, who can use Pinyin to learn the Chinese sounds, to read
Chinese text and later to key in the Chinese characters which they learn. Table
0.1 shows the relationships between the IPA and Pinyin symbols for the Chinese
consonants and vowels.
Table 0.1 shows a good one-to-one correspondence between the Chinese
Pinyin and the IPA symbols in the consonants section. This means a sound will
not be ambiguously encoded by more than one symbol or vice versa. For
example, the letter(s) f, ph, and gh can all stand for the sound [f] in English;
whereas the alphabet combination th can stand for either the [θ] or the [ð]
sound. For the Chinese Pinyin, this kind of ambiguity does not exist at the
consonant level. In the vowels section, however, ambiguities do exist, which
center around the use of the letter e. As can be seen from Table 0.1, the alphabet e
is used to represent any of the three sounds: [ɛ], [ə], or [ɤ], presumably due to a
shortage of common vowel alphabets.

Table 0.1 Chinese consonants and vowels in both IPA and Pinyin systems

In this book, as is the normal practice, Pinyin symbols are used to represent the
Chinese sounds for convenience in typing. As will become clear, Pinyin not only
indicates how the Chinese lexical items should be read, it also directly
‘represents’ the lexical item in an orthographic sense. That is, a lexical item
represented in Pinyin can be directly connected to its meaning.

0.2 CHINESE MORPHOLOGY

The discussion of English morphology often starts with the concepts of
morphemes, compound words, inflection and derivation, and so on.

• Morphemes: the smallest meaningful unit in a language. For example, the word
encouragements is decomposable into four morphemes: en-, courage, ment and
-s, each of which has a meaning (e.g. courage) or function (e.g. plural marker).
Morphemes can be further classified into:
○ Free morphemes: a morpheme that can function on its own, such as song
and table.
 ○ Bound morphemes: a morpheme that must be attached to another
morpheme/word when used, e.g. -ment, -ed, anti- and so on. There are two
kinds of bound morphemes:
♦ Inflectional morphemes: a bound morpheme assigned to a word to signify
a certain grammatical property, e.g. -ed, -ing.
♦ Derivational morphemes: a bound morpheme added to a word to create a
new form of the word, e.g. -er, -ful.

• Compound words: a word which is a combination of two or more words, such

as strawberry, football, blackboard and so on.

In Chinese, the above notions either are inapplicable or have to be modified in

some way in order to remain functional. Firstly, the idea of a morpheme is
conceptualized differently in Chinese. In English, a morpheme is defined solely
by the meaning disregarding the number of syllables it contains. A morpheme
could be as long as crocodile (3 syllables) or as short as dog (1 syllable). In
Chinese, however, any of the 400 or so usable syllables can mean something, after
being assigned a tone and used in an appropriate context. A morpheme in
Chinese can thus be defined not only by the meaning (i.e. the smallest
meaningful unit in the language) but also in phonetic terms (i.e. each morpheme
in Chinese is exactly one syllable in length).
Secondly, all morphemes are more or less of equal status in Chinese since
almost all usable syllables are used as free morphemes. That is, they can stand
alone to mean something, given appropriate circumstances. For example, zhu1 (or
[ʈʂu] in 1st tone) means ‘pig’ and rou4 (or [ʐoʊ] in 4th tone) means ‘meat’. There
is only a very small number of syllables in Chinese which behave like bound
morphemes. This is different from English, where there is a fixed set of
inflectional morphemes like -ed and -ing and a large number of derivational
morphemes like re-, un-, co-, -er, -ish, -ness and so on, which are used to create
many new forms of existing words.
In Chinese, a morpheme (or a syllable) also corresponds to a character, e.g.
zhu1 ‘pig’ is written as and rou4 ‘meat’ as . Although both are free
morphemes, they are not normally called ‘words’. The concept of ‘word’ is
notoriously difficult to define in Chinese. More than half of the lexical units
thought to be ‘words’ in Chinese consist of two morphemes. For example, ‘the
meat of pig’ in English is represented by a single word, pork. In Chinese, ‘pork’ is
simply the combination of two morphemes, zhu1 ‘pig’ and rou4 ‘meat’, written as
. The same is true for beef (niu2rou4 ‘cow meat’ ), lamb (yang2rou4
‘sheep meat’ ) and so on. The dilemma is that although we can call
monosyllabic units like zhu1, niu2, rou4, etc. ‘morphemes’, they are also ‘words’
in their own right – just like free morphemes such as garden, church, school and
so on in English. Thus, although the concept of ‘morpheme’ is relatively clear in
Chinese, the concept of ‘word’ is not.
For English, there are distinct levels on the morpheme → word → compound
word continuum. However, in Chinese, the boundaries between these categories
are not so clear. If zhu1 and rou4 are treated as morphemes and not words, then
zhu1rou4 is a word. But if zhu1 and rou4 are both words, then zhu1rou4 must be a
compound. In practice, most practitioners treat lexical units like zhu1rou4 ‘pork’
and dian4nao3 ‘computer’ as words. The term ‘compound word’ has very little
relevance in Chinese, then, since many words already look quite ‘compound-
like’, having been assembled together from two or more stand-alone morphemes.
There is a good-sized literature in Chinese linguistics on the internal structure
of disyllabic ‘words’, concentrating on the relationships between the two
morphemes. For example, within the word , the first morpheme describes the
second morpheme (i.e. the meat is from the pig). The relationship between the
two is said to be an ‘endocentric’ one (the first morpheme modifies the second).
There are other kinds of word-internal structures manifesting different
relationships between the participating morphemes, as indicated below:

• Endocentric: The first element modifies the second.

bai2tian1 ‘white-day (day time)’

fei1ji1 ‘fly-machine (airplane)’
yong3qi4 ‘brave-air (courageous)’
xin1wen2 ‘new-hear (news)’

• Coordinative: The two elements are equal or closely related in meaning.

shen1ti3 ‘body-body (body)’

pin2qiong2 ‘deficient-destitute (poor)’
zhao4gu4 ‘shine-look (take care of)’
si3wang2 ‘die-die (die)’
• Subject-predicate: The second element is the predicate (verb or adjective) of the
first.

di4zhen4 ‘ground-shake (earthquake)’

lian3hong2 ‘face-red (blush)’
you2zha4 ‘oil-explode (deep fry)’
xin1suan1 ‘heart-sour (grief-stricken)’

• Verb-object: The first element is a verb and the second is its object.

xia4yu3 ‘send down-rain (raining)’

chi1fan4 ‘eat-rice (have meal)’
da3qiu2 ‘hit-ball (play ball)’
shi1ye4 ‘lose-career (unemployed)’

• Verb-complement: The first is a verb and the second is its complement (the
resultant state of an action).

shuo1ming2 ‘say-bright (explain)’

tui1fan1 ‘push-turn over (overthrow)’
jie3kai1 ‘solve-open (untie)’
hun1dao3 ‘faint-inverse (pass out)’

• Noun-classifier: The first element is the noun and the second is the classifier (a
monosyllabic item used to categorize a noun).

che1liang4 ‘car-classifier for land vehicles (vehicle)’

fang2jian1 ‘room-classifier for rooms and buildings (room)’
hua1duo3 ‘flower-classifier for flowers and clouds (flower)’
shui3tong3 ‘water-classifier for large quantity of liquid (bucket)’

An inflection-like bound morpheme in Chinese is men5 ‘plural marker’, which

attaches itself to a certain type of noun to make it plural. For example, hai2zi5
‘child’ becomes hai2zi5men5 ‘children’. Morphemes like this are
extremely rare in Chinese. Their application to existing words or morphemes is
also fairly restricted. For example, ‘pig-plural’ is not a good expression in
Chinese, as is normally only added to certain categories of human nouns. The
noun alone (e.g. ) can be interpreted as either singular or plural depending on
context. Plural marking for common nouns is not mandatory in Chinese.
There are more derivation-like morphemes in Chinese than inflection-like
ones, but their application is also very limited and certainly not as productive as
the English derivational morphemes such as con-, dis-, -ive, -tion, -ment and so
on. Like English, these morphemes can occur at the beginning or at the end of a
lexical unit. A suffix-like morpheme (which is a free morpheme itself, not a
bound one) in Chinese is tong4 ‘ache’ which, like its counterpart in English, -
ache, can be added to a body part to mean a discomfort in that region. Thus, we
have ‘headache’, ‘toothache’, ‘stomach ache’, ‘heartache’,
‘tummy ache’, ‘sore throat’, ‘slanting-headache
(migraine)’ and so on.
A prefix-like Chinese morpheme is dian4 ‘electricity’. Examples are
‘electric-see (television)’, ‘electric-words (telephone)’, ‘electric-image
(cinema)’, ‘electric-lamp (electric light)’, ‘electric-ice box
(refrigerator)’ and so on.
There are more derivation-like morphemes like and in Chinese, with
different degrees of productivity. Again, the combinations of these morphemes
(bearing in mind they may also be called ‘words’ in Chinese) with other
morphemes or words can be conceptualized as word-formation rules in Chinese.
Yet they can also be said to follow phrase-structure rules in Chinese. The
distinctions between morphemes, words, and phrases are far from clear in
Chinese.

0.3 CHINESE ORTHOGRAPHY

Each Chinese character corresponds exactly to a Chinese syllable with a tone and
a meaning. Only a small portion of Chinese characters are really pictographs; that
is, the character resembles the concept it expresses in appearance. For example,
the shape of ‘hill’ does resemble a mountain with three peaks. The character
‘sheep’ originated from an oracle bone script which resembled the front of a
sheep. Other character formation rules traditionally recognized include the
following:

• Ideograph:
 ○ Simple ideograph: Simple strokes are used iconically to represent abstract
ideas. For example, ‘up’ (an icon on a horizontal line), ‘down’ (an
icon beneath a horizontal line), and ‘middle’ (a vertical line running
through the center of a square).
○ Compound ideograph: The combination of pictograph(s) and ideograph(s) to
represent more complicated concepts. For example, ‘rest’ (a person
leaning against a tree ).

• Phonetic loan: This is a ‘borrowing’ process where a character is said to be used

to represent a homophone (same sound, different meaning) which as yet has no
orthographic representation. For example, the verb meaning ‘spend’ had a
spoken form, hua1, but initially was without a written form, so the character of
its homophone, hua1 meaning ‘flower’, was used to represent it.
• Phono-semantic compound: This is the combination of a phonetic loan and a
meaning component. For example, the word qu3 ‘marry a woman’ was
created by adding a meaning component, ‘woman’, to a homophone,
qu3 ‘retrieve’.

Table 0.2 Different vs. identical Chinese characters across the two systems

Sound/meaning Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese

guo2 ‘nation’
xue2 ‘learn’

zhong1 ‘middle’
sheng1 ‘pupil’

There are currently two systems of Chinese characters used in various Chinese
communities around the globe. The Traditional Chinese is used mainly
in Taiwan and in Cantonese-speaking communities such as Hong Kong and
Macau. These are standardized character forms dating back to the Han dynasty.
The Simplified Chinese was developed by the People’s Republic of
China in 1954 and is now the official form used in China and by most overseas
Chinese language teaching programs. Many native speakers in China also read
Traditional characters and Taiwanese speakers also write some Simplified
characters, although there may be few who read both kinds of characters equally
fluently (each conditioned by their educational upbringing). Traditional and
Simplified Chinese characters are not always different. Table 0.2 shows two
characters which differ and two characters which remain the same across the two
platforms.
For practical reasons and following reviewer feedback, this book has been
printed in Simplified Chinese characters instead of Traditional Chinese
characters.

0.4 CHINESE SYNTAX

Chinese and English are said to follow the same basic word order of SVO (Subject
→ Verb → Object) which differs from a language like Japanese where the SOV
(Subject → Object → Verb) word order applies. Many of the phrase structure
rules of English are equally applicable to Chinese; for example:

• S → NP VP

A sentence can consist of a noun phrase and a verb phrase.

• NP → Art Adj N

A noun phrase can consist of an article, an adjective, and a noun.

• VP → V NP

A verb phrase can consist of a verb and a noun phrase.

However, there are departures from English in certain aspects of Chinese

grammar. For example, a prepositional phrase (PP), consisting of a preposition
(Prep) and a noun phrase (NP), normally comes after a verb or a noun in English.
In Chinese, however, the Prep can be to the left or the right of the NP within the
PP. The PP itself usually comes before the noun and before or after the verb it
modifies. Thus:

English Chinese
• PP → Prep NP • PP → Prep NP or PP → NP Prep
 in the area ‘at-this-area’
on the table ‘table-up’

• NP → Art N PP • NP → PP de5 N

the fiddler on the roof ‘roof-on-de5-fiddler’

• VP → V PP • VP → PP V

playing in the pub ‘inside-pub-play music’

There are other differences between Chinese and English syntax in respect of
word order. For example, an adverb describing a verb usually comes after the
verb in English (e.g. He leaves tomorrow). In Chinese, the default position for
‘tomorrow’ would be between the subject and the verb (i.e. ‘he-
tomorrow-walk (He leaves tomorrow)’).
Just like Chinese words, a Chinese sentence is also difficult to define. Many
Chinese sentences are either without subjects or without verbs, or have multiple
verb phrases which are not well coordinated. In addition, the special Topic-
Comment structure adds an extra dimension to the complexity of Chinese syntax.
A Chinese sentence can start with two noun phrases, one representing the topic
and the other the subject of the sentence.

0.5 CHINESE DISCOURSE

The problem of delineating Chinese sentences carries on to the reading of
Chinese paragraphs. In reading an English paragraph, the unit of processing is
normally a sentence (or a well-defined phrase if the sentence is relatively long).
Both sentential grammar and punctuation marks are very helpful in defining
English sentences. In Chinese, the punctuation marks do not help separate
sentences as they do in English and the sentence seems to ‘run on’ forever. It is
difficult for novice readers to know when to stop, ‘wrap up’ a structure and ‘sum
up the meaning’ read so far. Take the following news text, for example (the
translation is intentionally made ‘structurally literal’ so as to keep as many traits
of the Chinese syntax as possible):
 Sichuan Province Luzhou City a shopping mall occurred a deflagration
accident, the mall first floor basement and ground floor caught fire, nearby
many shops and a hotel were also involved, the accident scene shards of glass
scattered on the ground. As at 6:00 on the 27th, the accident killed four people,
35 people were taken to hospital for observation and treatment.

There are six identifiable sentences in the above example, based on the
conventional method of sentence analysis. However, there are only two Chinese
period marks in the text. As will be explained in Chapter 3, Chinese-style periods
are used more for ‘conceptual’ rather than structural marking. Nor are the
Chinese commas used to mark sentences – although most of them do in this
particular instance. The fourth comma, however, delineates a time phrase rather
than a sentence. In Chapter 3, we analyze Chinese sentences in ways that will
help readers understand not only the structure of the sentence itself but also how
Chinese sentences are extended to become paragraphs.
On the spoken side of the language, we focus on a category of morphemes
called sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Chinese, which are treated as discourse
markers (DMs) in this book. Discourse markers are those ‘small words’ which
play an important role in oral communication. In English, words like oh, so, well,
anyway, I mean, you know, etc. help make sure conversation moves on in a
smooth and efficient way. In Chinese, the same functions are carried out by a
battery of linguistic devices called sentence-final particles. For example, the
English expression Well, that’s it! is often used to conclude something, with the
discourse marker well showing the speaker’s mood of relief, reluctance,
disappointment, and so on. In the example below, the function of well is
transferred to the SFP le5 in the Chinese translation.
Note that, in the proper Chinese translation above, the discourse marker well is
replaced by a sentence-final particle , which expresses the same sense of
conclusion and the accompanying emotions. In Chinese, there are at least a dozen
SFPs serving discourse marker functions, and these are discussed extensively in
Chapter 5.

0.6 MANDARIN IN TAIWAN

Although Simplified Chinese and Pinyin seem to have become the mainstream
encoding systems for Chinese orthography and phonology respectively, they are
not the only option (just as communism is not the only possible political system
for Chinese countries). The Traditional Chinese and the Zhuyin phonetic
transcription system used in Taiwan deserve more of the world’s attention.
The current government of Taiwan represents the political party (i.e. the
Nationalist Party, or KMT) which led the revolution in 1911 that overthrew the
Qing Dynasty. The Republic of China began in 1912, which was the
first year in the country’s independent calendar. This is still the official calendar
system in Taiwan. Thus, Taiwanese year 103, or ‘year 103 of
the ROC’, is converted to year 2014 (= 103 + 1911) of the Western calendar.
The KMT (or ), after being defeated by Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) in 1949 and relocating to Taiwan, initially ruled by single-party
authoritarianism, just like the current CCP in China. However, with a series of
successful democratic movements from the grassroots, a strong opposition party,
the Democratic Progressive Party , was established in 1986, and the
first direct Presidential election took place in 1996. From then on, Taiwan has
become a fully democratic country with multi-party electoral competition, a
parliament (called the Legislative Yuan), ideology-free education, unimpeded
information flow, and the right to free speech and protests. Everything is
regulated by law instead of being controlled by a long-standing party. The law is
made by members of parliament who are directly elected by the people.
Communications between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have become
increasingly frequent in recent years due to the recent open policy of China and
the need of Taiwanese people to develop businesses on the mainland. There was a
period of some 40 years, however, in which interactions between Taiwan and
China were few because of the continuing state of war after 1949 (with both sides
wanting to regain lost territories). The Chinese languages evolved independently
in both regions during this period, which resulted in some noticeable differences,
especially in terms of the pronunciation of Mandarin and their vocabulary.
However, the differences are mostly negligible and generally do not affect
communication.
In Taiwan, Mandarin was made the official language after the KMT set up the
government in 1949. The phonetic system used in Taiwan to teach Mandarin,
called Zhuyin fuhao or simply Zhuyin, dated back to 1913 when the
KMT was still in power in China. Zhuyin looks different from the Pinyin system
released by the government of China in 1958. Table 0.3 contrasts the symbols
used in both systems.
Initially, the Zhuyin system may seem difficult and an extra burden to learn.
However, once the symbols are learned, and the correct phonetic associations
made, the subsequent learning of Mandarin syllables, words and phrases using
Zhuyin can be easier than with Pinyin (Flynn 2010).

Table 0.3 The Zhuyin and Pinyin symbols for consonants and vowels used in
Mandarin

Note: The semivowels and are used both as consonants and as vowels
CHAPTER 1
Chinese sounds

In this chapter, we explore the range of sounds used in spoken Mandarin, how
these sounds combine to form syllables, and how the tones are added onto the
syllables to form meaningful spoken units. We first distinguish between
consonants and vowels, explain some of their characteristics, and then analyze
how a Chinese syllable is made using different combinations of consonants and
vowels. In the second part, we introduce Chinese tones which are a necessary
component in turning syllables into the basic unit of meaning in Chinese.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Like English (and all other human languages), Chinese uses both consonants (C)
and vowels (V) to construct meaningful units. In addition, when combining
consonants and a vowel to form a syllable, Chinese uses a simpler method than
English; that is, while English permits consonant clusters of up to three
consonants each within a syllable, Chinese only allows one consonant per
possible slot (i.e. before or after the vowel).
Three levels of linguistic structures are contrasted between English and
Chinese in Figure 1.1: the word level, the syllabic level, and the sound level. In
particular, the differences in structural complexity of syllables between English
and Chinese are highlighted. The word Christopher comprises three syllables
which differ from one another dramatically in terms of vowel-consonant
configurations, as shown on the left side of Figure 1.1. The first syllable of
Christopher consists of two consonant clusters surrounding a vowel – altogether
five different sounds. The second syllable is a single vowel and the third syllable
is made up of a consonant and a vowel. In contrast, when Christopher is
transliterated into Chinese, the sounds adjust to the Chinese phonotactic system
and the overall picture becomes more ‘orderly’, as the right half of Figure 1.1
shows. For example, Chinese phonotactics do not allow a syllable initial
consonant cluster (excluding a consonant-semivowel combination), so a vowel
has to be inserted between the beginning two consonants. Thus, the initial CCV
configuration of Christopher is broken into two syllables in the Chinese
translation, becoming ke and li (CV-CV structure). Secondly, the s sound in
Chinese cannot exist alone and must be supported by a following vowel. This is
where si comes in as the third syllable in the Chinese version. The rest of the
word (i.e. -topher) generates a good CV-CV correspondence between the two
languages so the syllabic structure remains unchanged.

Figure 1.1 A rough comparison of English and Chinese syllabic structures

Thus, any syllable comprising a CCV structure must be turned into a disyllabic
CV-CV structure to conform to the Chinese phonotactic restriction, and a VC
structure must be changed to V-CV, unless the ending consonant is a nasal. That
is, the only final consonants allowed in Mandarin are two of the three nasal stops
– the n (alveolar) or the ng (velar) sound.

1.2 CHINESE SOUNDS

We now turn to the Chinese phonemic inventory; that is, the list of consonants
and vowels used in Chinese pronunciation. Again, there are abundant similarities
between English and Chinese. We will use the Chinese Pinyin system to
represent Chinese sounds. English sounds, where applicable, are represented by
their IPA symbols.
There are 22 Chinese consonants altogether (in this discussion we will exclude
the three semivowels), the same as English (if its two semivowels are also
excluded). Chinese consonants are allocated in Table 1.1 to slots according to the
manner and place of articulation. IPA phonetic symbols are provided in brackets
where there are equivalent English consonants.
The places of articulation for the sounds in Table 1.1 are marked
approximately in Figure 1.2, with straight lines connecting parts of the tongue to
the roof of the oral cavity where the constrictions occur. For example, the bilabial
sounds (b, p and m) are made by the upper and lower lips coming together. The
labial-dental sound f is made by gently placing the upper teeth on the lower lip
and letting the air flow through the narrow passage continuously. The dental
sounds (z, c and s) are made by bringing together the tip of the tongue and the
back of the upper teeth.

Table 1.1 Chinese consonants shown with English equivalents (where available)
 There are five ways of making the consonants in Table 1.1, referred to as the
manner of articulation. The plosives, also called ‘stops’, are made by building up
air pressure (air drawn from the lungs) in the tightly shut mouth and releasing it
by suddenly opening up the closure and releasing all the air. The closure may be
made by the two lips (b, p, m), by the front of the tongue sealing the mouth at the
alveolar ridge (d, t), or by the back of the tongue attaching to the velum (g, k).
The fricatives are made by allowing the air to flow freely from the lungs, up
through a narrow passage in the oral cavity, to the outside. Again, the narrow
passage may be formed in many places. In Chinese, the s fricative is made by
bringing the tip of the tongue toward the back of the upper teeth, which is
different from the English [s] whose constriction point is a little way back into
the mouth, at the alveolar ridge. The h sound, on the other hand, is made through
the narrow passage formed by the back of the tongue and the velum. The Chinese
h is also different from the English [h] (e.g. home), which is generally
characterized as a glottal fricative.
The affricates have both properties of plosives and fricatives as they involve
both an initial closure and some trailing air flow through a narrow passage.
There are six affricate sounds in Mandarin Chinese. The z and c share the same
place of articulation with s – at the back of the front teeth. Both the zh and ch
sounds are made by using the tongue (curled up like the bowl of a spoon) to
enclose the oral cavity at the post-alveolar region. The mounted air is then
released all of a sudden with a trickling hiss. The j and q sounds are similar to the
[dʒ] (giant) and [tʃ] (cheese) sounds respectively in English. If you modify the
two English sounds by ‘flattening out’ your lips (from the original rounded
shape), the resultant sounds are very much like j and q.
Both the lateral sound (l) and the nasal sounds (m, n, ng) used in Chinese are
basically the same as those in English.
According to Table 1.1, 12 of the 22 Chinese consonants are also used in
English. The other 10 consonants (four fricatives and six affricates) will be
unfamiliar to someone who speaks only English. Also, of the 22 Chinese
consonants in Table 1.1, ng is only used in syllable-ending position. As in English,
the sound ng is not used to begin a syllable. Conversely, all the other 21
consonants in Table 1.1 are only used in syllable-beginning position in Chinese –
except for n, which can be used either to begin or to end a syllable.
Most Chinese consonants are voiceless; the voiced ones are the three nasals m,
n and ng, the lateral l, and a retroflex r. The retroflex pair, r and sh, are the only
pair of sounds in Chinese that offers a voiced-voiceless contrast. In English, by
contrast, many pairs of sounds exist where one sound differs from the other only
in voicing, such as [p]-[b], [k]-[g], [f]-[v], and so on. In Chinese, the plosive
sounds are instead contrasted by the ‘aspiration’ feature, which is not used to
distinguish phonemes in English. Voicing refers to the vibrating movement of the
vocal cords when making the sound. Aspiration refers to the extra puff of air
coming out of the mouth when articulating a sound, usually when uttering
plosives or affricates, whose initial closure of the oral cavity enables aspiration.
In English, aspiration is a feature that distinguishes between allophones
(variants of the same phoneme that are pronounced differently due to a different
phonetic environment). For example, the same p sound is pronounced with
aspiration [ph] at word-initial position, such as poet, but it is pronounced
unaspirated [p] in a word like sport. Although the two sounds are pronounced
differently, they are both recognized by native speakers of English as the same
phoneme p at the conceptual level. One can articulate the p in sport as [ph] and
the word is still recognized as sport even though the pronunciation may be
thought of as irregular. In Chinese, however, aspiration has a different status – it
is used to distinguish meanings. For example, ba [pa] said in the fourth tone can
mean ‘father’ ( ), but pa [pha] in the same tone can mean ‘afraid’ ( ) instead.
Such a pair like [pa] and [pha] are called a ‘minimal pair’ in phonology – they
differ only in one sound at the same position and their meanings are different. In
this case, it is the aspiration feature that creates the semantic difference.
According to Table 1.1, there are 12 Chinese consonants which have (close)
English equivalents and therefore can be pronounced relatively easily by an
English speaker:

On the other hand, there are also 10 Chinese consonants that differ from similar
English sounds to different degrees. Some sounds only require minor
adjustments, such as making the rounded lips unrounded. Some are more difficult
to assimilate, such as the four retroflex sounds.

The approximate places of articulation of the 21 syllable-initial Chinese

consonants are marked on Figure 1.2.
Of the 10 consonants that have no close equivalents in English, the x sound is
similar to the English s in that they are both fricatives and both make high-
pitched, intensive hissing sounds (called ‘sibilants’), except that the constriction
point for x (alveo-palatal) is further back than [s] (alveolar). Both j and q are
affricates, which start like a plosive but release continuously like a fricative. The j
sound can be made by ‘unrounding’ the [dʒ] sound of J in Jack; that is, it is much
like the j sound in jeep. Likewise, to make the q sound in Pinyin, ‘unround’ your
lips when saying the [tʃ] sound of the ch in church. Again, it is easier to get the q
sound when the ch sound is followed by a high front vowel as in cheap, which is
less conducive to rounded lips.
Figure 1.2 The 21 syllable-initial Chinese consonants (in Pinyin)

Both z and c are also affricates. Both are made by bringing the tip of the
tongue to the back of the teeth to form a closure and then releasing the air in an
‘explosive’ manner followed by a trailing hiss. The z sound is like the ds sound at
the end of a word like cards. The c sound is similar except that it is aspirated. The
ts at the beginning of tsunami sounds like the Chinese c. The Chinese s sound is
again similar to the [s] sound in English except that s, like z and c, is made by the
tongue approaching the teeth rather than the alveolar ridge.
The four Chinese retroflex sounds, zh, ch, sh and r, are probably the most
difficult to assimilate for most learners (indeed, some of them are difficult even
for many Chinese native speakers to master). These sounds are made by curling
up the tongue toward the post-alveolar area. The tip of the tongue does not ‘curl
back’ to any large degree as the word retroflex suggests. Instead, there is a
general rise of all edges of the tongue when the tip of the tongue touches (in the
cases of zh and ch) or approaches (in the cases of sh and r) the post-alveolar area.
The configuration of the oral cavity remains the same for all four sounds. They
differ in zh and ch being affricates (release of air after initial blockage) and sh
and r being fricatives (continual release of air through a narrow passage). The
two sounds zh and ch differ in the former being unaspirated and the latter
aspirated. The sh, on the other hand, is voiceless and the r is voiced.

Table 1.2 Chinese vowels in Pinyin shown with English vowels (where
applicable)
 In terms of vowels, there are 10 single vowels in Chinese, most of which have
close English equivalents and cause few problems. Table 1.2 lists the 10 single
vowels in Mandarin Chinese. Where available, their English counterparts appear
in brackets in IPA symbols.
Vowels are classified by the tongue position being relatively ‘front’ or ‘back’,
high (close) or low (open). They are also called rounded (+rd) or unrounded (–rd),
based on the shape of the lips when uttering the vowels. Finely classified, there
are 10 single vowels in Mandarin Chinese, seven of which have close English
equivalents, as Table 1.2 shows. Two of the unshared vowels, ü and ɨ, due to the
relative inconvenience in typing, are normally represented as u (or v) and i
respectively in Pinyin, causing ambiguity as both u and i also represent other
sounds. The third unshared vowel, [ɤ], is written in Pinyin as e (the standing
alone e in Table 1.2) and is discussed in the next paragraph. The seven vowels
used by Mandarin that have close English equivalents are shown below with
English words containing the relevant vowel:

As Table 1.2 shows, the use of e is ambiguous in three ways in Pinyin. The first
usage of e is equal to IPA symbol [Ɛ]. When following a semivowel (e.g. ye), this
kind of e sounds like the e in cherry. The same is true when e combines with
other vowels to form a diphthong, such as ei and üe. This sound is sometimes
expressed as ê in Pinyin, to distinguish it from the other forms of e. Second, when
e is followed by a nasal sound such as en or eng, it is pronounced as [ə], like the a
in acute. Third, when e stands as the sole vowel in a syllable, it is equivalent to
IPA symbol [ɤ] and is pronounced like the ir in the English sir. Example Chinese
syllables are de, te, ne, zhe, che, she, and so on. Some sounds in this category will
‘look like’ an English word – me, he and she – but when used in Pinyin, they
only represent the sounds (which are pronounced differently from their English
lookalikes) and may be associated with a number of different meanings
depending on the tone.
Despite the high degree of similarity, two Chinese vowels are quite different
from regular English vowels – the [y] sound and the [ɨ] sound in IPA symbols.
The [y] sound is translated to ü as a relatively familiar alphabetic letter but the
[ɨ] is still represented as ɨ due to a lack of familiar corresponding letters.

Chinese ü ɨ
(written as v or u in Pinyin) (written as i in Pinyin and only
appearing after z, c, s and zh, ch, sh, r)
English müesli zzzi …
(German pronunciation) (the vowel part of this buzzing sound)

Since the [ɨ] sound is written as i in Pinyin, the i symbol then comes to represent
two sounds. It is pronounced as the ee in see in most cases (without the ‘long’
vowel ingredient), but it becomes a central (instead of front) high vowel when
following the three dental sibilants (z, c, s) or the four retroflex (zh, ch, sh, r)
sounds. The IPA symbol for this sound is ɨ (the letter i with a horizontal bar).
This central vowel is not found in English and can be assimilated by making a
zzzi buzzing sound (keeping only the ‘vowel’ part).
Another sound that does not exist in English is ü, a rounded front vowel,
which is found not only in Chinese, but also in German and other languages. A
way to make this sound is to start to say the y sound in yellow, while at the same
time making your lips round (like the lips’ shape in saying u), so ü is somewhat
like ‘the combination of [i] and [u]’. Because ü is not found on common English
keyboards, in practice the Chinese input method normally accepts the v letter as
ü. That is, if we want to type the Chinese character equal to nü3 (‘female’), we
strike nv3 on the keyboard and we will get the desirable character . It is also
not uncommon to use nv (as in this book) or even nu in place of nü as surface
Pinyin representations. However, since nu itself is a legitimate representation of
other meanings, context is crucial for determining whether nu really means nu
or, rather, nü on a given occasion.
There is, in fact, an additional vowel in Mandarin which is like the vowel
version of the retroflex consonants. This is represented in Pinyin as er. Since it is
an isolated vowel and only forms a syllable by itself (that is, it does not combine
with consonants or other vowels to form a syllable), it is excluded from further
discussions.
Apart from the 22 consonants and the 10 vowels described above, there are
three semivowels (or glides) in Chinese, whose IPA symbols are [w] (voiced
labialized velar approximant), [j] (palatal approximant) and [Ч] (voiced labialized
palatal approximant) respectively. The English counterparts for both w and y
exist, e.g. the [w] sound in wasp and the [j] sound in York. But there is no
English counterpart for yu [j], just as there is no ü in English. IPA symbols like
[j], [w], [Ч] are adopted by Duanmu (2007) for dedicated discussions on Chinese
phonology. In this book, however, like other consonants and vowels, we continue
to use the Pinyin symbols – in this case, w, y and yu respectively – to represent
these three sounds, taking advantage of Pinyin’s connectivity between sounds
and meaning.

1.3 CHINESE SYLLABLES

When analyzing Chinese syllables, it is customary to present models more
complicated than the CV (consonant-vowel) structure seen in Figure 1.1.
Normally, a Chinese syllable is said to comprise an Initial and a Final. The Initial
can be one of the 21 consonants shown in Figure 1.2. It can also be absent in the
case of a syllable consisting only of the Final. The Final itself consists of three
parts: the Medial, the Nucleus and the Ending. The Medial, when present, is one
of the three semivowels w, y or yu. The Nucleus is the only indispensable element
in the syllable, which can be any one of the nine vowels given in Table 1.2 (i.e.
excluding the ‘part of diphthong’ [ʊ] which only appears in the ending position).
Finally, the Ending can be i, o, u or one of the two nasals n or ng. Figure 1.3
shows the Chinese syllable structure with all the possible sounds in each
component and an overall example syllable.
Note that in Figure 1.3, the example syllable qiao makes use of a medial y [j],
which is written as i instead of y (it will be written as y in a syllable-initial
position such as yan). In the same vein, for a syllable like kuan, the u stands for
the semivowel medial [w], which will be written as w in a syllable like wang. To
take another example, the syllable yuan is analyzable into a Medial (yu) +
Nucleus (a) + Ending (n) with yu standing for the semivowel yu [Ч].
Another graphical illustration of the Chinese syllabic structure is given in
Figure 1.4 to show more example syllables and how they are generated from each
component.
Another way of analyzing the Chinese syllabic structure is using the Zhuyin
convention adopted in Taiwan. The Zhuyin system introduces a different set of
symbols, each standing for an Initial, a Medial or a Nucleus + Ending
combination. Figure 1.5 shows how some example syllables are derived in the
Zhuyin-based model.

Figure 1.3 Chinese syllable structure with all possible sounds in each level/group
Figure 1.4 Chinese syllable structure with possible CV combinations
Figure 1.5 Chinese syllable structure based on the Zhuyin system

As can be seen from Figure 1.5, the Zhuyin system clearly and unambiguously
represents the three semivowels with distinct symbols (y in Pinyin), (w in
Pinyin) and (yu in Pinyin). The Nucleus and the Ending portions are combined
in the Zhuyin model so that some symbols in this category consist of only a
vowel sound, while others each represent a diphthong or a combination of a
vowel and an ending nasal. The symbols are very distinct and provide a good
way for generating and remembering the Chinese syllables.

1.4 CHINESE TONES

For each syllable in Mandarin Chinese it is possible to distinguish four varieties
based on tonal differences. More accurately, the difference lies in the pitch
contour of each variety. For example, I recorded myself speaking ma1, ma2, ma3
and ma4 (with the numbers representing the first to the fourth tone respectively).
The result is shown in Figure 1.6. While the time factor in Figure 1.6 (i.e. the
horizontal bar) merits some attention, the pitch track (the vertical parameter) is
the more important distinguishing factor.

Figure 1.6 The pitch tracks of ma1, ma2, ma3 and ma4 spoken by the author of
this book

Here is a summarized description of the four tones based on Figure 1.6 (that is,
in terms of the author’s voice range):

• First tone (high-level): maintaining a level and relatively high pitch throughout
the articulation, concentrating on the 140Hz line.
• Second tone (rising): starting at a medium point and rising steeply, from
around the 100 Hz point to approximately 160Hz.
• Third tone (falling-rising): starting from a medium pitch (90Hz), falling to a
lower point (70Hz) and rising again to a higher point (120Hz).
• Fourth tone (falling): starting from a higher pitch (160Hz) and falling sharply to
a low point (80Hz).

There is a standard method for encoding Chinese tones in Pinyin using tone
marks of corresponding shapes; for example, ma1 as mā, ma2 as má, ma3 as mă,
and ma4 as mà. However, this book adopts the number system for clearer
presentation in later chapters when Pinyin annotations have to be given in
smaller fonts for language examples. The Chinese language (teaching) literature
normally represents the tonal differences in idealized ways like so:

Figure 1.7 Tonal differences

Figure 1.8 The pitch tracks of ma1ma5 spoken by the author of this book

Note that, in practice, the third tone is rarely pronounced in full but normally
ends ‘at the bottom’; that is, with the pitch contour of 2-1 instead of 2-1-4. This is
known as the ‘half third’ tone – see Norman (1988, p. 147), for example.
Also note that, apart from the four distinct tones, there is a fifth tone called the
‘neutral tone’ (or simply ‘toneless’), which is a relatively low-pitched and short
sound without a sustained or stable contour. In Figure 1.8, I said ma1ma5
(‘mother’). Note that the second ma is of the fifth tone and is lower in pitch as
well as much shorter in duration. The fifth tone, however, is normally not used to
distinguish meaning, but is merely a reduction at the phonetic level for certain
syllables at an unstressed position. The two ma’s in Figure 1.8, for example,
represent the same meaning, although the second ma is reduced to ‘toneless’ in
that position.
The addition of tone means many different meanings can be expressed by each
of the 400 or so syllables created via the process illustrated in Figures 1.4 and 1.5.
Using the syllable ba as an example, we can have four different kinds of ba-based
syllables, each of which represents one or more meaning. The most common
meanings for each syllable-tone combination are shown in Table 1.3. More
homophones of each of these varieties can be found in a complete Chinese
dictionary.
Note that the pitch range for each tone is relative. Each person has a different
voice frequency range. Their tones can be understood so long as the pitch
contours are correct, disregarding the absolute pitch range. In other words, for a
given syllable, there are prototypes (i.e. the most typical representations) for each
tonal contour, but there are no absolute pitch levels to aim at. For example,
Figure 1.9 shows two different people saying the same syllable with the same
tone. The pitch contours are recognizable, even though the pitch tracks appear at
very different frequency ranges (i.e. female between 220–270 Hz, male at a lower
120–180 Hz range).

Table 1.3 Different tones of the syllable ba and some examples for each tone
variety
Different tones of the Different meanings for the Character corresponding
same syllable same syllable-tone to the meaning
combination
ba1 ‘eight’
‘to get close to’, ‘to long for’
‘scar’

ba2 ‘to pull out’

 ‘cymbal’
‘to travel’

ba3 ‘handle’, ‘to hold’, Object

Marker
‘target’

ba4 ‘father’
‘a local chief’, ‘to dominate’
‘dam’
‘to cease’

Figure 1.9 A male and a female saying the same syllable with the same tone

Chinese tones are not as difficult to master as some would believe. Tonal
contours are also witnessed in non-tonal languages such as English. The
difference is that a non-tonal language does not use tonal variations to
distinguish meaning. For example, in English, there are different ways of saying
no, as in No?, No!!, or No, I’m not. Actually, Mandarin has the smallest number of
tones in comparison to other Chinese dialects. Cantonese, for example, is said to
utilize as many as nine tones (see Sun 2006 for a summarizing table of tones
versus dialects and Lin 2001 for a detailed analysis of tonal differences between
the dialects).
Another point to note about Chinese tones is the tonal change of syllables in
certain contexts; this is also called ‘tone sandhi’. We have already seen an
example of tone sandhi in Figure 1.8, where the second instance of ma1 in
ma1ma1 is reduced to the fifth (or neutral) tone in most contexts (i.e. we say
ma1ma5 instead of ma1ma1). In fact, this is a very common tone reduction
process that weakens the tone of the second syllable for many disyllabic items.
For example, the normal pronunciation of ‘watermelon’ is xi1gua1 but, on
many occasions, it is changed to xi1gua5, especially when it is at the end of a
sentence. This applies mostly to Mainland Chinese speakers and not to the
Taiwanese ones.
Another frequently encountered tone sandhi is changing the first third tone to
second tone when two third tone syllables form a lexical unit or a phrase of some
sort. For example, when we combine lao3 (‘old’) and ma3 (‘horse’) to form
‘old horse’, we say lao2ma3 [23] instead of lao3ma3 [33]. The latter seems more
difficult to produce (and comprehend) if you insist on not changing the tone!
When there are three consecutive syllables all marked with the third tone, the
process of sandhi is more complicated. Which syllable needs to change tone
depends on the grouping of morphemes. For example, in the case of
nv3zong3tong3 [333] ‘female president’, since zong3tong3 [33] ‘president’ is a
lexical item, it is also a sandhi unit and changes to zong2tong3 [23], so the entire
unit becomes nv3zong2tong3 [323] when uttered. When no such internal
grouping occurs within a trisyllabic unit, such as the syntactic combination
‘save some paper’, the pronunciation changes from sheng3dian3zhi3
[333] to sheng2dian2zhi3 [223]. That is, the two third tones prior to the final third
tone are changed to the second tone.
If a disyllabic unit has already undergone a sandhi process, i.e. it has changed
from [33] tone to [23], but it is followed by another syllable in the third tone,
then a further sandhi process is applied. For example, the phrase
[zong3tong3] hao3 ‘[president] good’ (‘How are you, president?’), is pronounced
as zong2tong2hao3 [223] rather than zong2tong3hao3 [233]. That is, the end
product is like a trisyllabic item without internal grouping, such as [223]
mentioned above.
 If a quadrisyllabic unit consists entirely of third tone syllables, the
pronunciation also depends on how you group the morphemes based on semantic
and syntactic properties. Some groupings are easier to say. For example,
is analyzed as [zong3tong3][hao3can3] ‘[president] [very miserable]’
and is spoken in a rhythmic [23][23] pattern. But in the case of
[[shui3guo3]jiu3][hao3] ‘[[fruit] wine][good]’, the sandhi process first needs to
change the pronunciation of ‘fruit’ from [33] to [23] as this is the core unit;
then it changes ‘fruit wine’ from [233] to [223]. The final step, however,
is less decisive. Most native speakers from China being presented with
are not sure how to say it! It could be that the same process continues to
change from [2233] to [2223] but a process of sandhi as far-reaching
as this is rare. Most native speakers I asked, who managed to settle on a more
consistent pronunciation, replied they would say [2233] instead of [2223].
How do we pronounce an even longer five-syllable expression such as
zong3tong3 ni3 hao3can3 ‘president, you are miserable’? Again, we analyze
the phrase into groups of syllables based on semantic and/or syntactic properties,
and then activate the sandhi process for each identified group. Thus,
is grouped into ‘[president] you [very miserable]’ and
pronounced as zong2tong3 ni3 hao2can3 or [23]3[23]. The process is the same for
even longer expressions. For example, can be grouped into
‘[president] [how are you] I [very miserable]’ and
pronounced as zong2tong3 ni2hao3 wo3 hen2can3 or [23][23]3[23]. Note that, in
both cases, we have a condition where two third tone syllables are adjacent to
each other. In other words, a [33] combination is still pronounceable and even
inevitable when word grouping dictates it or in order to avoid ‘unfavorable’
sandhi results such as the [2223] configuration.
In very rare cases, the same sequence of syllables can be analyzed in more than
one way, generating different readings. For example, can be
grouped in two ways:
The crucial difference between the two analyses lies in the tone of the morpheme
. If the speaker keeps the third tone for this syllable as in (a), then it is
understood to be part of ‘the police station’ and the sentence is
interpreted accordingly. If is changed to the second tone as in (b), then it is
understood to form a constituent with to become ‘all’, and a different
interpretation applies. Tone sandhi, therefore, can help resolve ambiguous
sentences occasionally.
Finally, special sandhi processes are applicable to two particular morphemes in
Chinese yi1 ‘one’ and bu4 ‘not’. There are three situations:

• When standing alone or as an ending morpheme to a constituent, and

are spoken with their original first and fourth tone respectively (e.g.
di4yi1 ‘first’; yao4bu4 ‘otherwise’).
• When followed by a syllable with the fourth tone, both and are changed
to the second tone in their respective units (e.g. yi2ban4 ‘half’,
bu2suan4 ‘not-count’).
• When followed by a syllable with all other tones (i.e. first, second and third
tone), both and are changed to the fourth tone (e.g. yi4sheng1 ‘one
lifetime’, yi4yuan2 ‘one dollar’, yi4ben3 ‘one volume’;
bu4gao1 ‘not tall’, bu4qiong2 ‘not poor’, bu4ai3’ ‘not short’).

Note: In this book, the tonal changes involving and are reflected in the
Pinyin notations in the example sentences. The tone sandhi, which changes any
syllabic combinations from [33] to [23], however, is not reflected. This is because
there are plenty of lexical items which inherently come with a [23] tonal
combination. If all [33] combinations are also presented as [23], then readers not
familiar with a given disyllabic unit will not know whether the [23] marking is
inherent or is a result of sandhi.

1.5 SUMMARY
In this chapter, we first identified the range of consonants and vowels used in
Chinese. We noted that there are 22 consonants, three semivowels and 10 vowels
used in Mandarin (excluding the isolated er). We then explored the important
concept of syllable in Chinese, considering the structure of the syllable and
investigating the process for generating Chinese syllables. As an integrated part
of the Chinese syllable, the range of tones used in Mandarin were also
investigated. We learned that, for any given syllable in Mandarin, there are four
possible tones that can be assigned to it. There is a fifth tone (the neutral tone) to
mark a weakened syllable without changing the meaning of the syllable. There
are also sandhi processes which change the tones of some syllables under certain
conditions; again, without affecting their meanings. With this fundamental
knowledge of Chinese phonology, we move on to consider how syllables are
combined into different kinds of meaning-making units in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 2
Chinese words

In this chapter, we discuss units of meaning of various lengths in Chinese on the

basis of the number of syllables contained in each unit. We start by pointing out
the importance of the syllable as a meaning-making unit in Chinese. We ponder
the intriguing question of ‘What is a word in Chinese?’ and examine the
relationship between the Chinese character, syllable, and morpheme. We first
consider the lexical units which contain meanings by themselves, including the
prevalent disyllabic units, the trisyllabic units, and the quadrisyllabic idioms
which demonstrate some interesting syntactic properties of the Chinese language.
We then move on to consider a number of functional items which mainly work at
the grammatical level.

2.1 THE SYLLABLE AS THE BASIC UNIT OF MEANING

It is useful to highlight the association between ‘syllable’ and ‘meaning’ for
understanding and learning the Chinese language. This is because almost all
Chinese syllables come with individual meanings or functions. Figure 2.1 shows
how the syllable stands at a pivot point, linking pronunciation and meaning.
There are two monosyllabic items which represent the Chinese view of what
constitutes the basic unit of meaning:

• zi4 ‘a Chinese character’

• ci2 ‘a basic linguistic unit which can independently express a concept’.
(definitions adapted from the Dr.eye dictionary)

Although we said earlier that each Chinese syllable/character has a distinct

meaning, it is more frequently the case (in modern Chinese) that concepts are
best expressed by combinations of syllables/characters. For example, although the
character li3 standing alone can mean ‘gift’, it is more customary to say and
write li3wu4 ‘gift-object’ on most occasions. In contemporary Chinese, a
two-character combination seems to represent a more complete concept and a
more qualified lexical unit than a monosyllabic item. For one thing, the
monosyllabic item is often combined with other items to form a different
concept. Thus, li3he2 means ‘gift box’, li3bing3 means ‘gift cake’,
li3fang1 means ‘gift shop’ and so on. Such multisyllabic combinations with
very specific meanings seem to make the monosyllabic core ambiguous, abstract
and incomplete when used alone.

Figure 2.1 The syllable at the intersection of sound and meaning in Chinese

It is therefore very difficult to decide what a ‘basic unit of language’ is in

Chinese. In fact, a fundamental challenge in explaining the Chinese language
using established English terminology is to define what a ‘word’ is in Chinese. In
Chinese a word is not a syllable (or character), as characters do not always stand
alone to make unambiguous meanings. But if words are multisyllabic items in
Chinese, what are the criteria for deciding the limit of syllabic expansion or the
boundary of a unit? An easy way to recognize what a word is in English is to see
if it is listed in an English dictionary as an entry. In a traditional Chinese
dictionary, however, the headwords are normally the individual characters.
Below each character are then listed a number of multi-character items which are
habitually used together to mean something. There are many kinds of
multisyllabic items in Chinese. How do we decide which are words and which
are not? This is an open question.
For most people speaking English, apple is clearly a word. In Chinese, the same
concept is expressed as ping2guo3 ‘apple’, which is a disyllabic unit
consisting of two characters, the first of which means a kind of weed and the
second, fruit in general. Is ping2guo3 one word or two words in Chinese? We
hate to say it’s a two-word compound because it refers to a monolithic natural
kind of object. If we say it is a single word, on the other hand, then we seem to
deny the wordhood of its two components, both of which are also undeniably ‘a
single unit of language which means something’ (part of the definition for word
in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary).
It may be useful to refer to another language, like English, for deciding on the
lexical status of a particular unit in Chinese. For example, chou1yan1 ‘to
smoke (a cigarette)’ can be expressed by one word in English (smoke) and refers
to an easily recognizable concept. Therefore, it is perhaps best treated as a
Chinese word. chou1tan2 ‘to suck out phlegm (from patient)’ is best
characterized as a phrase, as chou1 ‘to suck’ and tan2 ‘phlegm’ both seem to
maintain their individual meanings and the overall concept needs to be ‘added
up’, so to speak.
Using concepts to define lexical items is workable in many cases. For example,
kai1fei1ji1 ‘fly-airplane’ does not represent a single concept but two
(‘operate’ an ‘aircraft’), so it is a phrase rather than a lexical unit (the disyllabic
unit ‘airplane’, on the other hand, is a self-contained concept and can be
categorized as a word). The same analysis applies to the phrase da3fei1ji1
when it means ‘to shoot down an airplane’ in real battle or video game contexts.
However, is also a colloquial term which means ‘to masturbate’. In this
case, it is clearly a lexical unit as it expresses a single concept. Moreover, its
constituent elements ( ‘hit’ and ‘airplane’) also have not maintained their
original meanings in the colloquial usage. This example illustrates the usefulness
of using concepts to define wordhood.
Other definitions of the Chinese ‘word’ exist in abundance, each of which has
its own merits. For example, Packard (2004) distinguishes between many kinds of
words (semantic, lexical, phonological, psychological etc.) before deciding on the
‘syntactic word’ as the best term to characterize the Chinese word, which is
defined as ‘a form that can stand as an independent occupant of a syntactic form
class slot’ (p. 12). This definition presumably serves a good purpose in Packard’s
syntactically based analysis of ‘word’. Our aim in this book, however, is to
understand simply how different units of meaning in Chinese are formed from
syllables and used pragmatically in the real world. Thus, ‘word’ is defined here as
the minimum number of syllables habitually used by native speakers of Chinese
to denote a self-contained concept. Some other English words like term and unit
are also used interchangeably with word in this book to reflect the fuzzy nature
of the concept of ‘word’ in Chinese.

2.2 CONTENT UNITS

In this section, we explore lexical units which can stand alone by themselves and
represent meaning. These include meaningful units made of one, two, three, four
or even more syllables. The monosyllabic items may often be referred to as
‘morphemes’. The disyllabic items are most frequently referred to as ‘words’.
Units of meaning longer than three syllables in Chinese are more likely to be
thought of as ‘phrases’. The trisyllabic units can be words or phrases.

2.2.1 Monosyllabic items

A Chinese monosyllabic item corresponds to the linguistic concept of a
‘morpheme’, which is normally defined as the smallest meaningful unit of a
language. Thus, syllable, character and meaning are the three sides of a pyramid,
and represents the smallest meaning-making unit in Chinese where the sound,
orthography and concept converge. A syllable is a spoken unit of meaning which
may be ambiguous if it has homophones. A character is a less ambiguous
representation of a meaning in written form. A morpheme is the sum of the
syllable, the corresponding character, and the meaning(s) they represent. This
idea is graphically expressed in Figure 2.2.
 Thus, the tone-carrying syllable qiang2 when heard as acoustic signals, may
mean ‘strong’ ( ) or ‘wall’ ( ) or something else. But when presented in the
written form, as , it unambiguously means ‘strong’. We can then refer to the
unit [ qiang2 ‘strong’] as a morpheme or simply use the syllable or character
to represent the morpheme with the intended meaning.
Although most morphemes in Chinese can stand alone to represent a self-
contained concept, they may not be habitually used to do so (that is, native
speakers may be more inclined to integrate them into multisyllabic units). When
a monosyllabic item frequently stands alone in a sentence or in a pragmatic
context to mean something, it may qualify as a ‘word’ as well as being a
morpheme.
Some common monosyllabic items include verbs like shuo1 ‘say’, xiang3
‘think’, pao3 ‘run’, gei3 ‘give’, chi1 ‘eat’, ku1 ‘cry’; nouns like
qian2 ‘money’, she2 ‘snake, hua1 ‘flower’, guang1 ‘light’, lu4 ‘road’;
and adjectives such as mei3 ‘beautiful’, da4 ‘big’, leng3 ‘cold’, xin1
‘new’ and so on. Most monosyllabic items can be used in a sentence to form fresh
combinations with other items. For example, the morpheme ai4 ‘love’
normally functions as an independent verb and takes a morpheme like as an
object to form a verb phrase ‘love money’, or combine with a disyllabic unit
to form a trisyllabic phrase like ‘love music’. The same is true with a
monosyllabic adjective such as , which works independently to describe
another monosyllabic item, e.g. ‘new car’, or a disyllabic item, e.g.
‘new friend’. Morphemes like these deserve the status of ‘word’ since they often
function alone to represent a full concept.
Figure 2.2 A Chinese morpheme consisting of sound, character and meaning

Some monosyllabic units are rich in cultural connotations. For example, single
characters like chun1 ‘spring’ or fu2 ‘luck’ are printed on diamond-shaped
paper and hung in doorways in the Spring Festival period. Some Chinese
characters can often be seen on foreigners’ T-shirts or on their body parts as
tattoos, including animal morphemes like long2 ‘dragon’, hu3 ‘tiger’ and
xiong2, ‘bear’; philosophical terms such as ai4 ‘love’, ren2 ‘kindness’ and
mei3 ‘beauty’; those relating to personal qualities or aspirations such as li4
‘strength’, sheng4 ‘victory’ and ren3 ‘endurance’; and religious terms like
shen2 ‘deity’, fo2 ‘Buddha’, dao4 ‘way’ and so on. A monosyllabic item
(in the form of a Chinese character) can be a powerful symbol representing some
essence of the Chinese history, culture or philosophy. In this respect, they also
deserve to be called ‘words’, being frequently used independently, in pragmatic
contexts, to embody self-contained meanings.
Most Chinese surnames are monosyllabic items – they usually also mean
something when not serving as surnames. For example, Chairman Mao’s full
name is mao2ze2dong1 where mao2 is the surname and means ‘hair’ and
ze2dong1 is the given name (where ze2 means ‘to benefit’ and dong1 means
‘east’). Some common Chinese surnames are wang2 ‘king’, li3 ‘plum’,
huang2 ‘yellow’, ma3 ‘horse’, sun1 ‘grandson’, lin2 ‘woods’, gao1
‘tall’, tian2 ‘field’ and so on. Note that in Chinese, unlike in English, the
surname comes before the given name. Also, while Chinese surnames are
predominantly monosyllabic (with only a handful of disyllabic surnames) a
person’s given name could be either monosyllabic or disyllabic.
For foreigners wanting to adopt a Chinese name, the method is to find the
equivalent sounds of the original name in syllabic terms, often involving
supplying a vowel to any vowel-less consonants in a cluster to create a syllable.
For example, Andrew Strauss can become an1de2lu3 shi3te4lao2si1
, where the consonants d, s, and t in the original names have
become full syllables by adding vowels e, i, and e respectively in the Chinese
version.
Some monosyllabic verbs in Chinese can behave like simple English command
words such as Listen! ( ting1), Look! ( kan4), Come! ( lai2), Sit! ( zuo4),
Speak! ( shuo1) and so on. In practice, however, monosyllabic verbs often take
a noun object or a modifying adverb to form a verb phrase of some sort (or
become an established lexical unit); for example, chi1fan4 ‘eat-rice (have
meal)’, da3qiu2 ‘hit-ball (play ball)’, bao4zhu4 ‘hold-stay (hold
firmly)’, shui4xing3 ‘sleep-wake (awaken)’, chi1bao3 ‘eat-full’,
tang3xia4 ‘lie-down’ and so on. The resultant structure is similar to an English
verb phrase where a verb is followed by an object (talk business) or an adverb
(talk endlessly).
Monosyllabic nouns often serve as the basis for forming a larger nominal unit
in a family of nouns with related meanings. For example, che1 ‘vehicle’ is the
base morpheme for many kinds of vehicles, such as qi4che1 ‘steam-vehicle
(car)’, huo3che1 ‘fire-vehicle (train)’, zhan4che1 ‘war-vehicle (tank)’
and so on. This is dramatically different from English where a different type of
vehicle is more frequently referred to by a completely different noun, e.g. car,
truck, van, trailer. This is also a distinctive trait of word formation strategy in
Chinese, where syllables or characters are built upon each other to form new
units of meaning in a largely compositional way.
Monosyllabic adjectives often precede a noun which they modify, thereby
forming a frequently used phrase such as hao3shu1 ‘good book’,
huai4ren2 ‘bad person’, nv3tong2 ‘female-child’ and so on. Another
common form is for the adjective to follow a degree adverb such as ‘very’ or
 ‘extremely’; for example, hen3mei3 ‘very pretty’,
fei1chang2nan2 ‘extremely difficult’. In both of these the word order of adjective
→ noun and adverb → adjective are the same as in English. Note that the
popular monosyllabic unit ‘good’ can serve both as an adjective (
hao3xiao1xi2 ‘good-news’) and as a degree adverb ( hao3ben4 ‘very-stupid’).
As already mentioned, many monosyllabic items are used independently in
structural or pragmatic terms. At the other extreme, there are a very small
number of morphemes which cannot function alone and do not have independent
meanings. For example, both morphemes in the respective pairs of luo2bo5
‘carrot’, pu2tao5 ‘grapes’, zhi1zhu1 ‘spider’ and ying1wu3
‘parrot’ are bound to each other. None of the morphemes can stand alone and
they exist only in their respective disyllabic units (i.e. they do not form larger
units with other morphemes). However, these monosyllabic items are
comparatively few in number.

2.2.2 Disyllabic units

The disyllabic unit refers to a pair of syllables often used together to express a
self-contained meaning. A short Chinese text found in 2013 on the Facebook page
of Ma Ying-jeou, PhD, President of the Republic of China in Taiwan, illustrates
the overwhelming dominance of the disyllabic unit in Chinese text.
The text in Figure 2.3 consists of 45 (Traditional Chinese) characters in total,
among which 30 (67 percent) contribute to the formation of two-character units.
That is, more than half of the text consists of disyllabic units. This is not a
coincidence – it is the norm rather than the exception. The concluding paragraph
of Mr. Hu Jintao’s 2013 New Year speech as President of the People’s Republic of
China offers another piece of evidence for the ubiquitous presence of disyllabic
words in Chinese.
The text in Figure 2.4 consists of 70 characters, 50 of which (71 percent)
constitute 25 disyllabic units, slightly higher than the 67 percent of the text in
Figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3 A short text illustrating the prevalence of disyllabic units
Figure 2.4 Another text illustrating the prevalence of disyllabic units

Table 2.1 Disyllabic units classified on the basis of overall and constituent parts
of speech

Overall Constituent Constituent Example

PoS PoS relation

V VV Co si4yang3 ‘feed-raise (to rear)’

VN VO shi1zong1 ‘lose-track (to disappear)’
VA VC zhang3da4 ‘grow-big (to grow up)’
NV SP cao3chuang4 ‘grass-create (to start a
business)’
NN En yu2rou4 ‘fish-meat (to oppress)’
NA SP xin1suan1 ‘heart-sour (to feel sad)’
 xin1suan1 ‘heart-sour (to feel sad)’
AV En ku3gan4 ‘bitter-do’ (to work hard)’
AN En mei3rong2 ‘beautiful-looks (to
improve looks)’
AA Co fei3bo2 ‘light-flimsy (to slight)’

N NN En wang3lu4 ‘net-road (network)’

NA SP feng1xian3 ‘wind-dangerous (risk)’
NV SP li4xi2 ‘profit-cease (interest)’
AV En xiao3shuo1 ‘small-speak (novel)’
AN En bo2shi4 ‘broad-learned person (a
PhD)’
AA Co mang2luan4 ‘busy-confused (chaos)’
VV Co bian4hua4 ‘change-transform
(transformation)’
VN En bao4zhi3 ‘to report-paper
(newspapers)’
VA VO zun1yan2 ‘to respect-father
(dignity)’

A AA Co gao1xing4 ‘tall-cheerful (pleased)’

AV En mang3zhuang4 ‘rude-collide
(impetuous)’
AN En hen3xin1 ‘cruel-heart (heartless)’
VV Co jing1ya4 ‘to startle, to wonder
(surprised)’
VN VO li2pu3 ‘leave-music score (absurd)’
VA VC tong4ku3 ‘ache-bitter (painful)’
NV SP xing4gan3 ‘nature-feel (sexy)’
NN Co lang2bei4 ‘wolf-legendary wolf
(wretched)’
 (wretched)’
NA SP nian2qing1 ‘year-light (young)’
Note: En = Endocentric; Co = Coordinative; SP = Subject-Predicate; VO = Verb-
Object; VC = Verb-Complement

Disyllabic units can be verbs, nouns, adjectives or adverbs. Their constituent

morphemes can be any of the major parts of speech. Table 2.1 summarizes the
range of disyllabic units in relation to overall and constituent parts of speech.
A significant difference between Chinese and English in terms of parts of
speech is that, for Chinese, words revolving around the same concept but used in
different grammatical settings (i.e. as noun or verb or adjective/adverb) can share
the same form. For example, in English, the concept of ‘being protected from
danger’ can be referred to by the word safe (the adjective form), while the word
safety (the noun form) refers to the state of being safe. In Chinese, however, both
noun and adjective concepts are represented by the same token ‘safety,
safe’, thus:

We can see from the characters and Pinyin representations in Example 1 that the
Chinese word for the concept of ‘safety’ in both sentences is identical in form. In
English, however, the appropriate word forms must be used depending on the
grammatical context. This kinds of morphological-syntactic differences add to the
difficulties of Chinese speakers learning English as an additional language, for
the ideas of both inflection (talk → talked) and derivation (entertain →
entertainment) are unfamiliar concepts. On the other hand, the difficulty for
English speakers learning Chinese lies in the higher level comprehension and
encoding, as there are fewer bottom-up clues in the morphological department to
rely on when processing the Chinese language.
To understand how this ‘hidden parts of speech’ machinery works for Chinese,
imagine a non-existent English word, successal, which can represent succeed,
success, successful, and successfully depending on context. Example 2 presents an
array of sentences containing different forms of the word success, which,
however, have all been replaced by the non-word successal in order to give a
‘Chinese flavor’.

Example 2

a North Korea may have finally successal in putting a satellite into space.
(‘succeeded’)
b Officials said the launch appeared to have been a successal. (‘success’)
c South Korea hails successal rocket launch. (‘successful’)
d South Korea successal launches first rocket into space. (‘successfully’)

If the reader can derive the meaning of successal in the various contexts of
Example 2 without much ado (or irritation!), they can start to appreciate how the
Chinese get around the issue of grammatical categories by using a single form for
all contexts. One such set of Chinese sentences centering around the same
concept of ‘success’ is offered in Example 3 below, where the same form, , is
used as a verb, a noun, an adjective, and an adverb respectively.
We can therefore expect a lot of ‘mistakes’ in word forms when communicating
with a Chinese person in English, when English is not their first language. Verbal
interactions are especially difficult as these often involve conscious ‘calculations’
of which word forms to use in what sentential contexts. In Chinese, one is only
concerned with which lexical items to choose from the mental lexicon, without
worrying about further morphological processing.
Although disyllabic items account for more than half of the Chinese lexical
units, the process for generating habitual meaning-making units does not stop
there. As a trend in modern Chinese, more syllables can be added to existing
items to form new, larger lexical or phraseological units.

2.2.3 Trisyllabic units

The majority of trisyllabic units are formed by adding one more syllable to an
existing disyllabic unit. Few trisyllabic units comprise three separate
monosyllabic items unknown to each other. For example, the trisyllabic unit
wai4jiao1bu4 (‘Foreign Office’) is created by adding an extra syllable to
an existing disyllabic unit ‘international diplomacy’, which itself was
previously formed by combining two syllables ‘external’ and ‘to interact’.
The same process can go on to create even larger units, each of which may
express a self-contained concept and is habitually used by native speakers (e.g.
‘Minister of Foreign Affairs’).
A word formation process for disyllabic units was mentioned in 2.2.2, where a
head noun is used to generate a family of mutually related words. The same
process also applies to trisyllabic units. Thus means Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, is Ministry of Education, is Ministry of National Defence
and so on, which all share the same root morpheme ‘department’. Table 2.2
shows two further examples where ‘human’ and ‘member’ are the base
morphemes, with various disyllabic units added to create new units of meaning.

Table 2.2 Trisyllabic units created by adding different disyllabic units to the
same head noun

Head noun Participating disyllabic unit Resultant trisyllabic unit

yin1yang2 ‘negative- yin1yang2ren2 ‘an

ren2 positive’ intersex’
‘person’

yin3xing2 ‘hide-shape yin3xing2ren2 ‘an

(become invisible)’ invisible person’

ju2wai4 ‘bureau-outside ju2wai4ren2 ‘an

(outside the bureau)’ outsider’

guo4lai2 ‘cross-come guo4lai2ren2 ‘an

(come over)’ experienced person’

zhong1guo2 ‘middle- zhong1guo2ren2 ‘a

nation (China)’ Chinese person’
 gong1wu4 ‘public-affair’ gong1wu4yuan2 ‘a
yuan2 public servant’
‘member’

jiu4sheng1 ‘save-life’ jiu4sheng1yuan2

‘lifeguard’

guan3li3 ‘govern-manage’ guan3li3yuan2 ‘a

superintendent’

tui1xiao1 ‘push-sell’ tui1xiao1yuan2 ‘a sales

representative’

zu2qiu2 ‘football’ zu2qiu2yuan2 ‘a

footballer’

Most of the examples in Table 2.2 are compositional. That is, the meaning of
the trisyllabic unit is largely transparent and is the sum of the meanings of the
disyllabic unit and the noun root. A few of them are not straightforward, and
some imagination or learning is required to know what the trisyllabic items
mean. For example, someone who has got both the ‘shade’ (dark side) and the
‘sun’ (bright side) is an intersexual person. Someone who has ‘come over’ to this
side is an ‘experienced person’.
Sometimes monosyllables like and are said to be ‘derivational
morphemes’ in that they can be added to many existing words to create new
meanings, somewhat like the suffixes -or (act → actor), -ment (move →
movement) etc. in English. A derivational morpheme is usually restricted in some
way in the range of words it can combine with. For example, assignment and
equipment are fine, but not *allocatement or *affordment. The Chinese
derivation-like process is even more selective. Most of the examples in Table 2.2
represent individual cases and the process is not very productive, with the
possible exception of [nation + ] = ‘a citizen of that nation’ and [ball game +
] = ‘a player of that game’. Examples are ‘America-person (an
American)’ and ‘basketball-member (a basketball player)’.
Nouns are not the only grammatical category that can be the head of a series
of derived words. Table 2.3 lists a group of trisyllabic units centering around a
head verb. In this set of examples, the meaning of the monosyllabic head
(‘hit’) is depleted or neutralized when it combines with the disyllabic noun. That
is, it becomes a generic verb much like the make in make a phone call in English.

Table 2.3 Trisyllabic units created by attaching disyllabic units to the head verb

Head verb Participating disyllabic unit Resultant trisyllabic unit

dian4hua4 ‘electric-speech da3dian4hua4 ‘make a

da3 (telephone)’ phone call’
‘strike’

zhao1hu1 ‘attract-exhale da3zhao1hu1 ‘say hello’

(greeting)’

pen1ti4 ‘spurt-sneeze (a da3pen1ti4 ‘to sneeze’

sneeze)’

ling3dai4 ‘collar-belt da3ling3dai4 ‘put on a

(necktie)’ tie’

ma2jiang4 ‘hemp-general da3ma2jiang4 ‘play

(mah-jong)’ mah-jong’

suan4pan2 ‘calculate-tray da3suan4pan2 ‘use

(abacus)’ abacus; be scheming and
calculating’

Not all trisyllabic units consist of an established disyllabic unit plus a head
morpheme. Sometimes a trisyllabic unit is put together afresh by three
independent morphemes. For example, ye4lai2xiang1 ‘night-come-
fragrance (tuberose)’ comprises a noun/adverb (‘night’), a verb (‘come’) and a
noun (‘fragrance’), and together they form a noun denoting a flower name.
Likewise, a number of established trisyllabic units seem to originate from a
syntactic process. For example, ‘come-not-reach (too late)’,
‘differ-not-much’, ‘endure-not-live (cannot hold back)’ are frequently
used trisyllabic units which follow the [V not A] or [V not V] pattern.
Many trisyllabic units are pragmatically laden or culturally embedded. Some of
them acquire the status of idioms; that is, their meanings become very different
from the meanings of the individual words put together. For example,
‘three-legged-cat’ means ‘a person who can do many things but specializes in
nothing’, and ‘three-character-scripture’ becomes an umbrella term for
all the swear words consisting of three morphemes.
We have seen ways how trisyllabic units can be formed by putting together
three monosyllabic items or by combining a disyllabic unit with a monosyllabic
item. The meaning of the new unit can be either compositional or idiomatic. The
idiomatic trisyllabic ones such as ‘to sneeze’ and ‘sex trap’ each
refer to a self-contained concept and are habitually used as a unit. They should
therefore deserve the status of ‘words’. To take another example, ‘a
superficial person’ (idiomatic) seems more like a word than ‘two-headed
snake’ (compositional) as the latter is easily decomposable into three concepts
(‘two’, ‘head’ and ‘snake’) which retain their literal meanings in the new
formation. Thus, idiomaticity also seems a useful criterion for helping to decide
the wordhood of a multisyllabic unit.

2.2.4 Quadrisyllabic units

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of quadrisyllabic units in Chinese:
historically based units (commonly referred to as Chinese idioms) and usage
based items (newly established, frequently used expressions). Chinese four-
character idioms are a part of cultural heritage, each of which is normally
associated with a particular historical tale or is adapted from a well-known
classical work. They form a closed system and their number is unlikely to
increase. The usage-based quadrisyllabic units, on the other hand, are being
created daily, fixed in the mental lexicon as a result of repeated usage by native
speakers. Among the 10,000+ claimed listed cheng2yu3 ‘established
language’ in He (2004), fewer than 300 entries (3 percent) are exactly three
syllables or more than four syllables long. That is, around 97 percent of the
‘established phrases’ in Chinese may be quadrisyllabic units.
Most quadrisyllabic units listed in a phrase dictionary like He (2004) are either
historical idioms (e.g. san1gu4mao2lu2 ‘Warlord Liu Bei visiting
Zhuge Liang three times to get his help in managing the country’) or other
commonly used four-character phrases that have been fixed for some time (e.g.
 kong1zhong1fei1ren2 ‘a trapeze gymnast or a person who frequently
flies’). New quadrisyllabic units are being created every day and disseminated
through the media and social networks. ‘Collocation’ is a key factor in creating
new quadrisyllabic units in Chinese, which involves putting together two
disyllabic items to form a new expression, such as wei2chi2yuan2jia4
‘maintain original-price’, po4chuang1xing2qie4 ‘break-window-
conduct-theft’ and so on. (See Shei and Pain 2000 for a general discussion on
collocation and Shei 2005 for a comparison between English and Chinese
collocations.)
As can be imagined, with four syllables participating in the newly formed
structure, the configuration of the components can be quite versatile. Many of the
quadrisyllabic units are miniature sentences themselves, having a subject noun
phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP) functioning as the predicate. Figure 2.5 shows
such a case where a quadrisyllabic unit has the standard structure of a sentence
complete with an NP (subject) and a VP (predicate). Here
tie3shu4kai1hua1 ‘iron-tree-open-flower’ literally means ‘the sago cycad blooms’
and is normally used to refer to an unusual event, as the sago cycad is a plant
which does not flower easily.
Although expressions like seem ‘self-contained’ as a sentence-like
structure, they do not always stand alone as isolated expressions in discourse.
Instead, they are often embedded in a larger structure, supporting a higher order
expression. For example, in Example 4 clearly acts as a predicate for
the entire sentence.

The phrase (or miniature sentence) in Example 4 is used to describe

the footballer Evra’s performance in the 2013 Premier League, when he scored the
fifth goal in the Top 5 Goals competition. The Chinese commentator probably
used this phrase to show how rare and brilliant this goal was in comparison with
Evra’s existing record (only 2 goals from when he joined Manchester United in
2005 up to 2012). The text in Example 4 shows how a sentence-like quadrisyllabic
unit can be embedded in a larger sentence and serve as a predicate.

Figure 2.5 The syntactic structure of a four-character idiom

If we take the expression in Figure 2.5 as a sentence-like structure, since it

comes with an NP and a VP, then a quadrisyllabic unit in Chinese may be a good
frame to observe possible Chinese syntactic structures that are stripped to the
very essence. In a four-character idiom, for example, the VP portion is often
replaceable by an AP (adjective or adverbial phrase), like that in Figure 2.6.
The quadrisyllabic unit in Figure 2.6 does not contain a verb of any kind.
Instead, it includes a disyllabic unit consisting of adjectives at the predicate slot,
describing the state of the subject NP. This phrase is used to describe the anxious
feelings of a group of people facing some kind of crisis. It can stand alone as an
independent expression, or, like in Example 4, it can be incorporated
in a larger expression.
Figure 2.6 The syntactic structure of a quadrisyllabic unit with VP replaced by
AP

In Example 5, serves as a predicate, even though it can also function as

an independent expression, having both a subject and a predicate phrase, as
Figure 2.6 shows.
 So far we have seen how Chinese sentence-like structures work out in the
quadrisyllabic framework. We have also seen how a four-character idiom can
function as a predicate for a sentence. In fact, if we look into the constituent
structure of some quadrisyllabic units, we can find an even smaller sentence-like
structure (often consisting of two morphemes) embedded in the quadrisyllabic
unit. Figure 2.7 shows such a structure.
The quadrisyllabic unit in Figure 2.7, , means ‘the road is especially
narrow for people who don’t like each other’ (i.e. It is difficult to avoid your
adversary). If the quadrisyllabic unit is a sentence (S), then is the subject NP
which means ‘foes’. The other structure, ‘road narrow’, on the other hand,
is a predicate to the subject, which is a miniature sentence itself, having the
meaning of ‘the road is narrow’. However, as will be pointed out later, in Chapter
3, another way to analyze this is to treat the sentence-initial NP as the ‘topic’ of
the sentence. In contrast to the English Subject-Predicate structure, which is
syntactically oriented, the Chinese Topic-Comment structure is more
conceptually oriented. An example similar to is
luo4yang2zhi3gui4 ‘Luoyang-paper-expensive’, which literally means ‘In
Luoyang, paper is expensive’. Here, (the city), is not the subject of the
quadrisyllabic unit in a syntactic sense but ‘paper’ is, since the predicate
‘expensive’ is used to describe it. , however, occupies the thematic position
and is said to be the topic of the sentence. The miniature sentence structure,
‘paper is expensive’, is offered as a comment on the topic. This is a special feature
of the Chinese sentence. Thus, another structural property of the Chinese
language is demonstrated by the four-character idiom.
Figure 2.7 A sentence-like structure embedded in a quadrisyllabic unit

Yet another kind of structure the quadrisyllabic unit illustrates is the juxta-
position of two sentence-like units without any conjunctive elements. Figure 2.8
shows such a structure.
The quadrisyllabic unit illustrated in Figure 2.8 does not consist of two existing
disyllabic units, as neither ‘wind blows’ nor ‘grass moves’ is an
established lexical item (i.e. a habitually used unit with distinct meaning). They
both consist of a subject noun and a verb predicate, however, and can both be
said to be mini sentences. Here we witness another flexible syntactic
arrangement of Chinese expressions – two sentences can often be juxtaposed
without any intervening conjunctive devices. This happens not only within a
quadrisyllabic unit, but it is also a regular feature in Chinese texts.
Figure 2.8 A quadrisyllabic unit consisting of two coordinate sentences

Not all quadrisyllabic units exhibit sentence-like qualities (that is, having a
subject-predicate structure). The unit , for example, consists of two
noun phrases, hu3tou2 ‘tiger-head’ and she2wei3 ‘snake-tail’. Together
the unit means ‘having a fine start but a poor finish’. Despite the lack of a verb,
the entire quadrisyllabic unit of , however, can still function as a
predicate, as Example 6 shows.
In Example 6 we have a Topic-Comment structure where ‘against
corruption’ is the topic, and the comment is an imperative sentence warning
against a disappointing end when fighting against corruption.
Just as there are quadrisyllabic units made from two noun phrases, there are
Chinese idioms consisting of two verb phrases, such as ‘reap what you
sow’, where each of the two verb phrases consists of a verb and its noun object.
As could be expected, a quadrisyllabic unit consisting of two verb phrases is best
used as a predicate in a sentence.

In Example 7, the verb phrase ‘have harvest’ is the main predicate to the
subject ‘Aunt Fang’. The quadrisyllabic unit is also a verbal
predicate to the subject NP but it sounds like an inserted sequence in this case. It
is redundant in meaning but offers extra vivacity and metaphorical interest, a
function often performed by Chinese four-character idioms.
Still another kind of phrase structure illustrated by the quadrisyllabic unit is a
VP consisting of a prepositional phrase, a verb and a noun, such as
wu4li3kan4hua1 ‘fog-in-see-flower (blurred vision)’. The structure of this phrase
illustrates another aspect of the Chinese language which is different from English
– the prepositional phrase ‘in the fog’ consists of a noun ( ‘fog’) followed
by a preposition ( ‘in’). The word order within this prepositional phrase is thus
the reverse of English, where the preposition comes first and is followed by a
noun. In Chinese, some prepositions prefer to come before the noun, while others
habitually follow the noun.
Zhao’s (2001) Dictionary of Chinese Idioms contains 4,639 entries, among
which 4,214 (91 percent) are four-character units. The other 9 percent consist of
multisyllabic units of various lengths (i.e. trisyllabic units and units of between 5
and 14 characters). In the final part of this section, we visit some units of
expression which are at least five characters in length.

2.2.5 Five-or-more-syllabic units

As we cross over the threshold of the quadrisyllabic unit and venture into fixed
expressions over five characters long, we find fewer and fewer examples. The
more syllables a unit consists of, the more likely it is an aphorism or a proverb.
Due to their rare appearances, it is relatively difficult to determine whether a
multisyllabic unit is an established idiom/proverb or a one-off ‘poetic creation’ of
a language user. Shei (2008) introduces a good way of identifying fixed
expressions through the use of web search engines to which interested readers
can refer. Table 2.4 provides some examples of multisyllabic units ranging from 5
to 10 characters long.
Some of the examples of multisyllabic units in Table 2.4 are in the form of
couplets, which is a common feature in Chinese language and literature. These
are created under various meter and rhyme schemes and offer poetic reading as
well as compact and cleverly encoded meaning. Some couplets are written in big
characters on red paper and hung on the doors of homes and workplaces for good
luck. Below is a sample of a couplet which is often written on paper scrolls to be
pasted on door frames during the Chinese spring festival.
Table 2.4 Examples of multisyllabic units

Multi-character idiom Component analysis Overall meaning

ren2 ‘people’ ‘Even though one is

ren2qiong2zhi4bu4qiong2 qiong2 ‘poor’ poor, one should still
zhi4 ‘aspiration’ have ambition.’
bu4 ‘not’

sha1 ‘kill’ ‘Killing a chicken with

sha1ji1yan1yong4niu2dao1 ji1 ‘chicken’ an ox-cleaver’ (The task
yan1 ‘herein’ is too trivial to handle
with such inordinate
yong4 ‘use’
fuss.)
niu2 ‘cattle’
dao1 ‘knife’

qing2ren2 ‘lover’ ‘Any girl can look like a

qing2ren2yan3li3chu1xi1shi1 yan3 ‘eye’ Xi Shi in her lover’s
li3 ‘interior’ eyes.’ (Beauty is in the
eyes of the beholder.)
chu1 ‘produce’
xi1shi1 ‘Xi Shi (a
beautiful woman in
 Chinese history)’

bao4 ‘leopard’ ‘When a leopard dies, it

bao4si3liu2pi2, si3 ‘die’ leaves its skin; when a
ren2si3liu2ming2 person dies, they leave
liu2 ‘remain’
their reputation.’
pi2 ‘skin’
ren2 ‘person’
ming2 ‘name’

zuo4 ‘do’ ‘Being a monk one day,

zuo4yi4tian1he2shang4, yi4tian1 ‘one day’ strike the bell one day.’
zhuang4yi4tian1zhong1 (Do your duty as long as
he2shang4 ‘monk’
zhuang4 ‘strike’ you remain in the post.)
zhong1 ‘bell’

2.3 FUNCTIONAL ITEMS

In this section, we examine a range of functional items in the Chinese language.
Functional items normally refer to linguistic devices which perform syntactic or
discourse functions rather than represent content meanings on their own. Most
items discussed in this section are monosyllabic morphemes which generally do
not represent meanings on their own. There are also disyllabic items, some of
which may be more qualified as ‘words’ (e.g. ‘if’).
Grammatical categories such as articles, pronouns, prepositions, and
conjunctions are normally considered functional words in English. Most of the
Chinese functional items carry out the same grammatical functions as their
English counterparts. Some of them, however, are either particular to Chinese
(such as ‘classifiers’ and the sentence-final particles) or function in rather
different ways from their equivalents in other languages. Functional words are
also called ‘closed classes’ sometimes, as their numbers are unlikely to increase.
The linguistic devices discussed in this section include:

• Pronouns
• Classifiers
• Number words
• Modal auxiliaries
• Prepositions
• Conjunctions
• Adverbial elements
• Verb accessories

Although adverbs are normally considered ‘open classes’ (that is, new items can
be created and added to the lexicon), in Chinese, however, there is a fixed set of
adverbial elements (e.g. ) which seem very ‘functional’ in
nature (i.e. bearing some influence on sentence formation and interpretation) and
so are included in the discussion. The ‘verb accessories’, on the other hand, refer
to monosyllabic items such as (used to mark verb aspects), (as
the passive marker) and (as the object marker). Sentence-final particles (SFP)
is a large category of functional items in Chinese and will be discussed separately
in Chapter 5.

2.3.1 Pronouns
Just like English, the Chinese language has a full set of pronouns to refer to the
first person, second person and third person. Table 2.5 lists the entire range of
pronouns in Chinese, offering a comparison between Chinese and English
pronouns in terms of number, case, gender and so on. Note that, in speech, all
variants of the Chinese third person pronouns of the same number (i.e. all
varieties of ta1 for singular and all varieties of ta1men5 for plural respectively)
sound exactly the same. But in writing, different characters are used based on
whether the third person referred to is human (male or female), an object, animal
or spiritual being.
Two items are worth noting from Table 2.5: the possessive marker de5 and
the plural marker men5. The Chinese plural marker is fairly restricted in its
applicability. It is nothing like the English plural marker -s which can be added to
virtually all countable nouns (dog → dogs). The Chinese plural marker can
only be attached to certain types of countable nouns, notably nouns with the
[+animate] feature and especially nouns with a [+human] attribute. This is not to
say that objects like tables or trees cannot be referred to in a multiple sense. It
simply means plurality is not an aspect to be signposted every time a countable
noun is used. Thus wo3 mai3 le5 hua1 ‘I bought flower(s)’ could mean
one or more flowers. If it is important to mention the number of flowers, then a
quantity word will be used, e.g. ‘I bought 10 flowers’. Since
‘flower’ is not animate or human, ‘flowers’ is not an acceptable term
except in poetic contexts where the intention is to personify the flowers.

Table 2.5 English and Chinese pronouns

Note: The animal ( ) and spiritual ( ) representations are widely adopted in
Taiwan but not in China
 Another functional item in Table 2.5, de5, has two main usages: to mark the
possessive case (annotated as PD in this book) or to mark a structure as an
adjectival unit (annotated as AD in this book). When follows a noun, it may
mark the entire unit as a possessive case. Example 9 demonstrates this operation.

The function of in Example 9 is exactly like the possessive marker (’) in

English (e.g. John’s wife). However, has another function in Chinese which is
to turn a lexical unit or a structure into a descriptor. This kind of structure is
shown in Example 10:

In Example 10a, follows an adjective ‘easy’ to clearly mark the entire

unit ( ) as an adjective. In Example 10b, on the other hand, follows a
sentence-like structure ( ‘drizzle is falling’) again to mark the structure
as performing a descriptive function. In English, a relative clause always follows
the noun it describes (e.g. a person who is afraid of taking risks). In Chinese,
however, all noun descriptors, including the relative clause, have to be put ahead
of the noun, with a mediating clearly marking the structure as a pre-modifier
of the noun (e.g. ‘afraid-of-taking-risk de5 person’). The
functional morpheme itself has no meaning other than pointing out the
relationship between the descriptor and the described. The different positions of
relative clauses between English and Chinese in relation to the noun they modify
are shown graphically in Figure 2.9.

Figure 2.9 The different positions of relative clauses in English and Chinese

As Figure 2.9 shows, English uses the relative pronoun who to wrap up the
relative clause and post-modify the noun. Chinese, on the other hand, uses to
bundle up all the pre-modifiers and clearly indicate the relationship between the
noun and its modifiers.

2.3.2 Classifiers
In English, counting or referring to objects is fairly straightforward; for example,
one man, two fish, three lions and so on. In Chinese, a device called a ‘classifier’,
normally in the form of a single morpheme, has to be used when referring to a
noun. This monosyllabic item comes between the number word etc. and the noun
to indicate the speaker’s conceptualization of the category to which the noun
belongs. This is like saying one UNIT (of) man, two UNITS (of) fish, three UNITS
(of) lions in English, except that, in Chinese, the word UNIT is replaced by a
different classifier in each case, based on the assumed category membership of
the noun, and there is no other element (like of in English) intervening between
the classifier and the noun. Also, there is no plural marker like the English -s to
be added to the classifier or the noun in Chinese.

Table 2.6 Comparison of an English and a Chinese noun phrase

Note: The character also means ‘only’; the traditional is the unambiguous
and recommended usage

The first classifier to appear in Table 2.6 is , which introduces the noun man
in this instance. Apart from signaling the coming of human-related nouns, is
also the most general classifier in Chinese and can be used to introduce many
kinds of nouns. For example, ‘a family’, ‘a place’,
‘a story’ are all common usages. The classifier is also a relatively safe
option to choose when not knowing which classifier to use. Although an
incompatible classifier may cause disruption in communication, at least it fills in
a slot and helps avoid total incomprehension; such as when a noun immediately
and inappropriately follows a numerical item (e.g. rather than
‘a present’).
 The second classifier appearing in Table 2.6 is , which is normally associated
with long and narrow objects, e.g. ‘a river’. Other members of this
category include ‘road’, ‘snake’, ‘worm’ and so on. The third classifier in
Table 2.6, , on the other hand, is most frequently associated with animals,
e.g. ‘a monkey’, ‘two tigers’ and so on.
There may be as many as 100 commonly used Chinese classifiers. Some have
meanings on their own and can be (part of) a lexical unit. Their usage as
classifiers reflects their inherent meaning. Others, however, seem to be initially
assigned arbitrarily to a category. Also, a given classifier may be able to
introduce more than one category of entity and, vice versa, the same category of
nouns may be associated with more than one classifier. Two further examples of
classifiers are shown in Example 11.

In Example 11a, the classifier originally meant ‘head’. When used as a

classifier, it collocates with large animals such as lions, elephants and so on. The
meaning of the classifier and the meaning of the category it introduces are
somehow related. In Example 11b, on the other hand, does not have meaning
when standing alone, and its allocation to the ‘plant’ category is probably
arbitrary.
Before ending this section, we should note a mass classifier, , which
normally indicates the ensuing noun to be plural or of a larger mass. Examples of
usage can be seen in Example 12.
As shown in Example 12, the item collocates with the demonstratives ,
and the number ‘one’ to become ‘these’, ‘those’ and ‘some’.
These quantifying units can also be used to lead mass nouns (e.g. ‘some
water’).

2.3.3 Numbers, ordinals and sequences

Like other languages, numbers in Chinese can be written either in the standard
Hindu-Arabic form or in Chinese characters. In either case, they are of course
pronounced in the same Chinese syllable-based style. Each number from 0 to 10
is represented by one syllable/character as below:
From 11 onward, it is a simple matter of adding 10 to 90 onto 1 to 9, much like the
English way of saying 21 to 29:

The number 100 is represented as ‘one hundred’ in Chinese. From 101 to 109
a morpheme representing ‘zero’ is explicitly pronounced:

From 110 to 999, the numbers are again represented in regular cyclic patterns.
Some examples are given below:
The number 1,000 is represented in Chinese as ‘one thousand’. Anything
below the thousand is pronounced in the same way as described above. For
example, 1,105 is represented in Chinese characters as and
pronounced as yi4 qian1 yi4 bai3 ling2 wu3.
It may be tempting for a westerner to represent 10,500 as * ‘ten-
thousand-zero-five-hundred’. However, there exists an important difference
between the Chinese number system and the one we are familiar with in English.
This happens when the number to be said amounts to ten thousand (10,000) and
over. In Chinese, ten thousand is seen as a separation point, a new unit given a
new name ( wan4 ‘ten thousand’) rather than being treated as ‘ten units of one
thousand’. Thus, while English bundles up large numbers in three digits
(thousand, million), Chinese does it in four digits, so 1,0000 has a name ( ) and
1,0000,0000 has a new name ( yi4). In between these separation points, numbers
are called 10 , 100 , 1000 and so on. It is therefore slightly difficult for a
Chinese person to conceptualize large numbers in spoken English, and vice versa.
For example, when someone says the number 100,000 (100 thousand) in English,
the Chinese person probably has to mentally translate it to 10,0000 (10 ) in
order to understand its magnitude.
Thus, the Chinese numbers from 10,000 onwards are represented in the
following ways:

As for Chinese ordinals, it is quite straightforward once you are familiar with the
cardinal numbers. Add the syllable di4 in front of any number and the
combination becomes an ordinal. For example, ‘first’, ‘second’ and so
on. Normally, as in counting, when using the ordinal set a suitable classifier is
also used before the noun. For example, ‘the third eye’,
‘second world war’ and so on. However, in some cases,
especially with proper nouns, the classifier is disposed of and the ordinal precedes
the noun directly; such as ‘The Fourth Secondary School’,
‘The Sixth People’s Hospital’ and so on.
Another morpheme often used to indicate order is hao4 ‘No.’ which
functions like but comes after the number, as in ‘No. 3’. When is
used, is normally omitted but it can also be present; for example, ‘No.
6’. For easy distinction, we can call an ordinal prefix and an ordinal suffix
in Chinese.
In Chinese, the seven days of the week and the 12 months of the year are each
expressed as a numbered sequence, unlike in English where distinct names are
given to each day or month. The names for the seven days of the week in both
English and Chinese are contrasted below.

The disyllabic unit leading the name of the day (i.e. ‘week’) can be
conceptualized as a ‘prefix’ attached to numbers 1 to 6 and ‘sun’. Apart from
, two other items can serve the same purpose (i.e. as the prefix to name the
day of the week). These are li3bai4 ‘ceremony-worship’ and zhou1
‘circuit’. Thus, to refer to Wednesday in Chinese, one can use (standard),
(colloquial), or (formal). Similarly, when we wish to say ‘three
weeks’, we can say , or (no classifier for this option),
which all mean the same thing.
In contrast to days of a week, the month names in Chinese are based on a
suffix yue4 ‘moon’ rather than a prefix. The rest is easy: just add a number
before the suffix to form the name of a month. Thus, ‘six month’ means the
sixth month of a year, i.e. June. Note this is completely different from ‘six
UNIT month’, which means ‘six months’.
For a native speaker of Chinese, the first semantic property that springs to
mind when the name of a month is mentioned (e.g. ‘May’) is probably its
numerical status among the 12 months of the year (the same may be true with
other languages using the same system, such as Japanese). This is different from a
language like English, where individual names such as August are more likely to
trigger encyclopedic knowledge about the month such as weather, activities and
so on.

2.3.4 Modal auxiliary verbs

Modal auxiliaries mark the properties of a verb in terms of possibility, obligation,
ability and so on. This category of words includes can, may, will, must and so on
in English. There are corresponding items in Chinese, some of which are shown
in Example 13.
The phrases in Example 13 include a basic expression ‘I speak Chinese’ in
Example 13a followed by five other expressions each incorporating a different
modal auxiliary. Each example also includes a number which is the number of
Google hits for the expression (as a phrase) at the time of writing. The figures
show, for example, that Example 13b may be the most frequently used expression
among them and that Example 13f is the least popular.
Among the examples there, the item in Example 13b can express the
‘permission’ meaning of may or the ‘ability’ meaning of can in English. Therefore
the expression in Example 13b is ambiguous – the word can mean either
permission or ability. Context can disambiguate an expression such as this, as
Example 14 shows.

From the context of the sentence, the expression in Example 14a

can be understood to mean ‘allowed to speak Chinese’ (permission) in an
institution-controlled setting; while in Example 15b it refers to the existence of
persons ‘able to speak Chinese’ (ability) for desirable functions.
The same ambiguous situation applies to other modal auxiliaries in Example
13. For example, can impose either an ‘obligation’ meaning to the main
verb, or introduce a ‘possibility’ meaning.
Again, co-text can help disambiguate the ambiguous auxiliaries. In Example 15a,
clearly expresses an ‘obligation’ attitude due to the first-person plural
subject (to enforce group identity) and the nature of the predication (to enforce a
routine). In Example 15b, both the ‘possibility’ and the ‘obligation’ meanings of
are compatible with the co-text. The ‘possibility’ meaning applies if
Example 15b is asked as a genuine question (i.e. requesting confirmation). The
‘obligation’ meaning applies if it is a rhetorical question (i.e. a challenge).
Chinese is a non-inflectional, discourse-oriented language. Many grammatical
elements obligatory to a language like English can often be omitted in Chinese. A
sentence-like structure in Chinese, for example, can often omit a subject. A
complex sentence, on the other hand, can be without a subordinate conjunction.
This can be illustrated by a short sentence incorporating the modal auxiliary
The Chinese expression in Example 16 can be literally translated as ‘Can common
cold breastfeed?’ which does not make much sense in English. In Chinese,
however, an anonymous subject (a breastfeeding mother) is implied, as well as a
subordinate conjunction like when (as in when a mother gets cold). The modal
auxiliary plays a pivotal role here for ‘cold’ to be understood as a condition
of ‘breastfeeding’ with the functionality of its ‘permission’ meaning.
Unlike English modal auxiliaries, Chinese modals can accept adverbial
modifiers. In English, it is unacceptable to say *very can or *extremely must. In
Chinese, it is perfectly alright to add intensifiers in front of a modal auxiliary.
Some examples follow:
All the examples in Example 17 incorporate an adverb a typical intensifier in
Chinese, attached to modal auxiliaries to intensify the degree of ability,
possibility, obligation and so on.

2.3.5 Prepositions
A potential preposition (e.g. ‘on’), when assumed to function as a preposition in a
given situation, normally takes a noun phrase as its complement to form a
prepositional phrase (e.g. on the beach), which then acts as a modifier to another
word (sunset on the beach) or structure (When you take your dogs on the beach
…). For both English and Chinese, we can only tell if a word is functioning as a
preposition by the role it plays in a particular expression. For example, the word
on is not a preposition in the sentence Carry on with your work, as it does not
take any noun to form a prepositional phrase (but with is a preposition as it forms
a prepositional phrase with your work to modify carry on). On is an adverb in
Carry on with your work instead of a preposition. Therefore, whether a word is a
preposition or an adverb in English depends on where you find it in a sentence or
phrase.
In Chinese, an item which can serve as a preposition in an expression often can
also take on other roles in different contexts, not only as an adverb as in English,
but also as a verb or other categories. For example, the morpheme dui4 is a
preposition meaning ‘toward’ in ‘to-me-advantageous’ but is a verb
meaning ‘to match’ in ‘match-prize (to check lottery results)’. This makes it
even harder to identify a Chinese preposition or prepositional phrase in running
text. Some examples are offered in Example 18 with the prepositional phrases
enclosed in brackets.
All of the examples in Example 18 show the bracketed prepositional phrase as a
kind of adverbial unit modifying the verb, which seems to be the main usage of
Chinese prepositions (as opposed to adjectival usage modifying the noun). For
example, the preposition ‘toward’ in Example 18a takes ‘national flag’ as its
object and together they modify the verb ‘salute’ as a prepositional phrase,
specifying the direction of the salutation. The morpheme ‘use’ in Example 18b
serves as a preposition, forming a prepositional phrase with the noun ‘naked eye’
to modify the verb ‘judge’ by specifying the method used for evaluating
diamonds. In Example 18c, ‘from’ takes ‘flying’ as object to form a
prepositional phrase to modify the verb ‘begin’ by specifying a starting point for
the journey.
As previously mentioned, a Chinese preposition can often serve more than one
grammatical function, depending on the context. The preposition in Example 18d,
for example, can also be used as a noun to mean ‘heel’ ( ‘high-heel-
shoe’) or as a verb to mean ‘follow’ ‘please-follow-me-come’). The
preposition in Example 18b is also used as a verb, such as ‘learn-
use-chopsticks’. The examples in Example 18 also show that prepositions can be
monosyllabic (Examples 18a–d) or disyllabic (Examples 18e–f).
Sometimes a preposition comes in two parts, surrounding a noun on both sides.
Three examples are offered in Example 19:
Like correlative conjunctions in English (either … or, not only … but also), the
Chinese prepositions shown in Example 19 consist of two parts enclosing the
noun and jointly carry out the mediating function of the preposition. For some
pairs of prepositions like this, the second element of the pair is redundant and can
be omitted at the speaker’s discretion. For example, the preposition in Example
19a consists of two parts: ‘rid of’ and ‘outside’. The use of
strengthens the sense of exclusion but it can also be omitted. Similarly, in
Example 19b, the second part of can be omitted without loss
in meaning or functionality.
The prepositional pair up’ in Example 19c represents a
different kind of construction from Example 19a or Example 19b. For one thing,
the second half of is often necessary to its meaning and its replacement
with another legitimate item changes the meaning of the preposition. For
example, means as opposed to which means ‘on’. In fact, there
is a whole range of location items which pair with to refer to all possible
directions. Some examples are given in Example 20:
Thus, we have as part of a pair coupling with or to mean ‘in (a
building)’ in Example 20a or ‘on (a TV program)’ in Example 20b. The morpheme
also pairs with to mean ‘beside (the road)’ as in Example 20c and with
to mean ‘under (the microscope)’ in Example 20d.
Many locational items shown in Example 20 can carry out the same
prepositional function without the introduction of . Some examples of this
category appear in Example 21 below:
The four bracketed prepositional phrases in Example 21 all come with a
locational morpheme to indicate the spatial relationship between two objects (the
first PP in Example 21b) or the location of an action (Example 21a, the second PP
in Example 21b, and Example 21c). For all four prepositional phrases in Example
21, the morpheme can be added redundantly to the beginning of the phrase,
like those in Example 20. The fact that is omitted from all the expressions in
Example 21 may be because they are all news headlines which emphasize
succinctness. In spoken versions, would have been added to all prepositional
phrases in Example 21.
We have seen how can be omitted from a prepositional phrase containing a
more specific locational item. Conversely, can also be used as a preposition on
its own without other locational support. In this case, its meaning is roughly the
same as at in English. The two examples in Example 22 illustrate this usage.

Like the English preposition at, can be used to refer to a particular location
(New York as in Example 22a) or general places (schools as in Example 22b). Also
like at, can be used to indicate a particular time, as the two expressions in
Example 23 show:
In Example 23a, takes a specific date as the object to form a prepositional
phrase, and in Example 23b the object is a period of time. In both cases, helps
to signpost a particular point or period in time when something happens – babies
being born in Example 23a or theft being carried out in Example 23b.
In the beginning of this section, we mentioned the Chinese preposition being
able to act as a verb or other parts of speech. This is also true for the morpheme
. Apart from being a preposition as already mentioned, can also be a verb-
like morpheme, or an aspect marker showing the current state of an action. When
acts like a verb, it can constitute the sole predicate without any further
support. This is shown in Example 24:
Example 24a is the Chinese version of Descartes’ famous Latin philosophical
statement Cogito ergo sum (or ‘I think, therefore I am’). The 5 Chinese characters
in Example 24a correspond exactly to the English translation word-by-word
(illustrating again that English and Chinese share the same basic word order). In
other words, the last character, , corresponds to the meaning and function of
am in the English translation. A more accurate English translation for in this
context would be exist, a stronger predicate than am. In Example 24b, is the
sole predicate for the conditional clause ‘when parents are still alive’, again
positing an existential sense. Finally, in Example 24c, is used in the familiar
A-not-A construction to pose a question; in this case, asking if someone is within
hearing distance.
Apart from being a preposition and a main verb, can also take on the role
of an aspect marker.
Both sentences in Example 25 contain a acting as the aspect marker whose
function is to show the state of the verb as continuing.

2.3.6 Conjunctions
As in English, two kinds of conjunctions can be identified in Chinese:
coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Primary coordinating conjunctions
in English are and, but and or, which connect two words or expressions with the
second part being an addition, contrast or alternative to the first portion.
Subordinating conjunctions are words like because, when, if, although and so on,
which explain logical relations between two statements.
And is one of the most frequently used words in English, probably next only to
the words the and of. And is a versatile conjunction as it provides connection
between words, phrases and entire sentences. In Chinese, there is no single
conjunction to match and in its broad functionality. Instead, there are several
different conjunctions in Chinese sharing the functions solely performed by and
in English. We may look at a set of examples showing how and works in English.

Example 26
a [Thomas] and [friends]
b Someone [hit my car today] and [drove off]!
c [Give somebody an inch] and [they’ll take a mile].
Example 26 shows how the word and connects two words (Example 26a), two
verb phrases (Example 26b) and two sentences (Example 26c) respectively. This is
how the conjunction and typically works in English. Now if we translate the
sentences in Example 26 into Chinese, and will have to be replaced by a different
morpheme, word, or machinery in each case depending on what level of
linguistic structures it connects, as examples in Example 27 show.

The morpheme in Example 27a is probably the most similar Chinese

conjunction to and in English. However, tends to work more on the individual
word level and rarely connects larger structures. Thus, the and which connects
two verb phrases in Example 26b is replaced by a temporal conjunction, , in
Example 27b, which is appropriate as the two bits of information happen to be
sequential in time. Moreover, the and in Example 26c which connects two
sentences is replaced by a punctuation mark in Example 27c. This is the ‘null
conjunction’ situation prevalent in Chinese, where a conjunction of some sort can
be inferred from two juxtaposed sentences if the logical relation between them
and the context are clear (recall a similar type of structure discussed in section
2.2.4 – the VPVP four-character idiom). There are other copulative conjunctions
in Chinese whose functions are either similar or complementary to . These
include ‘and’, ‘with’, ‘as well as’, ‘moreover’ and so on.
While there is no Chinese word which can be taken as an exact match for and,
there is indeed a word which translates but quite well as a conjunction. This is
‘but’ (the second syllable can be omitted to become without a change of
meaning or syntactic functionality). Again, we can see some examples in English
which use but as a conjunction.

Example 28
a [Stylish] but [illegal] monkey found roaming Toronto IKEA
b Firefox [is already running] but [is not responding].
c [You can lead a horse to water], but [you can’t make it drink].

In Example 28, the English conjunction but connects two words (Example 28a),
two verb phrases (Example 28b) and two sentences (Example 28c) respectively.
The Chinese word , or its simplified form , can translate but competently
in all three settings, as shown in Example 29:
As can be seen, all instances of but in Example 28 can be fully translated by
in the corresponding Chinese sentences in Example 29. Other contrastive
conjunctions similar to include ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’,
‘even so’, although is by far the most frequently used and universally
applicable one.
The final type of coordinating conjunction to be discussed here is ‘alternative
conjunctions’, such as or in English. In Chinese, this function is normally carried
out by or . Some examples follow:
As the phrases in Example 30 show, makes connections between words,
while offers connections between sentences. However, it is also possible for
to connect between sentences and for to do so between words and
phrases.
In English, subordinating conjunctions are words like if, when, and because
which express conditional, chronological or causal relationships between two
statements. In Chinese, we find equivalent items to express the same logical
relations. However, unlike the single-word English conjunctions, Chinese
conjunctions for this kind of function often come in two parts; for example,
‘because … therefore’, ‘if … then’,
‘although … but’. The three sentences in Example 31 show how they work:
In Example 31a, the conjunctive pair connects between a cause
(‘unable to do anything’) and a result (‘do nothing’). In English, using the word
because would have been adequate. In fact, using because … so in English would
have been ungrammatical, which is a ‘mistake’ the Chinese learner of English
often makes. In English, we also see pairs like if … then and although … yet,
which would have been similar to the conjunction pairs shown in Examples 31b
and 31c. However, in Chinese the second element of the pair is more necessary if
not exactly compulsory.

2.3.7 Adverbial elements

In this section, we discuss some frequently used monosyllabic adverbs with
somewhat broader functionalities than common adverbs. First, we take a closer
look at whose function and usage are very similar to the English word very.
Example 32 illustrates its usage.

The monosyllabic adverb intensifies the degree of happiness in Example 32a

by modifying the adjective ‘happy’. The AP ‘very happy’ then serves as the
predicate for the subject ‘I’. In Example 32b, modifies an adverbial unit
‘perform’.
Unlike the adverb very in English, which only modifies adjectives or adverbs,
can also modify some categories of verbs, and even nouns at times! Some
examples where modifies verbs are shown in Example 33.
In Example 33a, modifies the static verb ‘like’, emphasizing the degree
of fondness. In Example 33b, again modifies a static verb ‘dislike’,
which is an antonym of . This usage of seems applicable to verbs
denoting mental states only; for example, ‘very-admire’, ‘very-
anger’, ‘very-care’, ‘very-despise’, ‘very-cherish’ and
so on. Structures like these are so prevalent in Chinese that some Chinese
speakers beginning to learn English would say things like very like, very hate and
so on.
In relatively rare cases, can be used to modify a noun. The construction [
N] then comes to be understood as an adjective phrase. In other words, with
the addition of the noun acquires an ‘adjectiveship’ of some sort. This is not
a very productive process. It usually takes a while for a new usage like this to
catch on among native speakers. Some examples of this type of construction are
shown in Example 34:
Each sentence in Example 34 demonstrates a [ N] construction which serves as
an adjective in the context given. For example, in Example 34a, is a kind of
food but when combined with the unit becomes an adjective phrase which
describes a person as cunning and slippery. In Example 34b, the word
acquires adjective status when combined with . The new unit, , is
used to show one’s loathing toward something or someone. Likewise, the noun
in Example 34c originally meant ‘Eight Trigrams’ but it can also mean
‘gossip’. When emphasized by the unit comes to mean a nosy
person or a gossipy situation. Example 34d shows an even more interesting
example, where the noun turns into an adjective, when sanctioned by
to describe a person as being fussy and irritating. (Note: is possibly a
euphemism for ji1ba1 ‘dick’ which can also couple with to mean
roughly the same thing.)
Monosyllabic adverbs similar to include ‘more’, ‘most’, ‘too’,
‘really’ and so on. In most cases, the item can be replaced by any one of them
to shift the quantity of the property being described toward the meaning of the
new adverb. For example, ‘very difficult’ can become ‘too difficult’,
‘more difficult’ or ‘the most difficult’ and so on. Some disyllabic
adverbs which can replace and vary the degree of emphasis are
‘unusually’, ‘comparatively’, ‘especially’, ‘rather’,
‘extremely’ and so on. Their functionalities are largely the same as differing
only in degree.
We turn now to some frequently used adverbial elements which can precede a
verb to provide more information about the action or situation. The first item we
look at is . When preceding a verb, can act as a logical connector, showing
the predicate marked by to be an obvious consequence of a previous
happening. Two examples of this kind of use of are shown in Example 35.

Example 35a says that ‘when one feels like singing, one should sing’. The
attachment of to the second verb gives it a sense of immediacy and legitimacy
– your desire to sing is reason enough for you to start singing. Although is
not a conjunction per se, it is a connector at the conceptual level, facilitating the
inference process between two propositions. Example 35b is another sentence
which uses for its logical connotation. That is, by using the search engine
Baidu a little, the user will become knowledgeable immediately.
 Another usage of is to keep its sense of immediacy without invoking the
causal relationship between two propositions. This kind of often pairs with
the particle to denote the immediacy of an action or a change of state.

In Example 36a, clearly signals the very short time (one day) between the
purchase of a computer screen and its being shattered. The supporting particle,
, on the other hand, indicates the change of state of the monitor from being
intact to being broken. The [ … ] construction like this often provides a sense
of contrast, from being intact to being broken in Example 36a, and from being
angry to being regretful in Example 36b.
A third usage of is to emphasize the ‘exactness’ of a proposition. Some
examples in this thread are listed in Example 37. The English translation of this
kind of is no longer ‘then’ but something like ‘just’ or ‘exactly’.
 in Example 37a helps authenticate the simile that life is like a journey. And, in
37b, it lends power to the somewhat paranoid hobby of ‘torturing the boyfriend’,
creating a sense of humor.
Another adverbial element, ‘only then’, seems to work in the same way as
but with somewhat different connotations. They are both capable of being
integrated into the [if … then] argumentation. While introduces a sense of
immediacy and fluency to the transition from the premise to the conclusion,
emphasizes the existence of some ‘false steps’ before arriving at the correct
solution. Two examples are provided in Example 38 to show how works.

First, Example 38a clearly shows two contrasting suppositions – one assuming
the commotion alluded to was an act of dancing, the other that it was actually a
fight. The role ‘only then’ plays in this text is to help bring out the contrast
between contesting suppositions, and to mark the final resolution as being
arrived at through some kind of misconception. In Example 38b, someone is
asking the question ‘How can we best fight against corruption?’ The use of
before the keyword ‘effective’ implies the existence of other futile steps
beforehand and the difficulty of arriving at a workable solution.
Another set of frequently used adverbial elements associated with verbs are
‘once more’, ‘again’ and ‘in addition’, which are used to mark the
repetitive nature of the verb or to help achieve an augmentative effect.

In Example 39a, points to the future and expresses a wish for the repetition of
an action. The next morpheme, , can also mean ‘again’ but it focuses more on
the effect of an already completed event; such as in 39b, where the use of
clearly identifies the woman’s pregnancy as being a (probably undesirable)
repeated event. The item ‘in addition’ in 39c also marks the augmentative
nature of an event, although can also mean ‘still, yet’ in other contexts.

2.3.8 Verb accessories

Three categories of functional items associated with the use of verbs are
discussed in this section. The first category marks the aspects of the verb
specifying how the speaker wants the verb to be understood, i.e. whether it is an
ongoing event or a completed action and so on. The second category marks the
verb as being used in the passive voice; that is, the subject of the sentence is now
understood as the object of the verb. The third category is a unique morpheme in
Chinese, , which marks a noun phrase as the object of a verb.
Among the first category of verb accessory (aspect markers), ‘at’ has been
discussed in section 2.3.5, focusing on its capacity as a preposition. When acting
as an aspect marker, indicates the action denoted by the verb to be continuing
at the time of speaking, as the sentences in Example 25 showed. Another
‘duration marker’, as it is sometimes called, , also marks a verb as continuing
but it differs from in word order relative to the verb: always comes before
the verb; invariably comes after the verb. This contrast is shown in Example
40:

When marks a verb as continuing, it means the speaker finds a consecutive

movement at the time of speech. That is, the movement has been occurring for
some time and is still happening when it is mentioned (hence is also called a
progressive aspect marker, for example, in Xiao and McEnery 2004). Thus, the
speaker asking ‘Are you looking at me?’ in Example 40a implies that the listener
has been looking at the speaker for at least a very brief time before the latter
notices it. While emphasizes the impact of the action at the moment of
speaking, the other marker of continuation, , is more concerned with the
duration aspect of the verb. That is, it focuses on the continuing state of the
action, rather than emphasizing what the speaker finds at the time of speaking.
For that reason, often marks a ‘background state’ of things against which
something happens, as in Example 40b.
The second type of aspect marker is the marker of completion (referred to as a
marker for the perfective aspect by Xiao and McEnery 2004, in contrast to and
, which mark imperfective aspects). This includes the morpheme and .
The item marks the action represented by the verb as having been completed
at the time of speaking, as opposed to a continuing action. Two examples are
offered in Example 41:
The expression ‘we get married’ can be a statement or a proposal
without any marker. Once it is marked by , as in Example 41a, however, it
becomes a completed action (‘We have got married!’). In 41b, is a verb and
helps mark it as a process having been completed (i.e. the person has caught a
cold).
Another marker of completion is the experiential marker , which marks an
action or process as having been experienced by the party in question. The
experiential marker differs from the other perfective marker in that, while
emphasizes the impact of the completed action or process upon the present,
focuses more on the past dimension, emphasizing the significance of the past
experience itself or the memory of it. Some examples of the usage of follow:
The expression in Example 42a demonstrates a typical use of : to shift the
perspective of the discourse to a time in the past, here to invoke the memory of
the songs once sung together by the discourse participants. Understandably, this
usage will often be co-marked by some adverbial elements referring to the past.
This is the case with Example 42b where the adverbial phrase ‘those
years’ clearly points to the past, highlighting the games that used to be played by
the participants of the discourse when they were much younger. Apart from a
difference in focus (i.e. focuses on the present, while focuses on the past),
structurally, a verb marked by can be negated to show the lack of a certain
experience, while a verb marked by cannot be used to deny the completion of
an action. The contrast is shown in Example 43:

The expression in Example 43a shows that the person has not left someone or a
place. The same expression, with the experiential marker replaced by the
perfective marker , in Example 43b, however, is illegitimate. To indicate the
incomplete state of an act, the perfective marker cannot be used. Instead, some
other adverbial element, like , coupled with the negative element , are used
to mark the bare verb, as in Example 43c, to achieve the ‘incomplete action’
effect.
We now move on to the second category of verb accessory included in this
section, which involves the marking of a verb used in the passive voice. The
primary passive marker in Chinese is which, like all the markers discussed
above, can serve other grammatical functions, such as a verb or a noun. The
sentences in Example 44 show how the morpheme is used as a passive marker.
The passive structure in Chinese marked by is predominantly used to encode
adverse conditions, such as unfortunate happenings or undesirable outcomes.
This is true for Example 44a where a protesting resident was maliciously killed
by a demolition team. However, perhaps due to the influence of English, where
passive structures are not subject to semantic preferences, it is becoming more
acceptable for the Chinese passive to be used in neutral or even positive
situations. For example, in Example 44b, is used to mark a positive verb
‘praise’.
It can further be observed in the Example 44 sentences that is used in the
frame [ (NP) VP] where, like in English, the NP (the agent who does the
action) can be omitted if they are deemed unimportant or cannot be identified.
There are other passive markers in Chinese such as shou4 ‘endure’, zao1
‘undergo’, jing1 ‘experience’ etc., but these are much less common and are
more restricted in the linguistic environments where they can appear.
The third category of verb accessory to be discussed in this section is . Note
that some writers consider a preposition (e.g. Bai 2009). However, since its
function is fairly restricted and different from the normal functions of
prepositions, we treat it as an object marker here. As a direct object marker, is
used in a fixed frame of [ NP V] where NP is the object of the verb V. Like
other monosyllabic items explained in this chapter, can serve other
grammatical functions, such as verb (meaning ‘grasp’), noun (meaning ‘handle’)
or even classifier (to mark ‘a chair’, ‘a fire’ and so on). The sentences in Example
45 below demonstrate the use of as direct object marker.
In Chinese there is a large category of verb units consisting of a verb morpheme
followed by an adverbial element (called a ‘resultative complement’ in Yip and
Rimmington 2004) which denotes the result of the action, such as ‘eat-
empty’, ‘hit-open (unpack)’, ‘speak-complete (finish speaking)’,
‘blow-dry’, ‘see-wrong’, ‘listen-understand’, ‘laugh-dead (laugh
to death)’ and so on. This kind of structure seems to be a preferred candidate for
the object marker , as Examples 45a–b show, where ‘dress-good’ and
‘do-complete’ are verb units including resultant complements. The [ NP
V] structure is sometimes interchangeable with an ordinary V NP structure. If we
use X to represent everything else that goes before ba3 in a [ NP V]
construction, then both example sentences in Example 45 can be expressed by the
formula [X NP V]. In some cases, can be removed from the structure, in
which case the NP and the V involved have to change places; that is, for
sentences like Example 45a and Example 45b:

[X NP V] = [X V NP]

In other words, it is equally legitimate to say Example 46b, which has the same
semantic content as 45a, reproduced below as 46a. The same procedure can be
applied to Example 46c to produce a sentence of the same meaning in 46d.
Sometimes the verb in a [ NP V] may be followed by a longer adverbial
structure like that in Example 47a and Example 47c below. We will use the
symbol AP (for ‘Adverb Phrase’) to represent structures like ‘to-
Mainland’ in Example 47a and ‘back-home’ in Example 47c. Like Examples
45a and 45b, the ba3-sentences in Examples 47a and 47c can also be replaced by a
ba3-less structure, with a different formula:

[X NP V AP] = [X V NP AP]

In other words, when the VP in a ba3-structure contains an AP, only the V

changes place with the NP when transforming into a ba3-less sentence. The AP
stays behind and makes room for the NP which now stands between the V and
the AP. The results of the application of this rule to Examples 47a and 47c are
shown respectively in Examples 47b and 47d.
There is a subcategory of ba3-structure which cannot be transformed in the ways
described above. This is the ba3-structure where two noun phrases are involved
and one is the complement of the other, much like the two noun phrases in the
English sentence ‘Officials call the pilot a hero’ (where ‘the pilot’ is the first NP
and ‘a hero’ is the second NP, the second NP being the complement of the first
NP). The range of verbs usable in this type of structure is fairly restricted. The
most frequently used one is ‘take as’. Moreover, the ba3-structure is
obligatory for this kind of expression. There is no equivalent structure without
ba3 in this subcategory. An example of this type of ba3-sentence is illustrated in
Example 48a below.
Example 48a is the original sentence from a news headline, where a drunkard
mistook his wife, on her way to collect him from the street, as a sex worker. If we
attempt to transform the sentence in the way in which Example 47a is
transformed into 47b, we get the ungrammatical result of Example 48b. However,
if we add a copula verb between and “ ”, as in Example 48c, then the
sentence becomes grammatical again. The meaning of sentence Example 48c is
the same as 48a, although this kind of structure is relatively less used than the
ba3-structure.

2.4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have examined Chinese meaning-making units of various
lengths (in terms of the number of syllables). We noted that the concept of ‘word’
is difficult to define in Chinese. However, if we define it as a habitually used unit
of meaning that expresses a self-contained concept, then we are able to
meaningfully distinguish between the content units of various lengths. For
example, we noted that some monosyllabic items can function independently in a
sentence and may qualify as ‘words’. Others are best called morphemes, because
they are normally subsumed in some kind of multisyllabic unit in actual usage.
The best candidate for ‘prototypical word’ is the disyllabic unit, which is
frequently used in contemporary Chinese to express a self-contained concept. The
majority of items listed as words in Xiao et al. (2009), for example, are disyllabic
units. We also found that, for trisyllabic units, idiomaticity seems a good
indication of wordhood. As for quadrisyllabic units, or the four-character idioms,
they demonstrate a lot of syntactic properties and can be treated as ‘mini
sentences’ or phrases in Chinese.
We have also explored a wide range of functional items in Chinese, including
pronouns, classifiers, modal auxiliaries, conjunctions, intensifiers, aspect and
experiential markers and so on. Some of these are common grammatical
categories (such as pronouns, modal auxiliaries, and conjunctions) which also
exist in other languages. However, despite the similarities in function, the forms
these grammatical categories take in each language may be dramatically
different. For example, we noted the different ways of representing pronouns in
Chinese from English, and the different ways of saying the days of the week,
months of the year and so on. Some grammatical categories may represent
entirely new concepts for English native speakers, such as the noun classifier,
which is obligatory when referring to a noun. Some frequently used adverbial
morphemes, such as and , are also particular to Chinese, which we have
discussed in some detail. Knowledge of all these grammatical items is useful for
exploring Chinese sentences further.
CHAPTER 3
Chinese sentences

In this chapter, we study Chinese sentences in some detail. Where available,

comparisons are made between Chinese and English sentences in terms of type
and structure. Based on the syntactic properties of the Chinese language,
sentences are classified into simple sentences, subjectless sentences, ergative
sentences, existential sentences, emphatic sentences, coordinated sentences,
complex sentences and extended sentences.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
As previously noted in Chapter 2, and as will gradually transpire in this chapter,
‘sentence’ may not be an ideal term for conceptualizing the Chinese language.
However, it is a good starting point as a readily understood concept to readers
who are familiar with English. Many of the properties associated with the
concept of ‘sentence’ are useful in understanding how Chinese text works.
The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘sentence’ as

a set of words expressing a statement, a question or an order, usually

containing a subject and a verb.

In linguistics terms, the second part of the definition means a sentence usually
contains a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP), since the subject is normally
a noun, and both the noun and the verb often attract modifiers such as adjectives
and adverbs around them to form a larger unit – usually called a phrase. In this
chapter, we adhere to the principle that a typical sentence consists of an NP and a
VP. Depending on the requirements of the speaker, a subject NP may contain
some descriptive elements such as an adjective phrase (AP) to modify the head
noun (N). Depending on the type of verb used, the VP may contain obligatory
elements such as an object NP and optional elements such as an adverb phrase
(also abbreviated as AP). In this chapter, a syntactic marking convention is used
to explain the structure of Chinese sentences. The convention is explained below
using the English sentence The exceptionally cold weather in March damaged
business activity as an example.

Thus, some example sentences in this chapter will be structurally marked in the
above fashion, but the level of marking will vary for each sentence depending on
the point of explanation and the space available.
A sentence does not necessarily have only one NP and one corresponding VP
serving as its predicate. A sentence may have two or more subject NPs sharing a
predicate:

S [NP [The Lion] and NP [the Unicorn] VP [are symbols of the United
Kingdom]].

A sentence may also have two or more VPs; that is, a subject NP doing multiple
tasks or having multiple properties:

S [NP [We] ’ve VP [worked together], VP [argued together], VP [cried

 together] and VP [laughed together]].

A sentence can also have more than one NP which are predicated by a set of VPs:

S [NP [Tammy] and NP [her lover] VP [got married at Lakeland] and VP [had
four children]].

However, the above sentences must be distinguished from a compound unit

formed by two sentences, each having a distinct set of NP-VP configurations, like
so:

S [NP [China] VP [sneezes] ] and S [NP [the world] VP [catches a cold]].

In this chapter, we will follow the convention illustrated above with English and
explore various kinds of Chinese sentences. First, we sample some texts from
Chinese online newspapers with a view to understanding what a Chinese
sentence may involve and what may be the best way to approach it. Then we
move on to explore the possible range of Chinese sentences and consider both the
basic facts and the salient features associated with them.
All five sentences in Example 1 include a subject NP and a predicate consisting of
a VP or an AP. Note that the verb in Example 1a, ‘open-ball’, cannot be
analyzed as a VP consisting of a verb (‘open’) and a noun (‘ball’). For one thing,
the combined meaning ‘open ball’ does not make any sense, at least not in the
current context. On the sports field, on the other hand, the disyllabic unit
does have a special meaning, which is ‘to kick off (a ball game)’. Therefore, the
disyllabic unit should be analyzed as an intransitive verb taking no objects in the
sentence rather than as a V+N verb phrase itself. In other words, for sentence 1a,
the VP consists of a verb only, or VP → V. The verb phrase in 1b, on the other
hand, does consist of a verb (‘aim at’) followed by its object (‘Seoul’), that is, VP
→ V NP where V is a transitive verb.
Another kind of verb, a linking verb appears in both Examples 1c and 1d.
This verb acts like an equal sign (=) giving the subject NP a different identity to
show how the speaker would like the term to be conceptualized. For example, the
sentence in Example 1c asks the reader to understand ‘safety’ as ‘the best gift of
all’, thus strengthening its importance in our daily life. The sentence in 1d, on the
other hand, diminishes the importance of a beautiful face by theorizing that it is
no guarantee of a long-term marriage.
A further different kind of internal structure of a sentence is shown in
Examples 1e and 1f. There is no main verb in this kind of sentence, only an
adjective phrase (AP) serving the role of predicate; that is, S → NP AP. In 1e, the
predicative AP consists of an adverb (‘excessively’) and an adjective (‘sweet’). In
1f, the AP is made of an adjective in comparative form (‘higher than’) and the
noun being compared with (the SARS disease).
To summarize, Chinese shares the basic word order of SVO with English when
creating a standard sentence. In the case of Chinese, the predicate can sometimes
be an AP (or even an NP as we will later see) rather than a VP.
Before moving on to more complicated sentence structures, it is worth noting
the dramatic difference between Chinese and English in contriving more complex
NPs. Sentence Example 1b, for example, shows three disyllabic nouns ‘stacked
together’ to form a longer NP – ‘North Korea’, ‘ten-thousand units’ and
‘artillery’. In English, the order of the nouns inside the NP would have been
different and there would have been some grammatical items added; for example,
‘ten-thousand units of artillery in North Korea’. In Chinese, it is just a matter of
stacking more peripheral units on to the outside layers of an existing core (i.e. the
so-called head noun) usually to its front (i.e. the left side) disregarding which
type of modifier is in question. This is different from English, where word-level
modifiers are to the left of the head noun and phrasal and clausal modifiers are to
its right. For example, the structure of the NP the wartime cooperation between
the Soviet Union and the US can be analyzed as in Example 2 below, where the
head noun cooperation is surrounded by the adjective modifier wartime to the
left and the prepositional phrase between the Soviet Union and the US to the right.

Example 2

NP [the Art wartime N cooperation N PP [between the Soviet Union and the US] ]

If we were to translate the English phrase in Example 2 into Chinese, it would

become Example 3, where both the word-level and the phrasal modifiers are
stacked together to one side (i.e. the left) of the head noun.

Thus, it is important that in forming a complex Chinese NP, we need to stack all
the descriptors to the left side of the head noun, no matter whether they are
single-word modifiers or phrasal or even clausal modifiers. In the case of phrasal
or clausal modifiers, the functional item is necessary to mark the entire phrase
or clause as a descriptor of the noun (see Figure 2.9 in Chapter 2 and the related
explanations). This is what happens to the prepositional phrase (PP) in Example 3,
where is added to the end of the PP. The same procedure applies to the NP
‘marriage-guarantee-card’ in Example 1d, which, when translated
into English, would become a guarantee card for marriage, that is, the
prepositional phrase for marriage is moved to the right side of the head noun
card, leaving the word-level modifier ‘guarantee’ to the left side of the head
noun. In the Chinese version, as is a word-level modifier, the descriptive
marker is optional in this case.
Returning to the structural issue of Chinese sentences, we noted earlier that
Chinese and English both follow the basic SVO order in forming a sentence, but
this seems to be where the similarity ends. We have just observed the different
strategies between English and Chinese for building up longer noun phrases,
especially the Chinese method of stacking up noun modifiers to the front of the
noun. We also know by now that a Chinese sentence can be ‘verbless’, like
Examples 1e and 1f, where adjectives serve the predicative function without the
support of a copula verb. In general, the Chinese language is more tolerant about
the well-formedness of a sentence. That is, there is no rigorous definition as to
what a sentence must have in Chinese, even though we are following the English
convention to explore the concept of ‘sentence’ in Chinese. The sentence in
Example 4a below, for example, features two verb phrases in a sentence without
a conjunction linking them (which would have been the case in English). The
same is true with sentence 4b, where a succession of two VPs and an AP
constitute a long predicate. In Example 4c, there are as many as four VPs telling
the story of what happened to the subject NP.
The syntactic structure of Example 4b is very different indeed from a
conventional English sentence. A grammatical English sentence would have only
one VP headed by a finite verb (or the main verb). If there are two or more finite
verbs, they must be properly connected by conjunctions, as in I fought two lions
and won. In a Chinese sentence, as there is no such thing as inflection, all verbs
appear to be of equal status within a sentence, and a conjunction is not needed
(although you can use one if you want) to connect the verbs which are
supposedly in the same sentence. It is quite normal in Chinese, as shown in
Example 4, for a sentence-like unit to include an NP predicated by a succession of
verb and adjective phrases without the intervention of any conjunction.
We have seen how a Chinese sentence can include an NP which is predicated
by a succession of VPs, and possibly also by other types of predicates (like an AP).
Another significant fact about this kind of sentence is that the subject can ‘hop
about’ within the sentence and attach itself to almost any predicative phrase the
user wishes. Example 5a is an example where an NP is predicated by three VPs.
Example 5b is another news headline reporting on the same incident, where the
subject NP is placed before the second, rather than the first VP as in Example 5a.

It would have been equally legitimate for the NP of Example 5b to be moved to

the front of the first VP, just like that of 5a. Conversely, we can also take the NP
in Example 5a out of its canonical position and relocate it in front of either of the
other two VPs rather than the first one. The same is true with 4c, which contains
a series of four VPs. Apart from the first VP, the subject NP can also be placed in
front of any of the other three VPs, as illustrated in Example 6 below:

Although the position of can be moved to the front of VP2, VP3 or VP4, in
practice some kind of punctuation (e.g. a Chinese comma) may be needed to
separate the NP from the preceding VP(s) to facilitate reading.
We have been sampling isolated sentences from news headlines. Now, let us
consider a text which presumably contains more than one sentence to see how it
fits into the profile we have built for Chinese sentences so far. What follows is a
continuous text running as the first paragraph of a news report on the web:

Note that the text is divided by three commas into four sections and is terminated
by a Chinese-style period . The analysis offered in Example 7 below divides
the text into six portions based on structural boundaries. As we shall see after the
analysis, Chinese punctuation often does not correspond to structural
delineations, probably due to the flexible nature of Chinese syntax. The commas
and the period in the original text have been kept in Example 7 and highlighted
with brackets so we can see how the language user’s structural awareness
corresponds to the linguistic analysis.
A rough examination of Example 7 shows the text to consist of two sentences
based on the structural marking provided. The first sentence, 7a–e, is very long
and has four VPs. This is reminiscent of Example 6a which also consists of one
NP and four VPs. The second sentence, 7f, is a short one whose structure we will
explain later. At this point, we will note first, that the Chinese period given
by the original author does not seem to correspond well to a sentential boundary.
For one thing, 7f is obviously a separate sentence with its own subject NP. If the
period mark should be used to conclude a sentence, an extra period should have
been provided at the end of 7e, allowing 7f to begin as a fresh sentence. This is
not the case in the original text. Therefore, it might be fair to say that the Chinese
period mark does not offer much help in analyzing the syntactic structures of
Chinese, since it gives no clear information as to where a sentence begins and
where it ends.
What about the Chinese commas ? Again, from our structural analysis in
Example 7, commas do not seem to provide clear and consistent information for
identifying the boundaries between phrases or sentences. There are three commas
altogether in the original text, two of which appear at the ends of 7b and 7c
respectively. This seems reasonable as they each conclude a VP, so a comma may
be a good punctuation mark to separate a VP from a neighboring VP or from
another structure. However, this consistency is broken by the lack of a comma
toward the end of 7d, to separate it from the next VP, 7e. Overall, Chinese
punctuation marks are not reliable in defining what a sentence is in Chinese, be
they commas or periods.
A detailed look at each line in Example 7 shows that the phrase structures fall
largely in line with the range of structures discussed so far. For example, 7a is a
complex NP serving as the subject of the sentence starting from 7a and ending at
7e. The head noun of this NP is , the baseball player’s name. Conforming
to the pattern previously explained, several modifiers come before this head
noun, including the two nouns ‘baseball’ and ‘famous-player’ and a
verb unit ‘travel-US’ acting as an adjective (which can be understood as a
present participle in English, such as residing in the US).
Next, the four VPs appearing in 7b–e also fall within the pattern explained
before where a sentence can consist of an NP predicated by several VPs. A
noticeable digression from the previous model is the generally longer VPs in
comparison to the previous sentences. This is why we started to see commas
separating the longer VPs, which otherwise may cause reading difficulty due to
their sheer length. Note that the length of the VP is contributed to by a
prepositional phrase (PP) in 7c and 7d. The default position in English for a
prepositional phrase modifying a verb is to the right of the verb (e.g. sing along
in the car). The default position for such a prepositional phrase in Chinese is to
the left of the verb (e.g. ‘at-car-up-follow-AM-sing’).
Finally, the short concluding sentence in 7f mentioned earlier illustrates a
phenomenon we have not seen so far. This is the omission of the copula verb
when the predicate is a noun phrase (imagine is being removed from the sentence
His brother is a doctor, becoming His brother a doctor, which nonetheless is still
used as a sentence). The omission of is acceptable here, although it can also be
kept.
Another thing we notice from Example 7 is that there are very few functional
items in the text overall. In particular, there are no conjunctive devices between
the various VPs or the sentences. There are only two prepositions ( and ) and
one negative item ( ) in the entire text. This illustrates an important fact about
the Chinese language – that the understanding of Chinese discourse is often quite
intuitive and dependent on context, as there is relatively little guidance from the
grammatical department.
It would be wrong to assume that we have covered the most complicated
situation in analyzing the Chinese sentence. For example, although Example 7
includes a relatively long sentence consisting of four VPs, at least all of them
share the same subject NP. In those cases, it is easy to understand who did what
as the subject is always the same person even though there is more than one
action stretching over a range of structures. A more complicated situation would
involve a series of structures consisting only of VPs, but where the omitted NPs
do not refer to the same entity! This is the case in another newspaper text:

To facilitate understanding of the above text and help with its linguistic analysis,
the text is broken down into five sections in Example 8 below.
Example 8 looks different to Example 7 at a glance. However, if we get rid of the
AP (here Adverb Phrase) in 8a and the initial S and NP symbols in both 8d and
8e, it actually looks very similar to the first sentence of Example 7 which consists
of an initial NP, followed by several VPs. Unfortunately, the similarity on the
surface is deceptive in this case. This is because in Example 8, among the three
VPs in 8c–e, only the first in 8c predicates the subject NP in 8b. The ‘hidden
subject’ of 8d is, in fact, another entity embedded in the VP of 8c – a ‘Mr Wang’.
Likewise, the hidden subject of Example 8e is another NP (‘an African girl’) that
comes within the previous VP in Example 8d. The situation quickly gets
confusing for a novice Chinese language learner as there is no way of telling who
is doing what when confronted by a succession of VPs in a long sentence. All the
VPs could claim the same subject NP, as in Example 7 or all could have different
subject NPs, as is the case in Example 8. In appearance, both structures look
exactly the same. Again, syntax is at the mercy of semantics and pragmatics in
Chinese. A lot of aids are required from the meaning and the context to help
disambiguate the sentence. Unsuspecting language learners will not be able to
know that the empty NP slots in both 8d and 8e each represents a different entity
than the first NP of the sentence in 8b.
To summarize, we have seen so far that the Chinese language can be analyzed
using the English-based syntactic model, even though there are many radical
differences. For example, the Chinese complex NP is formed by stacking up
modifiers before the noun; whereas in English, word modifiers come before the
noun and phrasal and clausal modifiers come after it. In English, a series of VPs
predicating a subject NP must be properly coordinated by punctuation and
conjunctions. In Chinese, punctuation marks are more loosely used and the
interpretation of multiple VPs in a sentence is largely based on intuition rather
than grammatical rules. Moreover, an English sentence must have at least one
main verb in order to be seen as a proper sentence, but a Chinese sentence can be
verbless so long as it has a predicative AP (adjective/adverb phrase) or an NP
(noun phrase).
Bearing in mind the flexibility of Chinese syntactic properties, we will
examine some typical Chinese sentence types and look into some distinct
structures within the sentence.

3.2 SIMPLE SENTENCES

By ‘simple sentence’ I mean an expression which consists of an NP–VP
configuration without any embedded sentence in the NP or VP. Both the NP and
the VP can also contain a reasonable number of coordinated same-category units
(e.g. ‘the dog and the cat’ or ‘lay down and went to sleep’). This is in line with
Loar’s (2011) definition of a simple sentence as ‘one that comprises a single
independent clause’ (‘clause’ is in turn defined as ‘minimally consisting of a
predicate of various forms’) (p. 15).
In Chinese, the VP serving as the predicate to a sentence can be replaced by an
AP, as discussed next in 3.3. The sentences in Example 9 are both simple
sentences, each with a subject NP and a predicate VP.

Both of the sentences in Example 9 have an intransitive verb (‘land’ and ‘return’
respectively) as their main verb. Sentence 9a is short because all that it contains
are an unmodified noun (‘aircraft’) and an unmodified verb (‘land’), plus a
functional item le5. Sentence 9b is slightly longer as it includes three adverbial
elements – ‘yesterday’, ‘just’ and the prepositional phrase ‘from Japan’ – on top
of the N V (‘I-return’) configuration. Nevertheless, the sentence is still as short as
nine characters long. The relatively short length of both sentences in Example 9 is
typical for a simple Chinese sentence. According to Shei (2010), a good Chinese
sentence is around 12 syllables/characters (e.g. sentence 10b below), as it
expresses adequate information within a pleasant reading span.
Next we look at sentences whose main verbs are transitive; that is, verbs that
take object NPs.
The sentence in Example 10a consists of a pronoun (‘I’) occupying the NP slot
and a VP consisting of a verb (‘love’), a complement (‘dead’) and a noun object
(‘Beijing’). The particle is not an aspect marker but a sentence-final particle,
which is a discourse marker expressing the speaker’s current mental state (see
section 5.12 in Chapter 5).
Example 10b consists of two NPs, one serving as the subject (‘a foreigner’) the
other as the object (‘a Chinese wife’) of the verb ‘marry’. The head noun in the
first NP, , meaning ‘foreigner,’ is an interesting word. It inherits a sense of
familiarity from the prefix ‘old’, often attached to a surname, to address or
refer to a person in a congenial way (e.g. ‘old-Wang’). However, the word
also gives a sense of strangeness or even hostility because of the second
morpheme ‘outside, external’. Thus, it can be used and understood in either
way (familiar and friendly or strange and hostile) or a bit of both. The head noun
in the object NP, , can refer to either one’s wife (mainly in mainland China)
or one’s daughter-in-law. In the hosting NP, the head noun ‘wife’ is modified by
another noun ‘China’ used as an adjective to describe the nationality of the wife.
Farther to the left is a numerical morpheme ‘one’ attached by a general classifier
which can be used to count humans or objects. This number-classifier unit
also appears to the front of the first noun, ‘the foreigner’. Finally, an aspect
marker is attached to the main verb ‘marry’, to indicate the completion of the
action.
 We have seen examples of two common types of verbs so far: transitive verbs
(e.g. ‘like’) and intransitive verbs (e.g. ‘die’). As in English, there is a
kind of transitive verb in Chinese that has two object NPs. These are called
ditransitive verbs. Some examples of this type of sentence follow:

Each of the ditransitive verbs in Example 11 takes two NPs as direct and indirect
object. In Example 11a, ‘math’ (direct object) is taught to ‘me’ (indirect object). In
Example 11b, a ‘credit card’ is lent to ‘him’. Both sentences in Example 11 have
equivalent verb usages in English as evidenced by their English translations.
However, in English, a sentence incorporating a ditransitive verb can usually be
expressed in a different way by reversing the order of the two objects and adding
a preposition before the indirect object. Thus She gave me everything becomes
She gave everything to me. Not all Chinese sentences involving the use of
ditransitive verbs can be converted in the same way. Of the two sentences in
Example 11, for example, only 11b can undergo the same kind of transformation
as English. The transformed sentence from Example 11b is shown in Example 12
below.
As can be seen, for the Chinese ditransitive verb ‘borrow’ used in Example 11b,
the other way of using it is as a transitive verb taking only one object NP, as
shown in Example 12, where the original indirect object ‘him’ has been subsumed
in a prepositional phrase instead. Interestingly, the preposition used in this case is
‘give’, which can itself be a ditransitive verb. Again, not all ditransitive verbs
in Chinese can be used in both ways.
We have covered three kinds of simple sentence so far, involving the use of
intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and ditransitive verbs respectively. We will
now look at simple sentences whose main verb is a linking verb (or copula) – the
equivalents of be, become, appear and so on in English. In Chinese, by far the
most frequently used copula is the morpheme ‘be’.

Note that normally only links two NPs – the subject NP and the complement
NP which is an equivalent term of the first NP. In English it is correct to say both
I am a singer and I am poor but in Chinese, is used only with an NP
complement and not with an adjective one. That is, the translation of I am poor is
‘I-poor’ (or more commonly ‘I am quite poor’) rather than
‘I-am-poor’ (which is still an acceptable sentence but is an emphasized expression
not used in normal circumstances).
Other linking verbs that also take an NP as complement are shown in Example
14 below. There are not many more verbs of this kind.
Most English linking verbs can take either an NP or an AP as a complement. For
example, He seems nice and He seems a nice guy are both legitimate. In Chinese,
it is rare for a linking verb to be able to take both an NP and an AP as a
complement. The sentences in both Example 13 and Example 14 all include
linking verbs that only take NPs as a complement. One frequently used linking
verb, ‘as if’, is a notable exception, which does take both NPs and APs as
complements, as Example 15 shows.

As can be seen, in Example 15a takes an NP (‘a dream’) as a complement;

while in 15b it takes an AP (‘very busy’). However, this is a notable exception.
Most Chinese linking verbs take either a VP or an AP as a complement. The
linking verbs in Example 16 below all take APs exclusively as complements.
The last group of sentences further illustrates an important aspect of Chinese
syntax. That is, the linking verb in some sentences can be omitted, especially
when the complement is an AP and when the AP contains a degree adverb such
as and , as are the cases in Examples 16a, 16b and 16d. In other words, the
three sentences in Example 17 are all legitimate.
The contrived sentences in Example 17 are acceptable and differ from their
corresponding original sentences in Example 16 only in the absence of a linking
verb. As a result, their meanings are slightly different because the linking verb
represents a reduction in truth value (i.e. ‘looks’, ‘seems’). Once the linking verb
is gone, the sentences in Example 17 appear to be ‘truer’ than the original (i.e.
‘She is young’ rather than ‘She looks young’).

3.3 VERBLESS SENTENCES

We have seen in the previous section that a Chinese sentence can be without a
verb. Instead, an adjective or adverb phrase (AP) can be the sole predicate of a
sentence, like those in Example 17. Although these sentences can each take a
suitable linking verb to become a normal sentence with a VP, as in Example 16,
we saw that their truth value can be compromised when a linking verb is added.
Thus, a sentence with an AP as predicate exists in its own right and is not
necessarily the result of a transformation from a sentence with a linking verb.
More examples of this kind of verbless sentence follow.
The first two sentences in Example 18 each have an AP as predicate. Moreover,
both APs consist of a head adjective (‘hot’ or ‘cold’) each modified by an adverb
(‘very’ or ‘especially’). We have noted before this is the common trait of a
predicative AP – as if an intensifier is enlisted to fill the vacancy of a verb.
Example 18c, however, does not come with an intensifier (or degree adverb).
There is an important difference between Example 18c and Examples 18a and b.
The AP in Example 18c consists of two adjectives joined together by a
conjunctive morpheme and there is no intensifier preceding the adjectives.
Perhaps the requirement of a degree adverb is waived because of the relatively
long and complicated AP.
An adjective phrase is the primary kind of predicate for verbless sentences but
it is not the only kind. Other candidates to fill the predicate slot of a verbless
sentence are a locational phrase, a time phrase or some kind of numerical phrase.
They are normally in the form of a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase. Some
examples are shown in Example 19:
In Example 19a, a prepositional phrase introduced by serves as the predicate
for the sentence, explaining the whereabouts of the noun subject. For the rest of
the sentences in Example 19, the predicate is an NP – a specific date for Example
19b and a number of headcounts in 19c. To some extent, Examples 19b–c
resemble the sentences in Example 13 as they involve the use of the linking verb
and an NP complement. Indeed, it is possible to add to both Examples 19b
and 19c and keep the same meaning (while adding to 19a would turn it into an
emphasized clause with very restricted usage, such as in contrasting two different
views). However, is not always removable from a sentence involving a subject
NP and a complement NP. In most cases, getting rid of (where should really
be) will create either ambiguity or difficulty in comprehension.
 The final kind of verbless sentence we will mention is one with a nominal
predicate and without a subject or a verb, like those shown in Example 20:

The sentences in Example 20 manifest a [NP ] pattern which can be understood

by the Chinese native speaker as a complete sentence of some sort. This kind of
sentence typically comes with the sentence-final particle to mark a transition
of state; for example, the speaker of Example 20a comments on the change of
season from autumn to winter. Example 20b draws the listener’s attention to the
current point of time as a result of the inexorable movement of the clock. As for
20c, it may refer to the amount of money collected up to the point of speech (e.g.
in a charity event). Apparently, not all nouns can be subsumed in this [NP ]
frame to express a change of state. As can be gathered from Example 20, nouns
that belong to a set of circular entities (e.g. seasons, months, days, units of time)
or objects that can be counted in an accumulative sense (e.g. money, scores,
distance) are possible candidates to fit in this scheme.

3.4 SUBJECTLESS SENTENCES

By ‘subjectless sentence’ I mean a normal sentence with a sound VP, AP or
complement-NP structure as discussed in sections 3.2 and 3.3 but without a
subject NP. A subjectless sentence in English is normally an imperative sentence
(e.g. Listen to me!) whose subject is understood to be the second person pronoun
(i.e. you). In Chinese, however, it is possible for any person to be the hidden
subject of a subjectless sentence – whether it is the second person ‘you’, the first
person pronoun ‘I; we’, or even the third person ‘they’. First, in Example 21, we
will see what Chinese imperative sentences are like.

All of the sentences in Example 21 are subjectless and the omitted subjects are the
listeners of the sentence (‘you’). The sentences would still be sound and mean the
same if a second person pronoun were reintroduced into the sentence to fill in
the empty NP slot. Example 21a is the simplest among them, consisting only of a
VP (‘Get away!’). Example 21b comes with an honorific element ‘please’
whose usage here is roughly the same as its English equivalent please. Examples
21c and 21d are both negative imperatives – advising the hearer against certain
actions. The negative morpheme and the disyllabic unit both mean ‘do
not’ in this context. As a negative element, can only be used in an imperative
sentence like Example 21c, while can also be used literally to mean ‘not
want’; for example, ‘I-not-want-die’ means ‘I do not want to die’. This
is different from its imperative use in which means ‘Do not die!’
There is a kind of imperative sentence which suggests actions not only to the
listener but also for the speaker. In English, this is equal to a sentence starting
with Let’s or Let us. Two examples are given in Example 22. Example 22a is a
fixed expression suggesting a joint toast together with the listeners. Example 22b
involves a serial verb construction ‘go-travel’. Both are invitations for hearers to
join the speaker in performing some kind of action. If we were to fill in the empty
NP slots of Example 22, we would use the first person plural pronoun .

The aforementioned sentences correspond to the English imperatives with the

omitted subjects being either ‘you’ or ‘we’. There is another kind of subjectless
sentence in Chinese which omits the first person singular ‘I’. This is similar to an
informal English sentence like Have been to London today. While this is a rather
informal usage in English, it is a regular type of sentence in Chinese. Some
examples are offered in Example 23:
All of the sentences in Example 23 are the first sentence of a paragraph in their
original texts and are not followed by a sentence with a clear subject. Therefore,
they can be construed to mean something related to the writers themselves, often
subsumed in a kind of ‘expressive text’ (Reiss 1981). Note the thematic positions
(the beginning word or phrase of a sentence) of all four sentences in Example 23
are occupied by time adverbs (‘for a long time’, ‘when young’, ‘up to now’,
‘today’). This is a reasonable arrangement as it gives clear background
information for interpreting the verb, which is especially important when the
subject is missing (i.e. the semantic processing of the adverb-verb combination
may quickly reveal who the subject is).
Still another kind of subjectless sentence involves the omission of a ‘generic
subject’ or an unspecified entity.
Example 24a is a question asked by someone in an online forum about whether a
person living in China can buy US stocks or not. The sentence is subjectless and
the thematic position is occupied by a locational phrase (‘in China’). Because of
the nature of the question – the broad reference to China and the generic action
of buying US stocks – it is easy to construe the subject of the sentence to be a
member of the general public residing in China. Example 24b is similar to 24a in
the respect of the thematic position being occupied by a prepositional phrase. In
this case, the background given is ‘Africa’, where an unknown ancient human
species is found. The subject of this sentence would have been a specific group of
scientists or archaeologists but this is common knowledge and is fine to be
omitted. The more important information is the location and the discovery.
Example 24c presents a more complicated situation, where three NPs appear to
have been omitted from the subject position of their respective clauses or
sentences, representing the same generic person.
In the most extreme cases, a text can start with a series of subjectless sentences
and the omitted subjects may not all refer to the same entity. Example 25 consists
of two sentences connected by a coordinative conjunction ‘but’. The subjects of
both sentences have been omitted.

The first sentence in Example 25, based on the meaning of the predicate and the
context (i.e. a love and relationship discussion forum), means that a couple have
parted from each other. The first missing NP thus stands for ‘my lover’ (Y) and ‘I’
(X) or, most likely, ‘we’ in Chinese. The second sentence comprises an
omitted NP and two VPs serving as the predicate. Again, based on the meaning of
the VPs (‘unable to forget and often sad’), we can infer that the missing NP refers
to the writer him-or herself rather than their ex-lover, as the feelings disclosed
are quite personal and private.
We conclude this section with a text consisting of a series of sentences with all
the subjects withdrawn. The empty NP slots have been marked with symbols X
(female speaker), Y (interested males) and XY (X and Y).
Example 26 is a short narrative explaining how the female speaker has been
approached directly by men suggesting a romance only moments after getting to
know each other. The omitted NP of the first sentence stands for the speaker
herself (X), the subject of the VP ‘having met some men lately’. The omitted
subject of the second sentence, however, should be the speaker and a certain man
who approached her (XY) judging from the predicate, as it takes at least two
people to ‘chat only for a while’. There are two omitted NPs in the third sentence.
The first NP missing is the man (Y) who suggested romance to the woman, while
the second NP is the speaker herself (X) who was asked to be the man’s
girlfriend. All of these missing NPs are instantly recoverable by a native Chinese
human processor but may prove difficult for foreign language learners.

3.5 EXISTENTIAL SENTENCES

Chinese existential sentences are like the English sentences that start with There
is/are which point out the existence of certain concrete or abstract objects at a
certain location. The most frequently used device for pointing out existence in
Chinese is the morpheme ‘have’. The easiest way of using to report the
existence of something is the construction [ NP], as Example 27 shows:

The exclamation marks in both sentences of Example 27 reveal the warning

nature of the sentence. For example, Example 27a could be used by a husband to
warn his wife when they return home to find an unexpected ‘guest’ upstairs. A
girl may shout Example 27b when a mouse suddenly runs across the living room.
Sometimes the aspect marker can be used with [ NP] to express a sense of
completion and to emphasize the transition from zero to something.

Example 28a assumes that there has been a period of waiting which is terminated
when the result of something (e.g. a singing competition) is known. Example 28b,
on the other hand, means an uneventful period of time is about to end as the
speaker senses trouble.
An initial adverb unit is often added to the [ NP] structure to indicate where
the highlighted object is. For example, the prepositional phrase, ‘inside the
house’, in Example 29a points to the source of the smell. Another PP in Example
29b, ‘in the lake’, indicates where the trout are.
Apart from locality, the initial adverb (frequently in the form of a prepositional
phrase) can also be related to time or other properties of action. The initial adverb
in both sentences of Example 30 below indicates the time spent or to be spent in
waiting for the outcome.

The negative form of is ‘not-have’, which can be used to indicate the

non-existence of something, as Example 31 shows. Both Examples 31a and 31b
are introduced by an adverb unit (‘in the world’ and ‘here’ respectively). Next
comes in Example 31a to announce the non-existence of something (‘free
lunch’). In Example 31b a second adverb precedes to emphasize the extent
of non-existence (‘total’).
A more complicated structure than [ NP] is [ NP VP]; that is, the entity
whose existence has been highlighted can also be engaged in some kind of
activity at the time of mention.

In Example 32a, the celebrity speaker says there will be people using abusive
language against her on the Weibo social network if they dislike something she
posts. In Example 32b, a TV chat show host advises an older writer using
Facebook that she will also have friends who use the ‘poke’ command to get her
attention. In both cases, the [ NP] construction is followed by a verb describing
what the NP does (i.e. ‘curse’ and ‘poke’ respectively).
When a quantifier (QN) is inserted between and an NP to create a [ QN
NP] construction, the NP can be placed at the front to become [NP QN]. So,
for example, it is equally legitimate to say ‘have-very-much-money’
or ‘money-have-very-much’. Moreover, the structure [NP QN] can
be further simplified to become [NP QN] (i.e. is omitted), especially if the
quantifier involves the use of an intensifier like . That is, ‘money-very-
much’ is also legitimate. Thus, the three sentences in Example 33 all mean the
same thing, although their frequencies of use by native speakers will vary
(Google hits show 33a > 33c > 33b).

Although is the predominant device for encoding existential sentences, there

are other means of doing so. The Chinese copula can also carry out such a
function. Compare, for example, Example 34a and Example 34b.
The two sentences in Example 34 differ only in their thematic elements – ‘this’
for Example 34a and ‘on the wall’ for Example 34b. While Example 34a is a
standard sentence, complete with a subject NP and a VP, Example 34b is an
existential sentence, where is substituted by . In other words, while is a
linking verb in Example 34a, where the subject NP (‘this’) is equal to the
complement (‘a map of China’), we cannot say the same thing about Example
34b, where the adverb unit (‘on the wall’) cannot be equal to ‘a map of China’.
Example 34b is, in fact, an existential sentence which gives more emphasis to the
highlighted NP than the existential sentence. In other words, retains some
of its copula function and implies, in Example 34b, that the map is the sole object,
or at least should be the sole object of attention, regarding what is on the wall. If
were replaced by , then the map would be just one of the many possible
objects on the wall. More examples of existential sentences involving can be
found in Example 35:
In Example 35a, the NP ‘a thick booklet of names’ is probably an unexpected and
the most important finding for anyone examining the handbag. Hence
‘(exactly) is’ is used in this existential sentence rather than the standard and
neutral . In Examples 35b and 35c, the emphatic value of is further
strengthened by the co-occurring adverbial elements ‘whole’ and ‘all’
respectively, which cannot co-occur with in this context. Finally, in Example
35d, helps produce a sharp contrast between people starved to death and the
expensive foods enjoyed by communist officials in Mao Zedong’s times. It would
have been less effective if were used to bring about the contrast.
 In addition to sentences containing or there are other types of existential
sentences in Chinese. One of them uses the continual aspect marker coupled
with a verb which can semantically connect an object to a locational phrase –
some sentences in this strand are shown in Example 36 below:

All of the sentences in Example 36 start with either a PP or an NP serving the

adverbial function of identifying a place. The VP then describes what happens in
the place. In most cases, it describes a static situation such as a knife being placed
on a table (Example 36a), a priest standing in front of a sickbed (Example 36b), or
a girlfriend’s name written on the property deeds (Example 36c). However, the
pattern can also be used in a dynamic situation when referring to the working of
the elements, such as snow falling in Example 36d.
A small number of verbs can also be used in existential sentences with or
without the support of an aspect marker. This is similar to sentences starting with
There appeared, There occurred and so on in English. Some examples along this
line are provided in Example 37 below:

The structures of the sentences in Example 37 largely fall in line with those of
Example 36 and manifest the S → VP NP pattern for Chinese existential
sentences. The theme of Example 37a is a noun (‘human life’), which may seem
incongruent with Examples 37b–d as the latter all start with an adverbial
structure (i.e. a prepositional phrase). However, a noun phrase denoting a
location is as good as an adverbial phrase in an existential sentence. The two
usages (i.e. NP or PP) are often interchangeable; that is, we can substitute
‘life’ (N) with ‘in life’ (PP) in Example 37a and obtain the same meaning.
We can also remove the prepositions from Example 37b and from Example
37c–d without changing the meaning.

3.6 ERGATIVE SENTENCES

An ergative verb allows either the performer or the receiver of an action to be the
subject of an active sentence involving the verb. For example, in English, it is
equally legitimate to say Someone opened the door or The door opened. By
ergative sentence I mean a sentence whose subject can be the object of the same
verb in another form of the sentence. Thus, The door opens is an ergative
sentence as the subject the door can become the object in John opens the door. In
English, an ergative sentence (The fish is cooking) is structurally different from a
passive sentence (The fish is being cooked) which should also imply some
semantic and/or pragmatic differences. Bear in mind, though, that not all
transitive verbs can be used in the ‘ergative way’. For example, Someone is
writing a letter cannot be transformed into A letter is writing (ergative), but A
letter is being written (passive) is fine. Figure 3.1 offers a comparison between the
three kinds of sentences.

Figure 3.1 English active, passive and ergative sentences

Practically all ergative sentences frequently seen in English can be translated

into equivalent Chinese ergative sentences, as the sentences in Example 38 show.
It seems that Chinese ergative sentences can also be readily translated into their
English counterparts, as Example 39 shows:
Example 39 shows four Chinese ergative sentences which can be translated into
their equivalent English sentences – ‘glass breaks’, ‘soup boils’, ‘airplane lands’
and ‘car burns’. Example 39d contains another verb, ‘fix’, which is normally not
used in the ‘ergative way’ in English so we cannot translate it into The car is
fixing (although Google does return some hits for this expression). It is
interesting that in Chinese, ‘fix’ is used in the same predicate structure as a
generally recognized ergative verb ‘burn’. This could mean that another type of
VP shares the same sentence structure with Chinese ergative verbs. In fact, there
are plenty of Chinese sentences which look like ergative sentences in that their
subject can be the object within a different type of sentence with the same
meaning. Most of them cannot be directly translated into English without
structural adjustment.
One of the main differences between the sentences in Example 40 and Example
39 lies in a certain semantic property of the verb involved. Due to the nature of
the verbs involved, it is relatively easy to conceptualize the role of the subjects in
the Example 39 sentences in relation to their verbs as either a passive receiver or
a voluntary experiencer of an action. For example, a house can be passively
shaken by an earthquake, but a house may also shake on its own for some reason.
Conversely, it is difficult to imagine the money ‘losing itself’ as in Example 40a,
or breakfast ‘eating’ (40b), homework ‘writing’ (40c) or telephone ‘calling’ (40d)
for the same reason. Thus, such sentences should be analyzed as consisting of an
object as the topic of the sentence followed by the transitive verb which takes the
topic as its object. The sentence structures in Example 40 are thus
indistinguishable from ergative sentences in appearance, as both start with an
object followed by its governing verb. I shall call the kind of sentence in Example
40 ‘object-fronted sentence’. Figure 3.2 illustrates the differences between a
Chinese active sentence, ergative sentence and object-fronted sentence.
Figure 3.2 Chinese active, ergative and object-fronted sentences

The first sentence in Figure 3.2, ‘someone opens the door’ can be
transformed into an ergative sentence ‘the door opens’, which is also an
object-fronted sentence as ‘the door’ can either be construed as the subject of an
ergative sentence or the object of an active sentence which is transposed to the
front to become the topic of the sentence. The third sentence in Figure 3.2,
‘someone ate the rice’ cannot be transformed into an ergative sentence
as ‘the rice has eaten’ does not make any sense (or, rather, the sentence
cannot be interpreted in this way). But it can indeed be transformed into an
object-fronted sentence ‘The rice, eaten’. The latter is comparable to the passive
sentence ‘The rice was eaten’ but is not necessarily a derivation of it. The
object-fronted sentence is a special means of emphasizing the object in the topic
position without the passive connotation. In fact, many object-fronted sentences
do not have highly acceptable passive counterparts, such as Examples 40c and
40d – both ‘homework is written’ and ‘phone call is put
through’ – are rather unusual expressions.

3.7 PASSIVE SENTENCES

The most common (but not the only) marker of passive structure in Chinese is
the functional item bei4. The standard way to create a Chinese passive
sentence is to add in front of the N-V configuration transposed from the
original active sentence. For example, ‘bird-eat-worm’ is transformed into
‘worm-by-bird-eat’; that is, from the active scheme [N1 V N2] to the
passive scheme of [N2 bei4 N1 V]. It may be useful to conceptualize the
morpheme as the preposition by in English as used in a passive sentence which
marks the agent of the action. A schematic representation of how to transform an
active sentence into a standard passive sentence in Chinese is shown in Figure
3.3.

Sometimes the subject of the verb in the active sentence can be

omitted in the passive sentence, so only the original object and the verb are
present Like English passives, this often happens when the focus is on the
entity who takes the consequences of an action and it is relatively obvious (or
unimportant or unknown) who carries out the action (e.g. A dog involved in an
attack on a 12-year-old child in Dundee has been destroyed – it does not matter
very much to the reader who actually destroyed the dog). The two passive
sentences in Example 41 below have not specified the agents who carry out the
action of ‘abandoning’ or ‘overthrowing’ respectively.
Figure 3.3 Transforming an active sentence into a passive sentence

With Example 41a, it is obvious that the baby has been abandoned by its parents
and it is not a priority to mention the fact in the sentence. For Example 41b, it is
more important to include evolution theory and the word ‘overthrow’ in the
punchy statement and leave other details for later elaboration. Consequently, in
both cases, the original subject is omitted and the passive marker is attached
directly to the verb.
The next pair of passive sentences makes a point of showing who the agents
are that perform the action.

In Example 42a it is important to specify who the alleged culprit is that stole the
computer. It is also crucial to emphasize, in 42b, that the chairman’s speech was
interrupted by enthusiastic applause and not by a flying shoe! Thus, in both
sentences precedes the NP-V combination to give information about ‘who-did-
what’ rather than just the info of ‘what happened’ as in Example 41.
Like active sentences, passive structures can also come in a series as we saw in
Examples 4 and 5, without the presence of conjunctive devices. Each of the two
sentences in Example 43 below consists of two passive structures in sequence.

Examples 43a and 43b are online news headlines which come without any
punctuation marks. The ending periods and the commas within the two sentences
are added by the author to facilitate understanding in the current context. The
three commas in Example 43 actually mark sentential boundaries rather than
define constituents within the sentence. That is, there are in fact two sentences in
Example 43a and three in Example 43b, each of which comes with a standard NP-
VP sentence structure. In this book I use the term Extended Sentence to refer to
the kind of elaborated structure like Example 43a or Example 43b which ‘tells a
short story’ and is made up of several short sentences (see 3.12 for more detail).
Thus, the extended sentence in Example 43b consists of three simple sentences,
each comprising an NP and a VP. Each NP is made up of a number morpheme
(‘three’, ‘one’, ‘two’ respectively) and a noun meaning ‘man’ or ‘person’. The VP
of S1 starts with a noun ‘Yellow River’ which serves the adverbial function of
naming the place of the action. S1 is an active sentence whereas S2 and S3 are
both passive sentences. Both passive structures consist of the simplified [ V]
scheme rather than the full [ NP V] configuration. The omitted NP in the
passive structure of S2 is ‘water’ (which carried a person away). The omitted NP
in S3 is ‘rescuers’ (who saved the other two men).

Figure 3.4 Transforming a passive sentence back into an active sentence

In normal circumstances, the passive sentence can be easily reverted back to an

active sentence if both the subject and object are present. For example,
‘bun-bei4-dog-eat’ [N1 N2 V] can be changed back to ‘dog eat bun’.
The process is illustrated more fully in Figure 3.4.
However, some passive structures involving the use of a certain type of verb do
not allow a straightforward reversion from the passive structure back to the
active form. This refers to the verb that is composed of a verb morpheme and a
noun morpheme as the verb’s object, i.e. [VN] V, such as ‘hit-ball (play ball)’,
‘open-gun (fire a gun)’, ‘borrow-money’ and so on. Since this kind of
verb already consists of a VN structure, they normally do not take another object
in a direct manner. Although some of them can take a notional object (e.g. ‘fire a
gun at someone’ or ‘borrow money from someone’), this indirect object has to be
connected by a preposition; for example, ‘she-at-him-open-gun’,
‘he-toward-me-borrow-money’. Consequently, when these verbs are
used in a passive structure, their reversion back to active structure is not
straightforward (i.e. a preposition has to be added before the notional object).
Two examples of this type of passive sentence are shown in Example 44:

Both sentences in Example 44 contain a VN type of verb following to form a

passive structure. Both verbs denote negative meanings (‘kick out of school’ and
‘amputate leg’) which coincide with the general impression that Chinese passive
structures are mostly used to encode adverse circumstances. Also, neither of the
sentences in Example 44 shows the agent of the action (presumably ‘school’ and
‘doctor’ respectively). When attempting to change these sentences back to active
ones, it is not a straightforward procedure as Figure 3.4 shows. Instead, a
preposition-like morpheme needs to be added in front of the notional object,
which is then inserted between the subject and the verb to form an active
sentence. One example set of sentences illustrating this point is shown in
Example 45, which is based on Example 44a, now resurfacing as 45a.
Example 45a is a passive sentence encoded with where the agent of the action
(i.e. the school authority responsible for dismissing the student) is hidden.
Example 45b shows the result of a normal passive-to-active conversion which is
not acceptable in this instance. Example 45c shows the correctly transformed
sentence, where the functional item is added to mark the receiver of the action
(i.e. the student).
An interesting recent development regarding the kinds of verbs compatible
with involves a group of intransitive verbs with negative senses. Theoretically,
an intransitive verb should never engender a passive sentence. For example, the
sentence John cried involves only a predicate (CRY) and an argument (JOHN)
and it is not possible to transform the sentence into a passive one because no
entity is involved in doing something to someone. However, a passive sentence
involving the use of an intransitive verb is now possible (in Chinese). As of now,
there seemed to be two primary categories of usage for this kind of ‘intransitive
passive’ structure:

• The person involved is a victim within an alleged conspiracy theory, for

example:
• The person is the victim of some kind of rumor, for example:

Thus, literally ‘was committed suicide’, actually means ‘was claimed to

have committed suicide’; while ‘was got married’ really means ‘was
rumored to have gotten married’. Similar usages include ‘was disappeared’
→ ‘was made to disappear’, ‘was retired’ → ‘was made to retire’ and so
on. The first usage usually embodies the public’s suspicion of foul play by the
government or some other sort of vicious group. The second usage is primarily
associated with media and celebrities but it also applies to groups of relatives or
friends.
The aforementioned new generative process for [ V] (where V is an
intransitive verb) even goes so far as to include nouns into the framework; for
example, ‘was car-accidented’ → ‘was rumored to be involved in a car
accident’, ‘was mental-illnessed’ → ‘was forced into a mental hospital’,
‘was birthdayed’ → ‘was given a (surprise) birthday party’ and so on. The
process now seems to come back around full circle to allow the [ V] structure to
take on any previously impossible verbs simply to mean ‘being forced to do
something’. For example, means ‘was made to sign one’s name (to agree to
something involuntarily)’.
Not all passive sentences in Chinese are encoded with the standard passive
marker There are other functional items which can also help form a passive
structure but their use is more restricted and less frequent in comparison to A
miscellaneous collection of passive sentences created by other markers than is
presented in Example 46.
The two passive markers and in Examples 46a and 46b are disyllabic
units whose functions are very close to and can in fact be replaced by it. The
differences between the three are mostly prosodic, although is mostly used in
written language and is rarely heard in spontaneous speech. Both and
share the same morpheme ‘reach’ which can be omitted from both disyllabic
units without affecting their passive marking functionality. Example 46c, for
example, retains only as the passive marker, while Example 46d retains only
When appears alone as a passive marker it forms habitual combinations (i.e.
collocations) with the ensuing verb. For example, the passive structure
‘enjoy popularity’ in Example 46c is a very common usage.
The morpheme means ‘give’ when used as a verb. However, in Example 46d
it serves the purpose of passive marking in a way similar to The same is true of
the verb ‘let’ which, when serving the passive marker function as in Example
46e, is also equivalent to The use of these two variants of seems quite
region-specific.

3.8 EMPHATIC SENTENCES

The beginning of a sentence is sometimes called the ‘theme’ of the sentence in
functional linguistics (e.g. Baker 1992). The rest of the sentence is called the
‘rheme’. The first unit of the sentence receives the initial attention of the reader
and triggers the necessary reference framework in the mind to help process the
rheme. In a normal sentence having the standard NP-VP structure, the theme is
usually the subject of the sentence. However, sometimes a non-subject NP or
something else is fronted to become the theme (see object-fronted sentences in
example 40). Again, this is in order for the structure to act as the ‘attention
catcher’ so the reader or listener knows what the sentence is about and can
process the rest of the sentence accordingly.
In both Examples 47a and 47b, the object (‘this question’, ‘Mercedes’) has been
fronted to receive the initial emphasis allocated to the beginning of a sentence.
Example 47b is a commercial headline and it is obvious why the commodity
being advertised is placed at the strategic position of the theme. In fact, the
subject of the sentence (‘the vendor’) is also omitted to make the sentence more
compact and punchy. Like passive sentences, the subjects of object-fronted
sentences are often omitted when it is obvious or relatively unimportant who
they are. Such is the case for 47c, where the warning of ‘not eating these five
foods fresh’ is obviously meant to apply to everybody.
In Chinese, a unit outside a regular sentence can be placed at the front of the
sentence to serve as the ‘topic’ of the sentence. Example 46c is a good example,
where ‘Mother’s day present’ is the sentence-external topic, which is followed by
a complete sentence ‘cash is the most popular option’. In English, this topic
would have been packaged in an adverbial unit like In terms of a Mother’s day
present, … but in Chinese, it is common to use an NP to serve the topic function.
More examples are shown in Example 48 below:
All the sentences in Example 48 start with a topic NP (‘zodiac signs’, ‘12-year-old
girl’, ‘losing weight’, ‘house’, ‘life’) which is external to the NP-VP structure of a
simple sentence. Each sentence in Example 48 has a separate subject NP (‘I’, ‘half
of the face’, ‘the most effective way’ for 48a–c and a hidden ‘you’ for both 48d
and 48e respectively) immediately following the topic, which becomes less
significant due to its secondary position. Topicalization is thus a way for an NP to
gain extra emphasis in a Chinese sentence. Sometimes a longer topic is physically
separated from the sentence by a punctuation mark such as a comma, like those
in Example 49.
Both sentences in Example 49 are questions asking the reader about their
commitment to, or knowledge about, the topic. The topic in Example 49a is an NP
(‘new 24 exemplars of filial piety’), while the topic in Example 49b is a VP-like
structure (‘sending gifts between men and women’). Both structures are set apart
from the main sentence by a comma and are apparently not involved in the
process of sentence formation beyond the punctuation point. The topic structure,
like a fronted object NP, brings more emphasis to that first element of a sentence
than a sentence starting with a subject NP or an adverbial structure.
There are other ways to emphasize a certain constituent of a sentence than
transposing it to the front of a sentence. One of them is to place the emphasized
element in a certain frame. The most frequently used type of emphatic sentence
involves the use of and in various configurations. Some examples are shown
in Example 50:
The three sentences in Example 50 use the [X Y frame where Y is claimed to
be a strong property of X. For Example 50a, the emphasis is placed on the
speaker’s merit of being ‘dedicated to one (lover) only’ in dealing with romance.
In 50b, the speaker emphasizes her being a lively person by nature, possibly in
contrast to her serene appearance. Example 50c emphasizes the impossibility of
obtaining both the fish and the bear palm.
Note that if we take and away from the above sentences, so the pattern [X
Y becomes [X Y] only; what remain are still legitimate sentences, only
minus the emphasis. For example, if we take and away from Example 50b,
the remnant is still a good sentence. Both the emphasized and de-emphasized
sentences are shown in Example 51:
The elements that get emphasized by the [X Y structure in Example 50 are
adjective units, or APs, which are used to emphasize the attributes of certain
entities (i.e. nouns). Attributes of verbs can also be emphasized in this frame, for
example, when verbs are accompanied by modal auxiliaries, adverbs or
prepositional phrases. Some examples along this line are presented in Example 52:

In the [X Y structure demonstrated by the sentences in Example 52, X is an

NP (‘cancer’, ‘this novel’ or ‘I’). The Y part – the constituent that gets emphasized
– is a VP with a modal auxiliary or an adverb taking the front. In Example 52a,
the leading element of the VP (‘can be avoided’) is a modal auxiliary (‘can’). This
is the portion of the VP that gets emphasized. In Example 52b, on the other hand,
the foremost portion of the NP is a prepositional phrase (‘according to fact’). The
prepositional phrase is what the speaker means to emphasize with the [X Y
frame here. Finally, in Example 52c, it is an adverb (‘intentionally’) modifying the
action of ‘taking the hat’ that gets emphasized. Note that Example 52c also
exemplifies the negative form of [X Y that is [X Y
We have seen that auxiliaries or different adjuncts of a VP can be emphasized
by the [X Y frame. If there is more than one peripheral element like these in
or around a VP, any one of them can receive emphasis by being placed
immediately after The set of sentences in Example 53 show how various
portions of a sentence can be emphasized.

Example 53a is the original sentence where no particular emphasis is placed on

any portion of the sentence. Among the three hypothetical sentences that follow,
Example 53b emphasizes the time of the celebration (‘yesterday’), while the
objective of the celebration (‘for me’), and the people who held the celebration
(‘colleagues’) are emphasized in Example 53c and d respectively. Note that in the
last sentence of the set, the entire sentence is inserted between and in the [X
Y frame as Y. This sentence, Example 53d, where an NP is emphasized rather
than a verb auxiliary, can be expressed in another way, as Example 54a shows:

The sentences in Example 54 all follow the emphatic pattern of [Y X], which
is a reverse of [X Y That is, if in general X = NP and Y = VP or AP, earlier in
the [X Y ] structure, the verb or adverb element in the predicate portion
receives the emphasis. For the [Y X] pattern, it is the NP portion of a sentence
that gets emphasized. Thus, in Examples 54a and 54b it is the subject NP
(‘colleagues’ or ‘Chinese’) that is emphasized. Examples 54c and 54d, on the other
hand, show that an object NP (‘your health’, ‘American dream’) residing in a VP
can also receive emphasis within the pattern.
Note again that if such added elements as and are omitted from the
sentence, the resultant sentence differs from the original sentence only in the loss
of emphasis. If the emphasized portion is the subject NP, like in Examples 54a
and 54b, the NP has to be reintroduced to the beginning of the sentence following
the omission of and In the case of object NP being emphasized such as
Examples 54c and 54d, there is no change of word order when and are
removed. The resultant de-emphasized sentences are offered in Example 55 for
comparison with their original emphasized counterparts in Example 54.

The set of sentences in Example 55 are de-emphasized versions of the sentences

in Example 54. As previously mentioned, because the emphasized portions in
Example 54c and d are the object NPs, the process of de-emphasizing involves
only the removal of the redundant morphemes and without having to adjust
the word order. For Examples 54a and b, however, since the emphasized portions
are the subject NPs, they should be returned to the beginning of the sentence (or
after the time adverb as in 55a when no longer emphasized by the
combination).
 Within the emphatic structure [Y X], the two morphemes and are not
glued together but can be separated by an adverb of some sort to create even
more emphasis. Some examples of intervening adverbs between and are
shown in Example 56:

In each sentence of Example 56, an adverb is inserted between and to add

more emphasis – ‘certainly’ and ‘absolutely’ respectively. To increase the
emphasis even more, complicated patterns are used involving a repetition of the
combination or alone in some ways. Example 57 illustrates a more
complicated variety of the [Y X] pattern.
Example 57a involves the use of a negative morpheme to deny a statement
which would have been established by ‘footsteps are exhausted’. The
contrastive structure of this sentence is used to deny the allegation of ‘exhausted
footsteps’ and to emphasize the truthfulness of a ‘feeling of tiredness’. Note that
the use of ‘but’ before the second instance of helps highlight the contrast
(between true and false). Conversely, the ‘if not … then’ structure in
Example 57b carries out an additive rather than contrastive function. That is, not
only ‘top officials’ but also ‘celebrities’ sit in the venue in question. Again, the
additive meaning results from an adverbial element – the morpheme ‘exactly’
which collocates with the verb to form a habitual disyllabic unit.
There are also more complicated versions for the [X Y pattern discussed
earlier. Two examples are offered below, both of which involve the use of the
negative morpheme

As previously mentioned, the [X Y structure emphasizes the Y portion, i.e.

the predicate part. In both Examples 58a and 58b, the sentence-initial NP (‘I’ and
‘right’ respectively) is predicated by two VPs, one of which is positive and the
other is negative. This difference in polarity creates the contrast required to
maximally emphasize the speaker’s belief (i.e. ‘to work’ rather than ‘to rest’; ‘to
strive for’ rather than ‘to wait (for something to happen)’).
There are other kinds of emphatic sentences in Chinese, but by far the most
frequently used ones are those which involve the use of and in ways that are
similar to, but not limited to, those discussed in this section.

3.9 SERIAL VERBS CONSTRUCTION

3.9 SERIAL VERBS CONSTRUCTION
In English, we often see two verbs used together in one expression such as Go get
the ball, I want to volunteer, She quit smoking, I saw you smile and so on. In
English, only one verb (the main verb, usually the first one) will get grammatical
marking such as tense, person and number. This is called a ‘finite verb’ and the
other verb(s) are said to be ‘non-finite’. In Chinese, such serial verb constructions
also exist but, as usual, there is no inflectional marking to any of the verbs in the
series.
Some types of Chinese serial verb construction are similar to English and can
be directly translated into corresponding English expressions. One of them is the
pattern [V1 V2] where V1 is often cognitive (‘consider’, ‘decide’, ‘learn’),
interactive (‘agree’, ‘refuse’, ‘promise’) or involving future actions (‘begin’, ‘plan’,
‘avoid’). Some examples follow:

In both sentences of Example 59, the [V1 V2] combination can be translated
directly into English, although in English there is a distinction between V1 and
V2 in terms of inflection (i.e. only V1 is inflected; V2 is non-finite, surfacing as a
gerund or an infinitive). Again, in Chinese, there is no inflection at any level and
all verbs appear in base form (which is the only form they have) in all contexts.
There are some Chinese verbs of this type for which there is no corresponding
English [V1 V2] structure. In some cases, the second verb is more naturally
expressed by a noun in English, as Example 60 shows.
The kind of verbs that fit into the [V1 V2] frame discussed above can often
appear in succession to form a larger structure such as [V1 V2 V3] or [V1 V2 V3
V4]. However, the verb that plays a pivotal role in this kind of construction (that
is, V2 or V2 and V3 respectively) must be similar to the original V1 in nature in
order to warrant the entrance of the next verb. That is, they should be verbs
which are cognitive (‘consider’) or interactive (‘refuse’) in nature or involved in
future actions (‘begin’). Some examples are shown in Example 61:
Examples 61a and b illustrate the [V1 V2 V3] structure and Example 61c the [V1
V2 V3 V4] structure. Note that all the instances of V2 in Example 61 and the V3 in
Example 61c are of the type that can initiate a [V1 V2] construction. This is why
3 or 4 verbs can appear in succession in these examples. The serial verb
construction stops where the last one is not a verb related to cognitive activity,
interpersonal relation or future action that can habitually start a [V1 V2]
structure.
Another prevalent structure in both Chinese and English involving the use of a
series of verbs is the [V1 NP V2] construction. This differs from the [V1 V2]
structure in the insertion of an NP between V1 and V2 which is the object of V1
but is the ‘subject’ of V2 (e.g. Police told residents to stay indoors). Again,
inflection is where English and Chinese differ. In English, V1 is normally the
main verb which carries inflectional marking (told) and V2 is reduced to the
infinitive (to stay). In Chinese, there is no morphological difference between V1
and V2 Some Chinese sentences of this type are presented in
Example 62 below.

Both sentences in Example 62 illustrate the [V1 NP V2] structure where V1 is a

certain type of verb (mostly denoting interpersonal interactions) and V2 is a
common verb. However, if V2 is the kind of verb that can itself initiate a [V1 V2]
or [V1 NP V2] construction, then larger structures built upon these two basic
forms are possible; for example, [V1 NP V2 V3], [V1 NP V2 NP V3], [V1 V2 NP
V3] and so on. Some examples are shown in Example 63:

The three sentences in Example 63 represent the construction [V1 NP V2 V3], [V1
NP V2 NP V3] and [V1 V2 NP V3] respectively. In general, they work in the same
way as the corresponding English verbs with exactly the same word order and V-
NP configurations. Due to the absence of verb inflection in Chinese, the patterns
may be less easy to discover (and interpret) than their English counterparts.
So far we have seen serial verb constructions associated with certain types of
verbs (cognitive, interactional and those involving future actions). This is, of
course, not the only way for verbs to appear together in a Chinese sentence.
Another method of verb combination is through some kind of conjunctive
relation. Again, this kind of structure is difficult to recognize in Chinese, due to
the absence of surface conjunctions. Let us look at some examples.

In Example 64a, the quadrisyllabic unit ‘leave-home-exit-walk’ meaning

‘run away from home’ has become a fixed expression (gaining over 11 million
Google hits as a phrase at the time of writing). The unit actually consists of two
VPs ‘leave home’ and ‘walk-out’ which form a coordinative relationship rather
than a ‘control’ one like those seen in Examples 59–63. In practice, this means the
two actions ‘leave home’ and ‘walk out’ are of equal status and are
simultaneously happening, unlike the [V1 V2] type of structure where the
occurrence of V2 is somehow dependent on V1 (e.g. ‘promise to come’). This is
also true for Example 64b, ‘being hospitalized’ and ‘receiving treatment’, and
Example 64c, ‘apologizing’ and ‘admitting fault’, where both actions in the same
pair happen simultaneously.
Some pairs of serial VPs appearing in the same sentence do not represent
simultaneous movements but denote consecutive actions. In Example 65a, the
pilot first ejected and then was saved. In Example 65b, the victim was killed after
the perpetrator broke into her house.
Another type of serial verb/VP construction demonstrates a facilitative or causal
relation. That is, the first action somehow warrants or causes the happening of
the next action. Some examples are shown in Example 66:

Example 66a shows someone performing a certain action (‘go home’) to facilitate
a second action (‘eat supper’). In Example 66b, on the other hand, someone does
something (‘falling into water’) which triggers another event (‘dying’). Note that
the serial verb constructions exemplified by Examples 64–66 above are very
similar to, and can be called miniature models of, the serial VP/AP structures
discussed earlier in Examples 4 and 5. Whatever their size, they all exemplify
sentences with multiple-VP structures.

3.10 EMBEDDED SENTENCES

3.10 EMBEDDED SENTENCES
Just as in English, there are three kinds of dependent clause in Chinese: the noun
clause, the adjective (or relative) clause, and the adverbial clause. As with other
shared structures between English and Chinese, it is harder to detect a
subordinate clause in Chinese due to the absence or different styles of
grammatical marking. In English, for example, a noun clause is frequently
marked with that, a relative clause with a wh- word (called ‘relative pronoun’),
and an adverbial clause with subordinate conjunctions like although, because,
when, if and so on. In Chinese, there is no special marking for nominal clauses,
and the adjective clauses are marked by an ending particle 的 rather than by
anything at the beginning. For adverbial clauses, although subordinate
conjunctions exist, their use is not compulsory. In this book, the term ‘complex
sentence’ is adopted to refer to a sentence consisting of an independent clause
(i.e. a simple sentence) and one or more embedded sentences.
Noun clauses serving as the object of an epistemic verb (such as know, think,
suspect) may be the most prevalent kind of nominal clauses. Two Chinese
sentences subsuming a noun clause as object are presented in Example 67:

As can be seen, the epistemic verbs in Example 67 are followed by a complete

sentence functioning as the object of the verb. Unlike in English, there is no so-
called ‘complementizer’ (i.e. that) attached to the noun clause.
Nominal clauses can also serve as the subject of a sentence, like those in
English (e.g. That he was gay had no effect on the quality of his work).
Both sentences in Example 68 contain a smaller sentence functioning as the
subject of the larger sentence. Note that when the Chinese sentences are
translated into English, a complementizer, that, has to be added to the beginning
of the nominal clause in order to maintain the grammaticality of the English
sentence. In Chinese, it is much more difficult to identify the nominal structure as
there is no surface marking of any kind.
We will examine Chinese adjective clauses next. The main departure from
English here is that whereas an English relative clause comes after the noun
being described (Children who cannot swim well should remain in shallow
water), the Chinese relative clause always comes before the noun
‘swim-technique not-good de5 children
should stay-at shallow-water-zone’). Furthermore, while an English relative
clause is characterized by a relative pronoun (who, which etc.), in Chinese there is
no relative pronoun but there is a functional item which serves to ‘wrap up’
the relative clause and mark the unit as an adjective phrase (AP). An AP of this
kind thus consists of a full sentence and a functional item . The descriptor is
attached to a Chinese adjective phrase/clause just like a relative pronoun leads an
English relative clause. This analogy is illustrated by Example 69. In particular,
Example 69b is a hybrid sentence with English words arranged in Chinese
syntactic fashion where the relative clause is concerned.

Example 69

a You can’t beat the person [who never gives up]. (English)
b You can’t beat the [ never give up de5 ] person. (Chinese-style English)
Example 69a shows an English sentence with a relative clause (who never gives
up) enclosed by brackets. A crucial element to this relative clause is the relative
pronoun who, which semantically represents the person in the main clause and
grammatically signals the beginning of the clause. The entire clause follows the
noun it describes (i.e. person). This is not how a Chinese adjective clause works,
though. As explained elsewhere in this book, the Chinese adjective clause comes
before the noun it describes. A comparison of the bracketed elements between
Example 69a and Example 69b further reveals two differences: first, there is no
identifying device such as a relative pronoun at the beginning of a Chinese
adjective clause; second, there is indeed a grammatical item de5 attached to the
end of the Chinese adjective clause.
We will further analyze the internal structure of a Chinese sentence which
contains an adjective clause. The Chinese sentence in Example 70 corresponds to
the English sentence The person who stole the stuff has been caught (relative
clause emphasized). As can be seen in Example 70, the adjective clause has been
moved to the front of the object it describes (i.e. person), the relative pronoun
who is non-existent, and a new item is added to the end of the clause.

The structural notation given in Example 70 seems a bit complex at first glance.
The key point is the embedded S which represents a complete sentence and thus
contains an NP and a VP. The NP, however, is not filled in by any linguistic
device in this instance. The empty slot created by the two brackets following the
second NP notation is meant to show something that should have been here (i.e. a
subject NP if the dependent clause were to stand alone). In English this empty
slot would have been filled in by a relative pronoun (i.e. who). Whether it is the
relative pronoun in English, or the empty slot in Chinese, the position should
have been occupied by the entity that the adjective clause describes (i.e. ‘person’
in this sentence). Another special notation added in Example 70 is the AP
(standing for Adjective Phrase) which, in this instance, includes a sentence and
an ‘adjective marker’ de5 (AD). Together the sentence and the finalizing form
a descriptive unit just like situations where word level ( ‘intelligent’) or
phrase level ( ‘big-eyed’) adjectives both end with . A graphic
representation of Example 70 with structural analysis is given in Figure 3.5.
Figure 3.5 shows how a sentence combines with a descriptive marker to
form an adjective unit which is then used to describe the subject of the sentence.
Note that the subject of the embedded sentence is non-existent and is represented
by an empty square in the chart. A dotted line connecting this empty slot to the
subject noun means the noun is also the ‘notional subject’ of the embedded
sentence even though it is not realized in that particular slot. In contrast, Example
71 shows the subject noun (‘dish’) to be the ‘notional object’ of the verb (‘cook’)
in the embedded sentence.
Figure 3.5 An adjective clause with omitted subject

Just like the English relative clause, a Chinese adjective clause can offer
additional information about time, place, reason and so on. In English, this would
be a clause marked by where, when, how or why (e.g. This is the place where stars
are born). Again, in this kind of Chinese adjective clause, the wh- word is non-
existent, but the embedded sentence itself is relatively complete, in the sense that
it is not short of an essential element like the subject or the object of a verb. Two
example sentences are shown in Example 72:

In Example 72a, the sentence ‘Children live their lives’ combines with the
descriptive marker de5 to form an adjective unit to modify the noun ‘place’. In
Example 72b, the sentence ‘Dorm closes’, after being tagged by de5, is used to
describe the subject NP ‘time’.
The third and final type of embedded sentence that we will look at is the
adverbial clause. Adverbial clauses are normally not said to be ‘embedded’ as
they are more clearly set apart from the main clause (e.g. She fainted when she
saw blood) instead of being integrated with it in some way. In Chinese, however,
they also frequently appear within the main clause, usually cutting between the
NP and the VP. An adverbial clause of this kind appears in Example 73a. A
different version appears in Example 73b, which is equivalent to an English
participial phrase.
Example 73a shows the main clause ‘I cried once’ being split into two halves by
an adverbial clause ‘because he got hurt’. The adverbial clause consists of a
complete sentence ‘He got hurt’ led by a conjunctive element ‘because’ followed
by a trailing ‘so’. Subordinate conjunctions like ‘because’, ‘although’, ‘if’ etc.
often come with a second element in Chinese which mediates between the
adverbial clause and the main clause (similar to the pair If … then … in English).
The subordinate conjunction pair in Example 73a is where the first
element introduces the cause and the second part brings out the consequence.
The second element is optional for this set of conjunctions and can only be
followed by a VP (as opposed to a full main clause). Example 73b shows a
simplified kind of adverbial clause where the subject of the embedded sentence is
omitted. This is a frequently used structure in Chinese. Example 74 consists of
two more sentences of this type.
Another pair of subordinate conjunction appears in Example 74a, , which
functions in the same way as in Example 73a. Like Example 73b though,
the embedded sentence in Example 74a is without a subject NP. This is, then, like
an infinite phrase or a prepositional phrase in English. In 74b, the subordinate
conjunctions disappear altogether. The embedded sentence ‘wearing a mask’ is an
adverb phrase (AP) of some sort, specifying the circumstances when the claim of
the main clause ‘I look prettier’ is true.
To conclude this section, let us look at a longer sentence which seems to
consist of all three kinds of embedded sentence.
The main clause of Example 75 is ‘Cameron insisted (on something)’. The main
verb then takes a noun clause ‘(Cameron) met with the Dalai Lama’ as its object.
The noun clause itself includes an embedded adjective clause ‘(the Dalai Lama)
visited London’. Finally, adding to this already complex sentence is an adverbial
clause ‘(Cameron) disregarded China’s strong opposition’ which gives some
background information about the main event. All three subjects in the
dependent clauses are omitted.

3.11 COORDINATED SENTENCES

Coordination involves two or more sentences being strung together by a
coordinating conjunction in a unit of expression, such as He cried but no one
listened. In Chinese, coordinating conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘so’ are
not so prevalently or consistently used. In many cases, two or more sentences
produced in a particular order are coordination enough and no superficial device
is needed to connect them into a larger structure. The logical relationships
between the series of sentences will be evident from the context if no conjunctive
device is given. First we consider a few coordinated sentences connected by some
commonly used conjunctions. Then we look at pairs or groups of sentences in a
coordinative relationship without the help of surface connectors.

The three sentences in Example 76 each consist of two independent clauses which
are connected by a coordinating conjunction – ‘but’, ‘and’ and ‘so’ respectively.
The structural and semantic relationships between the pairs of independent
clauses joined together by their particular connector are very similar to their
counterparts in English. In Chinese, however, the three kinds of logical
relationships – contrastive, additive and causal – can be correctly interpreted by
a native speaker when no superficial connectors are used. Some examples of
coordination without conjunctions can be seen in Example 77:
Example 77a consists of two independent clauses demonstrating an additive
relationship (‘rice burned’ + ‘dish ruined’) but there is no conjunctive device to
string the two together except for a Chinese-style comma. The inter-sentential
relationship is arrived at through consecutively processing the two sentences and
building up the semantic connection in an intuitive fashion. Likewise, Example
77b demonstrates a contrastive relationship between the two clauses (‘a night
market full of crowds’ but ‘no one patronizing the meat soup stalls’) without
using an overt conjunction. Likewise, the two clauses in Example 77c are causally
related (‘no water in the dorm’ → ‘student using fire hydrant to shower) and
there is no overt conjunction to show the relationship. Obviously, such a
connection is made intuitively by Chinese native speakers reading the sentence,
but it may be less easy for non-native speakers and may take them longer to
work out the logical relationship.
Not only coordinated sentences but also subordinated sentences can come
without superficial conjunctions. Structurally, both types of connected sentences
would then look exactly the same, being deprived of leading or intervening
conjunctions. For example, in Example 78a, the first clause states the reason
(‘climate warms up’) with the main clause stating the outcome (‘plants blossom
early’). In Example 78b, the first clause gives the background information (‘heavy
rain causes flooding’) with the main clause stating the highlighted information
(‘The Czech Republic is in a state of emergency’).

When coordinated sentences are not connected by conjunctions, in many cases

they can still be identified by certain adverbial elements which show the
relationship. Example 77a is a case in point, where the adverbial element ‘also’
appears at the second clause to give the additive connotation. More examples like
this follow in Example 79:
All three sentences in Example 79 consist of two coordinated clauses without
overt conjunctions mediating between the two. However, each of the complicated
sentences has an adverbial element usefully embedded in the second installment
to relate it to the previous clause. In Example 79a, for example, the morpheme
helps mark ‘mother has cancer’ as additional information to ‘father died of car
accident’. In Example 79b, the morpheme helps develop a quick contrast
between ‘buyer paid deposit’ and ‘seller backed out’. In Example 79c, the
disyllabic unit ‘cannot but’ also implies a kind of semantic relation between
two propositions. In this case, it helps point out its host sentence (‘I climb stairs’)
as an inevitable consequence of the previous sentence (‘Elevator broke down’).
Other means are also used to help facilitate the interpretation of coordination
between two sentences. Cohesion, for examples, plays a role in linking the two
independent clauses together in Example 77b, where ‘meat soup stall’ and ‘night
market’ demonstrate a ‘part-whole’ relationship. In Example 77c, ‘water’ appears
in both clauses, forming a lexical cohesive tie (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Two
more examples of coordinated sentences connected by cohesive devices are
shown in Example 80:

In Example 80a, the same morpheme ‘electricity’ appears in both independent

clauses, making a connection between the two (i.e. lexical cohesion). In Example
80b, ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ are antonyms, constituting a cohesive tie of the
‘collocation’ kind (Halliday and Hasan 1976). This kind of cohesion no doubt
helps language users realize the semantic relationships between the coordinated
sentences without the explicit guidance of a conjunction.
A symmetrical structure between the two independent clauses is also a means
for forming coordinative relationships. Earlier we saw an example in Example
77a, where ‘rice is burnt’ and ‘dish is ruined’ are structurally symmetrical,
making it easier to see the connection between the two sentences. Two more
examples of this kind are shown in Example 81:
Example 81a shows a perfect structural symmetry between the two independent
clauses – ‘North Korea’ against ‘South Korea’, ‘release’ versus ‘express’ and ‘good
will’ contrasting with ‘welcome’. Symmetrical couplets like these are frequently
seen in Chinese poetry and other genres such as newspaper headlines. Structural
similarity is an invitation for readers to interpret each sentence in relation to the
other to arrive at the intended meaning. Example 81b follows the same routine in
contrasting ‘economy’ with ‘bank’, ‘growth’ with ‘bad debt’ and ‘decline’ with
‘increase’. The causal relationship between the two propositions can be better
arrived at if the reader realizes the two sentences are related through a perception
of structural symmetry.

3.12 EXTENDED SENTENCES

Extended sentence (ES) is a term I use in this book to refer to a Chinese text
consisting of two or more sentences which are not appropriately coordinated and
the entire unit is marked by a terminating Chinese-style period . As noted
earlier in this chapter, while discussing the extended sentence in Example 7, a
Chinese period does not really mark the boundary of a sentence, or any precisely
defined unit, but is often loosely used to mark the combination of a series of
related sentences or a very long and complicated sentence. It may be useful,
therefore, to invent another term to refer to this kind of long structure which
must correspond to some kind of conceptual unit in the Chinese native speaker’s
mind. An example of the extended sentence thus defined is shown in Example 82:
Example 82 clearly consists of three sentences which together complete a mini-
story: 1. Footbridge collapsed, 2. Woman fell off bridge, and 3. Firemen sent her
to hospital. In this case, the Chinese style comma usefully marks the
boundaries between sentences. In many cases, however, the use of a comma
within an extended sentence is more confusing than helpful in terms of structural
delineation. Example 83 is a case in point.
Example 83 is the beginning paragraph of an online news report. It is also an
extended sentence as defined in this section, consisting of more than one sentence
and concluding with an ending Chinese-style period. The division of Example 83
into five sections is based on the permitted number of comma-marked units on
each line space, which in this case happens to coincide with five distinguishable
structures from the paragraph. The first line, 83a, is a simple sentence with a clear
NP-Adv-VP structure. It gives the background of the story that follows. The next
line, 83b, is also a simple sentence having the structure of NP-VP which
introduces the student in question. 84c is a coordinated sentence of some sort
comprising two independent clauses (‘She did not know Chinese’ and ‘She is
good at both Mandarin and Taiwanese’). However, the subject (‘Chen Lin’) of
both sentences is omitted so their sentential status may be questionable. Next,
83d is a sentence consisting of one NP (‘she’) and two VPs – ‘delivered a speech’
and ‘brought the house down’. The second VP is separated from the main
sentence by a comma and no further conjunction is present (in English a
conjunctive device like and would have been obligatory). Finally, 83e consists of
a main clause ‘She promised her classmates’ and a noun clause ‘She would return
to Taiwan to attend university’ serving as the content of the promise.
Thus, the extended sentence shown as Example 83 consists of three simple
sentences (83a, 83b and 83d), a possible coordinated sentence (83c) and a complex
sentence (83e). Because of the intervention of Chinese-style commas, sentential
boundaries are neutralized (i.e. commas are used to mark not only sentences but
also structures within sentences) and can only be recovered through in-depth
structural analysis. This is why ‘extended sentence’ seems a more practical term
to use in Chinese running text than simply ‘sentence’. The comma, on the other
hand, can delineate anything from a phrase, to a sentence, to a structure longer
than a sentence. It is useful in terms of semantic grouping and the segmentation
of particularly lengthy structures (bearing in mind that a favorable reading span
in Chinese is about 12 syllables), but it also releases confusing information that
may be unhelpful to structural processing. To make this point clearer, in the next
example, we examine another extended sentence by looking at comma-delineated
units one at a time.
As can be seen from Example 84, the extended sentence is divided by seven
commas into eight sections. Each section is either a sentence, a clause or an
additional portion of a sentence, as shown in the structural analysis below:
a NP (as a location phrase of c)
b AP (adverbial clause to c)
c S (main clause of a complex sentence)
d S (simple sentence)
e VP (additional predicate for d)
f S (simple sentence)
g S (simple sentence)
h VP (additional predicate for g)

Chinese-style commas are therefore not very consistent in labeling structures

since they are habitually used to mark miscellaneous units. The Chinese-style
period, on the other hand, is more helpful, but it does not correspond to a
sentence boundary in the way an English period does. Rather, as Examples 82–84
show, the Chinese-style period seems to mark the conclusion of a mini-story, a
section of a longer narration, which normally consists of more than one sentence.
It may be tempting to equate the Chinese period to a paragraph marker based
on the above demonstration, but, in many cases, two or more periods can appear
in the same paragraph, splitting the paragraph into two or more conceptual units.
In fact, the Chinese-style period is used to mark the end of a paragraph, an
extended sentence, or even a simple sentence. The following example will
illustrate this point. Example 85 is a Chinese text appearing as the third
paragraph of a news report, extracted in original form for the reader to observe
the three Chinese-style periods scattered about in this paragraph in addition to
the period which concludes the paragraph. The text is further analyzed in
Examples 86–89.

Example 85 consists of four units defined by the four Chinese-style periods. Each
unit includes at least one sentence, as analyzed below:
Unit 1: one complex sentence, one simple sentence
Unit 2: a coordinated sentence
Unit 3: three simple sentences
Unit 4: one simple sentence

The first unit marked by a Chinese-style period is annotated in Example 86:

Example 86 is an extended sentence as defined in this book since it consists of

two simple sentences connected by a comma and ending with a Chinese-style
period. Semantically and pragmatically, it offers a prologue to the entire story,
paving the way for further development of the story. The next unit is a
coordinated sentence consisting of two simple sentences.
The second unit of Example 85, shown above as Example 87, consists of two
sentences coordinated by a conjunctive device ‘leading to’. By definition this is a
pair of well-coordinated sentences and is not an extended sentence. However, the
fact that it is demarcated by a Chinese-style period means it is a stand-alone
section of a story, a legitimate conceptual unit. In this case, the unit gives the
main theme of the story – that the girl was attacked by voracious dogs due to her
unwillingness to share the food. The next unit consists of three simple sentences.

By definition, Example 88 is an extended sentence as it consists of at least two

stand-alone sentences. Although Examples 88b and 88c look like a pair of
coordinated sentences, there is no overt conjunctive device. A cohesive device
(‘two of …, the other two …’) does exist to reveal the connection between the two.
Altogether, this extended sentence serves the pragmatic function of offering
background information, implying who were to blame for the unusual event
(which resulted in a girl’s death).
The fourth and final unit in Example 85 is a short simple sentence which
concludes the paragraph and is marked by a Chinese-style period.

Example 89 is, in fact, a meta-statement of Examples 88b and 88c, summarizing

the traits of the two kinds of dogs involved. As its content resides on a more
abstract level than the previous unit, it makes sense that it is separated from the
main story by two Chinese-style periods (instead of it being preceded by a
comma and subsumed into the previous ES). The ‘conceptual demarcation’
function and the legitimacy of the ES unit seem well supported by how this text
is marked by punctuation.
In this section, we have seen how the term ‘extended sentence’ is useful for
delineating a semantic-pragmatic unit which can span a few sentences. We have
noted how the Chinese-style period is consistently used to demarcate an
extended sentence, separating one conceptual unit from another in a text. Given
that the period is also used to mark the end of a single sentence, we might
consider the term of ‘conceptual sentence’ too, which is essentially what the
Chinese period is used to demarcate.

3.13 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have adopted the concepts and terms habitually used to
discuss English grammar to examine types of sentences in Chinese. Many
similarities between English and Chinese sentences surfaced during the process.
In particular, both languages appear to share the basic sentence structure of NP
and VP, in the same order. Both languages also have the same types of
independent clauses embedded in a complex sentence – nominal, adjectival and
adverbial clauses. Within this largely homogeneous picture, however, there are
dissimilarities which reveal the significant traits of Chinese sentences. For
example, a simple Chinese sentence can have ‘run-on VPs’; that is, several VPs
predicating an NP without proper coordination between them. Two coordinated
sentences can appear without an overt coordinating conjunction, just like a
subordinate sentence can come without a subordinating conjunction.
Mechanically, we also found the use of two main punctuation devices – the
Chinese-style comma and period – to be very different from their English
counterparts. In particular, the Chinese period carries out a more conceptual than
grammatical function; it is often used to mark a distinct section of a narration (or
argumentation). This offers the inspiration for the term ‘extended sentence’ used
in this book to refer to a series of sentences marked by a Chinese-style period
which form a conceptual or pragmatic unit in a text. The Chinese comma, on the
other hand, can be used to mark a phrase, a sentence, or a structure longer than a
sentence (before a semantic-pragmatic unit is concluded by a period).
CHAPTER 4
Speech acts

When a sentence is spoken in the real world (referred to as an ‘utterance’), it

carries with it the speaker’s intention, the purpose it is supposed to fulfill and the
likely effect it is going to have on the listener(s). From this perspective, the
speaker is conducting a ‘speech act’ when they utter a sentence. In this chapter,
we consider how native speakers of Chinese use language to do things. First we
discuss different kinds of speech acts with authentic examples. Then we focus on
how to ask questions in Chinese and how to create negative sentences.

4.1 SPEECH ACT CATEGORIES

Searle (1969) distinguishes five speech act categories:

• Representatives: Speaker asserts something believed to be true.

○ She was a very good swimmer.
• Directives: Speaker requests the listener to do something.
○ Please keep your voice down!
• Commissives: Speaker commits themself to a future course of action.
○ We will always be there to support those who need help.
• Expressives: Speaker reveals their psychological state.
○ Thank you for the meat!
• Declaratives: Speaker brings about a new state of affairs.
○ You are now the registered owner of the property!

These speech act categories are valid across all languages, including Chinese.
Most of the sentences discussed in Chapter 3 are ‘representatives’, where speakers
share something which they believe to be true. These will not be further
discussed here. We also touched upon imperative sentences in Chapter 3 when
discussing subjectless sentences. In English, an imperative normally starts with a
verb (Come in! Shut up!); in Chinese many more varieties exist. We will have a
closer look at the ‘directive’ sentences in this chapter. First we revisit the Chinese
command starting with a verb, like those in English.

All the Chinese imperative sentences in Example 1 start with a verb, which
translates into English sentences in a straightforward manner because of the
structural correspondence. A sentence final particle (SFP) is added to the end
of Example 1b to ‘soften’ the request. Example 1c includes two commands which
would require a conjunction like and to join them in English.
In Chinese, it is possible to add an adverb in front of the verb in forming an
imperative sentence. In English, it would be more acceptable to say Walk slowly!
than *Slowly walk!
Instead of starting the command with a verb, sentences Examples 2a–c each start
with an adverb – ‘slowly’, ‘quickly’ and ‘definitely’ respectively.
As in English, an honorific term like ‘please’ can be added to the front of
an imperative to make the request more polite. However, this tends to happen
only on formal occasions in Chinese where is incorporated in fixed phrases
such as that in Example 3a. Otherwise the word is comparatively less heard in
daily interactions. As a result, a Chinese person speaking English may sometimes
‘forget’ to use the word ‘please’ and may be (mistakenly) perceived to be
‘impolite’. Conversely, a foreign language learner using the Chinese too much
may well be perceived to be too formal and ‘pretentious’.
The morpheme in Example 3a coincides with the English please in function
and meaning when used in a request. However, this is where the similarity ends.
The Chinese , when used as a verb, means ‘to invite’, ‘to treat with food’ and
so on (while the English please means ‘to make happy’). Also different from
English, apart from , there are other honorific items in Chinese with different
degrees of formality, sincerity and urgency. For example, , appearing in
Example 3b, is at the same level of formality as the English please. Another term,
, in Example 3c sounds much more sincere and urgent. The verb with
duplicated morphemes, , in Example 3d is the strongest form to be used in a
request in terms of degree of urgency and desirability for the listener’s action.
Unlike English imperatives, where the subject of the sentence is more
frequently omitted, the Chinese imperative often includes the person it is
addressed to in the sentence, which in most cases is the second person pronoun.
Example 4a looks different from its appropriate English translation – the subject
is omitted in the English imperative and the Chinese verb comes after the
adverbs. In Example 4b, the second person pronoun appears after .
A Chinese imperative sentence can also be a command or suggestion intended
for the first person plural (‘we’). Some examples follow:

Example 5a starts with the so-called ‘inclusive we’ – the suggested action is for
both the speaker and the listeners. In Example 5b, the term ‘big-home
(everybody)’ is used to address ‘everyone within hearing range’ and invite them
to join in the proposed action.
The subject of an imperative sentence need not always be a pronoun. It can
also be a common noun or a descriptive phrase, as the following examples show:
Example 6a addresses motorists as a whole, suggesting they should pay attention
to road safety. Example 6b uses an adjective phrase to name the persons to whom
the action is proposed.
Sometimes the first element of an imperative sentence is neither a description
nor a named person, but is a term that is relevant to the proposed action. Some
examples follow:
In Examples 7a and 7b, the addressee is told to perform some action related to
one of their body parts – the head and the eyes respectively. These body parts
appear as the first element of the imperative sentence. In 7c, the ‘clapping sound’
occupies the thematic position but it is only an ‘instrument’ in this command (the
addressees being the plural ‘you’ who are invited by the speaker to join in the
hand-clapping action). In 7d, ‘light in the house’ is the first element of the
command, which again is the object of an action to be carried out by the hidden
subject – the second person pronoun.
Thus, we saw that the first constituent in a Chinese imperative sentence can be
a verb (like in English), an adverb, a polite word, a pronoun, a common noun, an
adjective phrase, and so on. This is different from English, where an imperative
sentence normally allows a verb, the word please, or occasionally the second
person pronoun you, to occupy the thematic position.
While the ‘directive’ speech act represents the speaker’s intention to get the
addressee to do something, the ‘commissive’ represents a commitment made by
the speaker to a future action; for example, when giving a promise. In English,
this may be done by the overt use of a ‘performative’ verb such as ‘promise’ or by
using a modal auxiliary like will or shall to show the determination of the
speaker. In Chinese, performative verbs also exist, as well as auxiliaries revealing
a speaker’s commitment.

Example 8a shows the use of the performative verb ‘promise’ which subsumes
the speech act in its meaning. The auxiliary in 8b, on the other hand,
reveals the speaker’s commitment to the proposed action.
The ‘expressive’ kind of speech act is less associated with a particular structure
or type of sentence. This speech act can also be realized as a ‘joint act’ with some
other speech act in the same host sentence. For example, Shut up your big mouth!
not only conducts a ‘directive’ speech act, it also shows the speaker’s strong
emotion (i.e. being ‘expressive’). A command given to the listener can be with or
without personal feelings, as illustrated by the following pair of sentences.
Both sentences in Example 9 ask the listener(s) to physically get away from the
current location; that is, they both carry out a ‘directive’ function. However, in
terms of emotion, Example 9a sounds formal and detached, whereas 9b seems
loaded with anger and hatred. Therefore, we can say that Example 9a conducts a
‘directive’ speech act solely, while 9b carries out both ‘directive’ and ‘expressive’
functions. More Chinese sentences which include an ‘expressive’ speech act are
shown in Example 10:
Example 10a seems to carry out two speech acts simultaneously: a
‘representative’ act to convey the speaker’s belief about the truthfulness of the
statement, and an ‘expressive’ act to reveal the speaker’s emotional state.
Example 10b is an invitation (‘directive’) which also shows the speaker’s positive
and pleasant attitude (‘expressive’). Example 10c shows the speaker’s
determination (‘commissive’) as well as revealing her deep affection for the
addressee. Example 10d, while incorporating a performative verb ‘hit to death’ to
reflect the action being taken, also shows the speaker’s resentment toward the
addressee.
The final category of speech act to be considered in Chinese is the ‘declarative’,
where the speaker is said to bring about a new state of affairs, such as the boss
saying You are fired! to an employee or the minister saying I now pronounce you
husband and wife to a wedding couple. Some Chinese examples follow:
The so-called ‘felicity conditions’ apply to declarative sentences. For example, for
someone to say You are fired! they must have the authority to do so and in
appropriate circumstances. For Example 11a to be valid, it must be said by a
politician who is thinking about retiring or changing profession. The speaker in
Example 11b must be a house owner who wishes to pass the ownership to
someone else or a lawyer passing the legal documents on to a client. The
addressee of Example 11c must really owe the speaker money in order for the
statement to be valid.
Some utterances can cause ambiguity in speech act interpretation, like
Example 12a below.
There are at least three ways to interpret Example 12a. In Example 12b, the
sentence is considered to be a report of fact. The sentence is interpreted as a
promise in Example 12c. Alternatively, it can be interpreted as a command (‘I
give an order for us to go to the zoo next week’) as in Example 12d.

4.2 QUESTIONS
Because using questions to request information (i.e. a ‘directive’ speech act) is a
very important function of language, different ways of asking questions in
Chinese are discussed separately in this section.

4.2.1 Yes/no questions

There are many ways of asking yes/no questions in Chinese, just as there are in
English. In English, a yes/no question is asked using an auxiliary like be (Are you
ready?), do (Did you know?), have (Have they survived?), can, may, will and so
on. In Chinese, the same questions can be asked but in entirely different ways; for
example, by using a sentence-final particle (SFP) or an A-not-A construction. The
easiest way of asking a yes/no question in Chinese is to attach the SFP to the
end of a statement, which instantly turns the statement into a question. Two
questions as a result of this operation are shown in Example 13:

Both questions in Example 13 are created by adding to the end of a declarative

sentence. The removal of this SFP instantly turns the question back into a
statement. If is deleted from Example 13a, for example, the question is
reverted to a claim that ‘Japanese is easy to learn’. The same is true for Example
13b: if is removed, what remains is a conviction that ‘the world needs nuclear
energy’.
Another question particle equal to in function but much less used is
This morpheme, used as a question marker, only appears in written Chinese and
not in the spoken language. Two examples copied from the web are shown in
Example 14:

Another way to ask yes/no questions in Chinese is to use the A-not-A

construction, where A is (the first syllable of) an auxiliary, a verb, an adjective,
and so on. Two examples of A-not-A questions using auxiliaries are presented in
Example 15:
A-not-A questions as shown in Example 15 are essentially a kind of yes/no
question because they require either a positive (yes) or a negative (no) answer.
An easier way to conceptualize the Chinese A-not-A construction is to group it
into the (A) (not-A) configuration and to understand the question as demanding a
choice between (A) or (not-A). For example, Example 15a asks the reader to
provide an opinion as to whether a pregnant woman can eat mango or not. The
author of Example 15b, on the other hand, probes the question of whether the UK
should leave the EU or not.
Two frequently seen A-not-A constructions are the [shi4 not shi4] and the
[you3 not you3] constructions. One example of each is provided in Example 16:

Both questions in Example 16 require only a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer. While

Example 16a asks the reader to confirm the identity of ‘today’ using the linking
verb , 16b uses the existential verb to request info about whether there are
ghosts in the world. Note that when the ‘A’ is in the A-not-A construction, the
‘not’ is represented by rather than the usual This is because is an
established combination, while is not.
The A-not-A construction also applies to Chinese adjectives and verbs to form
yes/no questions in a quick way, as Example 17 shows.

Note that when a disyllabic unit is used in an A-not-A construction, only the first
syllable is needed in the first A position (while the full two-syllable unit is
required for the second A), as in Example 17b.
The A-not-A construction can sometimes be replaced by an X- construction
where means ‘not X’. Therefore [X fou3] equals X-not-X in meaning. This
usage occurs almost exclusively in written language. Some examples are given in
Example 18:
The in Example 18a equals and the in Example 18b equals
in both meaning and function. The former normally appears in written
documents, the latter primarily in oral communication.

4.2.2 Alternative questions

To answer an alternative question, the hearer or reader only has to choose one
from the two or more options provided. In English, alternative questions are
made using a coordinating conjunction like or (e.g. Deal or no deal?). In Chinese,
equivalent items exist such as and , both of which mean ‘or’. Two
examples are provided in Example 19.

Example 19a shows one of the most frequently used devices for making Chinese
alternative questions – Example 19b shows another one – . The
morpheme can also be used alone or in another combination, , to mean
the same thing (‘or’).
There are other ways of making alternative questions, although these are much
less frequently seen in comparison to those in Example 19. One of the methods is
using ‘which one?’ following a list of two or more items. Two examples are
given in Example 20:

Both questions in Example 20 take the form of a list followed by a question. First,
a list of usually two items is provided, then the hearer or reader is asked to pick
one. This is the case in Example 20a. For Example 20b, however, the list consists
of four items and the reader is asked to choose the most preferred option.

4.2.3 ‘Wh-’ questions

Again, all the wh- questions that can be asked in English (Who?, What?, Why?,
How?) can be asked in Chinese. However, there is a fundamental difference in the
machinery for generating wh- questions between Chinese and English. In
English, all the wh- questions have to start with a wh- word (e.g. What would
you like?). In Chinese, the wh- word remains ‘where it should be’ in the question.
For example, the question ‘What would you like?’ in Chinese becomes
? (‘You like what?’). Being the object of the verb ‘like’, the Chinese
wh- word remains where the object of ‘like’ would be in the sentence – directly
after the verb, whereas in English, what is interposed to the front of the question.
The difference is captured graphically in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1 The different locations of the wh- word in English and Chinese
 As Figure 4.1 shows, unlike English where all question words are placed at the
front, the Chinese wh- word stays where the answer word should be in the
corresponding statement. Thus, in terms of ‘what’, there is a wide range of
possible positions for it in a Chinese question, as Example 21 shows.

The word (sometimes written as ) plays different grammatical roles in

the questions of Example 21. In Example 21a, is the object of the verb ‘say’.
In Example 21b, it is the subject of the sentence. In Example 21c, is the
complement following the linking verb to explain the subject. In Example 21d,
functions as an adjective to modify ‘meaning’. As can be seen, all these
instances of are placed at the slot where the answer would have been if the
sentence were a statement rather than a question. This is like saying He knows
what? rather than What does he know? in English.
Like ‘what’, the wh- word representing ‘who’ in Chinese is a noun and appears
in similar positions (except in 21d, where is used as an adjective). Example
22 offers two questions involving the use of .
In Example 22a, is the subject of the sentence that ‘stole the money’. In
Example 22b, is the object of the verb ‘seek’.
So far we have seen wh- words as nouns, i.e. and . Undoubtedly, there
are also adverbial question words in Chinese equivalent to the English when and
where. Examples of Chinese question words regarding location are given in
Example 23.
First of all, we notice that the Chinese equivalent of where behaves more like a
noun rather than an adverb. For example, in 23a, the question word forms a
prepositional phrase with the preceding preposition , a characteristic of a noun.
The same is true for Example 23c. In Examples 23b and 23d, on the other hand,
both and serve as the object of the verb ‘go’ (which is a transitive
verb in Chinese), again the regular function of a noun.
The prototypical form of Chinese where is , which appears in Example
23a. However, there are various other forms which all mean the same thing, as
shown in Examples 23b–d. Note that all of these variants contain the morpheme
, which can also stand alone as in Example 23b.
The morpheme in Example 23b, when standing alone, can mean ‘where’.
However, has a broader meaning somewhat equivalent to ‘which’ if followed
by a classifier; for example, ? ‘Which one?’, ‘Which kind?’,
‘Which person?’ and so on. The orthographic form of na3, represented in
Example 13 as , is easily confused with another syllable na4 ‘there’. To
make the matter worse, some native speakers do not distinguish between the two
in writing and use the latter to represent both na3 and na4 orthographically.
Because of the position of question words in Chinese, a declarative sentence
containing and a question using can look exactly the same apart from the
ending punctuation marks. An example is given in Example 24 below to illustrate
this point.

Example 24a is an actual sentence, used as a question on the web. As already

mentioned, many people do not distinguish between and orthographically
and use instead of for a question. An unambiguous orthographic form for
Example 24a is However, when the question is written as
as in Example 24a, it is indistinguishable from Example 24b, which is a
statement. To recognize 24b as a question, the reader will have to rely on the help
of the context.
As for the Chinese question words concerning time, there is no predominant
form like which asks about the location. Several forms are possible for
asking about the time. Some examples are provided in Example 25:
Table 4.1 Comparison of the frequency of question words for place and time

Note: As of 1 January 2014

If the locational question word behaves like a noun, the temporal question
words introduced in Example 25 behave more like adverbs. A typical position for
an adverb to appear within a Chinese sentence is between the subject and the
verb; for example, ‘I fell ill yesterday’, ‘He gradually
becomes old’ and so on. Similarly, the time question word appears between
the subject and the verb in Example 25b. If a location question word like is
placed in a similar slot, a preposition is normally required, for example,
‘You-at-where-study?’
The question word appearing in Example 25a is the rough equivalent of
of Example 23a in the dimension of time. However, it is not overwhelmingly
popular as a question word about time. There are more popular forms, like
and but, predominantly, the most common usage is especially in
the spoken language. Table 4.1 offers a comparison of frequency of usage among
various question words in terms of both place and time.
As suggested by Table 4.1, the most popular item for asking about location is
and the most frequently used item for asking about time is All
the other question words are much less used than these two terms.
Like other question words, there is also more than one Chinese counterpart for
the English wh- question word how, asking about the manner in which
something is done. Some possible Chinese equivalents of how are shown in
Example 26:
Example 26 first shows a series of questions all using a variant of ‘how’. A
completely different form of ‘how’, then appears in Example 26e, which is
more often used in writing than in the spoken language. The morpheme is the
simplest form of ‘how’ in Chinese and is rarely used alone. It can combine with
or or both into three different configurations as shown in Examples 26b–d,
all of which have identical meaning and function.
A phrase which Chinese speakers often use as an extension of is
which means ‘What can one do?’ Two examples illustrating the usage of
are given in Example 27:

It can be seen from Example 27 that normally occurs at the end of a

sequence (or it may also act as an independent utterance). Usually an event is
given as a premise and, in the face of some dire consequences, the speaker solicits
advice on what to do next.
The final wh- word to tackle is why, for which there is a prototypical form:
‘for-what’. There are also variant forms such as and . Some
examples are given in Example 28:
In Example 28a, as an adverbial question word appears between the
subject ‘people’ and the verb ‘can grow old’. In Example 28b, appears at
the beginning of a question, followed by a full sentence. In Example 28c, a
condition is given (‘being ill’) before a question is asked about the necessity of an
injection. Example 28d uses a colloquial form of , that is, , which has
no place in formal language. On the contrary, as shown in Example 28e, is
mostly used in written language.
Another common question morpheme is ‘how many’, often used to ask
about quantities of countable things. It is normally coupled with a classifier.
Some examples follow in Example 29.
The quantity question item is normally followed by a classifier specific to a
certain category of nouns. In Example 29a, this is , normally used to describe
living things which can age. In Example 29b, the classifier is , which is widely
used to label clothing, sports goods, objects in a series, and so on. In Example 29c,
however, appears in an unusual position – it follows a noun ‘week’ rather than
preceding a classifier. This is because days of a week are said in this way in
Chinese: ‘week-one’ for Monday, ‘week-two’ for Tuesday and so
on. To question what day of the week it is, the number is replaced by the
morpheme , which, according to the Chinese wh-question formation rule,
appears at the same place as the expected answer (i.e. the number). Thus
‘week how-many’ means ‘What day of the week?’ When precedes ,
however, to become , then it means ‘How many weeks?’ instead, as is the
normal usage of (i.e. being followed by a unit for counting).
Another frequently used question item concerning quantity is ‘plenty’. Some
example usages involving this morpheme appear in Example 30:
Note that in English, when asking about the measurement of something, by
default we use words on the ‘top end’ (How tall?) rather than those on the
‘bottom end’ (How short?) The same is true for Chinese. Hence, we have ‘How
heavy?’ in Example 30a, ‘How tall?’ in 30b, ‘How big?’ in 30c, ‘How far?’ in 30d
and ‘How long?’ in 30e, all consisting of the morpheme and a ‘top end’
measure morpheme like , and so on.
A fixed combination involving the use of is literally ‘many-few’ but
meaning ‘How many?’ or ‘How much?’ This is a very frequently used question
word to ask about quantities.
In Example 31a, is used to ask about normal human body temperature.
Temperature is counted using the measure morpheme ‘degree’ but it can be
omitted in the presence of . In Example 31b, is followed directly by a
noun , which normally does not come with a classifier when collocating with
in a question.
A final question phrase to conclude this section is which is an abbreviated
form of , literally ‘do-what’. This is a very frequently used colloquial
expression. Some examples of its usage follow in Example 32.

Example 32a is a genuine question asking the addressee what they intend to do in
summer. Example 32b is a rhetorical question which does not expect any answer.
Both and are very frequently used expressions and can stand alone to
mean ‘What are you doing?’, ‘What do you want?’ and so on, depending on the
context. Both expressions are somewhat rude and the more polite form for both is
‘do-what’.

4.3 NEGATION
All of the five speech act categories mentioned in 4.1 can be negated. For
example, one could use the negative form of a ‘representative’ to assert
something which they believe to be false. A negative ‘directive’ would involve
telling someone not to do something. In this section, we explore some of the most
frequently used negation words or structures.
There is more than one functional item which can be used for negation in
Chinese. The most widely used is ‘not’, which can work at many levels of the
language to create a sense of negation. First of all, it combines with other
morpheme(s) to form established lexical units such as those shown below:

• Disyllabic items

º bu2cuo4 ‘not-wrong (not bad; good)’

º bu4xing2 ‘notable (no good; not allowed)’

• Trisyllabic items ( = 1st syllable)

º bu4shu1fu2 ‘not-comfortable (unwell)’

º bu4yi2yang4 ‘not-same (different)’

• Trisyllabic items ( = 2nd syllable)

º dui4bu4qi3 ‘match-not-rise (I am sorry)’

º shou4bu4liao3 ‘receive-not-end (cannot stand)’

• Quadrisyllabic item

º bu4zhi1bu4jue2 ‘not-know-not-feel (unaware)’

º bu4hao3yi4si5 ‘not-good-meaning (embarrassed)’
In English, some antonyms are created by adding a negative prefix such as un- to
the positive term (e.g. comfortable vs. uncomfortable). In Chinese, carries out
the function of a negative prefix and creates antonyms from existing words, such
as ‘different’ derived from ‘same’.
When occurs in a phrase or sentence, it normally precedes a verb, an
adjective, or an auxiliary, for example:

In negating an English auxiliary, not is added after the auxiliary (e.g. will not);
whereas in Chinese, the negative device comes before the auxiliary as the
negative sentences in Example 33 show.
In modern English, verbs are not directly negated using the negative element
not; instead, a dummy symbol do is added to form a negative structure consisting
of two words (i.e. do not, did not and so on). In Chinese, as happens with the
auxiliary, again directly prefixes the verb to form a negative structure, as
shown in Example 34:
In both sentences above, the negative morpheme directly precedes a verb to
negate it. Unlike English, no extra element is needed to perform the negation
apart from the negative morpheme itself.
The Chinese verb is often followed by a complement of some sort which
describes the result, extent, direction etc. of the action; for example, ‘sit-
down’, ‘wipe-dry’, ‘starve-dead’, ‘run-exit’ and so on. For this
kind of verb-complement structure, there are two possible locations where the
negative morpheme can be placed. If is attached to the front of the entire
structure, it denies the whole action-result sequence. If is inserted between the
verb and the complement, it has no effect on the verb but denies the consequence
of the action solely. Thus, for the positive Example 35a, there are two possible
ways to negate it, shown in Examples 35b and 35c respectively.
Example 35a is a ‘directive’, which can be a command given by the leader of a
group of soldiers trapped in a besieged house, for example. Example 35b is then
opposing the proposal of dashing out. Example 35c is a pessimistic evaluation of
the proposal. In practice, the [V Com] construction of 35c is much more
frequently seen than the [ V Com] structure in 35b. Two more sentences like
Example 35c are shown in Example 36 below.

As previously explained, for the basic [V Com] structure , two possible

negative forms exist: which means ‘not trying to open’ and which
means ‘try to but fail to open’. Thus, Example 36a shows the more frequently
used option: ‘fail to open’. Similarly, we have in 36b which means ‘have
listened but failed to understand’.
We have seen how a [V Com] unit can be negated using the form [V Com].
In fact, there is a related form, [V Com], which means that the result can
indeed be achieved by the proposed action; for example, means to break
something. There are four related expressions, like these, in Example 37.

The basic [V Com] form in Example 37a means causing something to break
by hitting – in this case, abstract tradition rather than tangible things. Example
37b, with the negative morpheme external to the entire [V Com] structure,
denies both the action of breaking and the resultant state of the tradition being
broken. Example 37c, on the other hand, uses the [V Com] construction to
deny the possibility of a broken tradition even if the action of breaking is
launched. Finally, in Example 37d, the [V Com] structure is embedded in the
question to ask whether or not the broken state of tradition could be achieved.
 We have seen how Chinese verbs can be negated by directly applying the
negative morpheme in front of the verb. The same routine also applies to
adjectives and adverbs, as the sentences in Example 38 show.

In Example 38a, the negative morpheme is added to the adjective ‘cheap’ to

create a negative structure ‘not cheap’. In 38b, is used as a negative adverb
‘not carefully’ (often meaning ‘unintentionally’) to describe the action of gum
swallowing.
The negative element can also be used to deny a phrase, as in Example 39.

In Example 39a, the speaker does not want to play ‘with you’, but they may want
to play ‘with someone else’. In 39b, the parents are not ‘at home’ but they may be
‘somewhere else’. In each case a prepositional phrase is negated.
 The negative morpheme can be modified by a degree adverb to lessen the
degree of negativity, as in Example 40:

In Example 40a, within the original negative structure , an adverbial element

is inserted to mean ‘not very good’ – a mitigated criticism. Likewise,
‘not perfect enough’ in 40b is somewhat better than ‘not perfect’ thanks to the
addition of the adverb . In 40c, the unmodified negative expression is ‘not
late’, a double negative which actually means ‘early enough’. However, since
‘quit smoking’ is important to one’s health and is difficult to accomplish, the
speaker would like any potential listener to start quitting immediately. Thus
‘not regarded as too late’ is a compromised term, which anticipates the
difficulty of quitting smoking and at the same time encourages the audience to
start the process as soon as possible. Finally, in Example 40d, the adverb
‘totally’ is used to partially deny the correctness of the answer given by the other
party. The unmodified negation ‘incorrect’ would have meant total denial.
Note that for some adverbial elements in this kind of construction, the order of
the two items (i.e. and the mitigating adverb) can be reversed. This will create
very different meanings, as illustrated in Example 41 below:
Thus, in Example 41a means ‘not very’ – a mitigated form of negation.
in Example 41b, on the other hand, means ‘very not’ – a reinforced negative
form. The two meanings differ dramatically.
Apart from , there are other negative items in Chinese which work in similar
or slightly different ways. The next item we examine is ‘none’, sometimes
partially rendered as . The differences between and are contrasted in
Example 42:

The negation of the verb ‘tell’ by in Example 42a implies intention,

determination and future action. If negated by , as in 42b, the focus is on the
non-occurrence of the action, involving deliberation or deception. More examples
of referring to non-occurrence of things are shown in Example 43:
The complex NP in Example 43a is similar to Example 42b in structure and
connotation. In both cases, the negative item helps focus on the non-
occurrence of an action and its implication. In 43b, emphasizes the speaker’s
lack of intention to steal things.
Although can be used to mean the non-occurrence of action, its primary
usage is to refer to the non-existence of objects, as shown in Example 44:

Thus, precedes a noun when denying the existence of an object. In Example

44a, the idea of a ‘free lunch’ is dismissed. In 44b, helps point out the non-
existence of water resource in 20 years’ time, in the speaker’s opinion.
In addition to denying verbs and nouns, is also used to negate adjectives
in limited circumstances, as shown in Example 45.

In Example 45a, negates a monosyllabic adjective ‘drunk’ to mean ‘not

drunk’. Not all adjectives can collocate with in this way. For example,
expressions like ‘not-have tall’, ‘not-have hot’, ‘not-
have comfortable’, ‘not-have happy’ are not highly acceptable
expressions by themselves. However, if a degree adverb like ‘to such a
degree’ is added, then the entire negative expression becomes acceptable, like that
in Example 45b.
Another frequently used Chinese negative morpheme is , normally used in
‘directive’ speech acts, as in Example 46:
The negative morpheme is used as the first element in the imperative Example
46a. This is identical in structure to a negative English imperative starting with
Do not. Example 46b, however, differs from this pattern by introducing a second
person pronoun at the beginning of the sentence. In Example 46c, ‘you’ is
replaced by a common noun, ‘the Chinese’ (i.e. offering a suggestion to all
Chinese persons in general).
Apart from the three main negative markers mentioned above, there are some
less well-used negative items with very restricted usages. The first one we look at
is ‘without’.
The negative morpheme is primarily used in written language, often surfacing
as part of an idiom or other fixed unit. In Example 47a, replaces to make
the news headline less colloquial, giving it a formal touch. In Example 47b,
combines with a negative word (‘poison’) to cancel out the negativity. This is a
word-formation rule based on . Other examples include ‘harmless’,
‘not smelly’, ‘pollution-free’, ‘obstacle-free (accessible)’ and so on,
all very formal usages.
Another negative item mainly used in formal settings is ‘not’. Some
examples are offered in Example 48:
Like , contemporary usage of is for it to be subsumed in a lexicalized unit or
an idiomatic expression rather than participating in syntactic formulation as a
free morpheme. In 48a, is part of a lexical item, ‘not-for-sale article’. In
Example 48b, appears in a quadrisyllabic fixed term, ‘dead or
injured’, which can only be used as a whole and normally in writing. In 48c,
occurs within a technical term, ‘illegal immigrants’. However, in this
case, is a moveable item and often combines with other items to form a
phrase; for example, ‘illegal means’, ‘illegal fishing’, and so
on.
A final negative item to be looked at is ‘not (yet)’, which is also usually
confined to written language.
The negative morpheme means ‘not’ or ‘not yet’ depending on context. In
Example 49a, combines with to mean ‘not yet fully (18 years of age)’.
Similarly, in 49b, negates not in an absolute sense (i.e. ‘not fully grown
yet’). In 49c, however, does negate the action of ‘seat belt fastening’ in an
absolute sense. Like and , the morpheme is predominantly used in formal,
written language.

4.4 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we explored how the Chinese language is used to express
opinions, to give commands, to offer promises, to express feelings and to bring
about changes of state. We found that the linguistic patterns used by Chinese and
English to carry out the same speech act may be structurally different. Some
critical differences have been highlighted in the relevant discussions within this
chapter.
We also examined different ways of asking questions and creating negative
sentences in Chinese. For example, we saw how differently the wh- words behave
in Chinese from those in English. We also examined a variety of negating devices
in Chinese, which again is different from English where similar words like no,
not, none and never seem to dominate the functionality of negation.
To sum up, with speech act categories explored and interrogative and negative
structures explained, we now know how the language is equipped to carry out
basic functions in daily life. In the next chapter, we explore Chinese
conversations in depth, focusing on a key ingredient – the Chinese sentence-final
particles.
CHAPTER 5
Sentence-final particles

In this chapter, we explore a range of Chinese particles primarily used in the

spoken language. Most of these particles are monosyllabic and they are mostly
discourse functional in nature. Our main focus is on sentence-final particles
(SFPs) but I also call some of them constituent-final particles (CFPs) when they
appear at the end of a constituent rather than at the end of a full sentence. A
further category in this is the independent particle (IP); these mostly appear
before the start of a sentence. We will treat the various Chinese particles as
discourse markers (DMs) and explain their meanings and functions with plenty
of examples, as used in authentic contexts.

5.1 INTRODUCTION
The sentence-final particle is a language device which is not seen in a Western
language like English. It is mainly used in spoken language and is attached to a
short sentence or phrase to provide more information on top of the lexical and
structural meaning. The SFP is a special category of functional items that a
foreigner learning the Chinese language must acquire separately, in real-life
settings, in order to understand their meanings and usage.
An SFP is outside the canonical structure of a sentence. It plays no part in
sentence formation and is not subsumed in regular grammatical frameworks. A
good way to understand the SFP is through existing discussions on discourse
markers. Schiffrin’s (1987) book, for example, proposes a model for analysing
discourse which consists of five components: • Idea Structure
• Exchange Structure
• Action Structure
• Participation Framework
• Information State

In English, according to Schiffrin, discourse markers are words and phrases like
oh, well, I mean, you know, and so on, which help organize a speaker’s ideas in
their speech (Idea Structure), reveal the speech acts performed in their utterances
(Action Structure), show their awareness of the amount and kinds of information
currently available to participants in conversation (Information State), reflect
their perception of role relationships in discourse (Participation Framework) and
show the influence of conversation structure on speaker contributions (Exchange
Structure).
Chinese SFPs can potentially be analysed using Schiffrin’s framework. Some
SFPs are indeed used to mark the idea structure of an utterance by highlighting
the saliency of a contribution, contrasting notions or entities, or sidelining a piece
of information. Some SFPs are used to indicate the speaker’s awareness of their
participatory role. Others appear at certain junctures in the conversation to help
staple the utterance into a certain position so it can be interpreted in relation to
other utterances in the vicinity. Still other SFPs help manage the knowledge pool
and information flow in discourse, by marking a piece of information as already
shared or as newly introduced information.
Fung and Carter (2007) propose a ‘functional paradigm’ for analyzing
pedagogical discourse which distinguishes four groups of functions associated
with discourse markers.

• Interpersonal: marking shared knowledge; indicating attitudes; showing

responses.
• Referential: cause; contrast; coordination; disjunction; consequence; digression;
comparison.
• Structural: opening and closing of topics; sequence; topic shifts; summarizing
opinions; continuation of topics.
• Cognitive: denoting thinking process; reformulation/self-correction;
elaboration; hesitation; assessment of the listener’s knowledge about the
utterances.

Both Schiffrin’s and Fung and Carter’s models are useful for comprehending the
functions of discourse markers as a whole and at a conceptual level. However, the
functions of Chinese SFPs are so versatile and complicated it is difficult to assign
an SFP to any individual or collection of modules proposed by these models. As
will become evident in the ensuing discussion, individual and in-depth
examinations of the SFPs are highly desirable for understanding their particular
meanings and usages.
In the following sections, around a dozen of the most commonly used
Mandarin SFPs will be examined on an individual basis. The data are collected
from contemporary Chinese reality TV shows broadcast in China or Taiwan.
Table 5.1 lists the primary Mandarin SFPs that can be heard on Chinese and
Taiwanese television. Some SFPs listed in Table 5.1 have phonetic variants which
are not shown in the table. Although is an SFP, it is already covered in Chapter
4 as a question marker and so will not be further treated here.
For sentence-final particles, the spoken forms are primary. That is, the Pinyin
notations are better approximations to their identities than the characters chosen
to represent them. Some SFPs recognized in this book have established
orthographical representations; for example, for a5, for ba5, for ne5,
for la5 and so on. Other SFPs are used in spoken Chinese but (as yet) there is no
consensus as to how to represent them in writing; for example, ye5 is variously
written as or something else.
Even more troublesome are the SFPs which have no established identities,
whether from language users’ or researchers’ points of view. For example, this
book recognizes three variants of o – o2, o5 and ou5 – and orthographically
represents them as and respectively. However, this is far from an
established practice. As will be explained later, some researchers only recognize
one kind of o in their publications. Moreover, the third o identified in this chapter
(i.e. ou5) is in fact identical to the second o (i.e. o5) in spoken form. The
representation of it as ou5 is only to avoid the confusion of having two SFPs
represented in exactly the same Pinyin notation.
Chinese language learners should bear in mind that most SFPs can only be
observed and reliably learned from the spoken language. This book may offer a
relatively complete model for understanding and identifying currently active
Chinese SFPs. However, for certain SFPs such as ye5 and the different o’s, no
consistent evidence of usage may be found in the written language. Learners
should associate the properties of these particles explained in this chapter with
their spoken forms (i.e. Pinyin) rather than tying them to the characters used
here.
Table 5.1 also shows the Google hits for each orthographically represented SFP
at the time of writing. These numbers offer a very rough impression of SFP usage
scales and rough comparisons between different SFPs and do not reflect the real
usage of SFPs in spoken language. Also, for some SFPs like and ,
there is no consensus among Chinese speakers regarding their orthographical
representations. Some researchers avoid the orthographical issue altogether by
using only Pinyin to present their work (e.g. Wu 2004). The frequency of is not
shown because the character is also used as a content element and most of the
Google hits reflect the content usage rather than the SFP function.

Table 5.1 The primary Mandarin SFPs currently in use

Pinyin Grapheme Google Frequency (December 25, Primary Function

2013)

a5 401,000,000 showing
emotion/conviction
ba5 633,000,000 marker of uncertainly
bei5 11,800,000 marker of light-
heartedness
ne5 364,000,000 marker of contrast
o2 179,000,000 giving warning
o5 66,000,000 wondering/admiring
ou5 16,600,000 seeking agreement
ma5 75,400,000 assuming shared
information
ye5 N/A expressing surprise
la5 273,000,000 dismissing
le5 1,480,000,000 aspect marker change of
state

We now turn to examine each of the SFPs in Table 5.1, using examples to
illustrate their usage in Chinese conversations.

5.2 SFP A5
 a5 is one of the most frequently used Mandarin SFPs; it is often heard in
spoken Chinese and is very versatile in discourse functions. First of all, like the
other SFP a5 can be used to turn a statement into a question.

Marker of question

When used as a question marker, participates in the process of question

formation, turning a declarative sentence into a yes/no question. A question
marked with a5 displays a mildly inquisitive, somewhat caring, attitude. This is
different from a question marked by which is either completely neutral or
used to challenge as a rhetorical question. If is replaced by in Example 1, for
example, the question could sound somewhat more impolite, almost as if the
speaker is condemning the situation or is demanding an explanation.
The SFP , when used in a question, differs from the default question marker
in one important aspect: a5 can be attached to a question which is already
made a question by other means (e.g. by containing a wh- word), but ma5 cannot
do so (i.e. it must be attached to a declarative sentence). Example 2 shows a5
attached to a sentence which is already a question without the addition of a5.
The difference between Example 1 and Example 2 will be self-evident if we strip
off both questions. The result is shown in Example 3 below.

Having been stripped of Example 3a is no longer a question. On the other

hand, Example 3b is still a question even without a5. This is, of course, because
Example 3b contains a question word . The issue then boils down to what
extra information a5 adds to the question in a situation like Example 2. It would
seem that whether a5 creates a question or is attached to a question, it expresses
the speaker’s curiosity and their attitude of concern. Without a5, Example 3b
sounds formal and nonchalant. With the addition of a5, the same question
expressed in Example 2 sounds informal, showing the speaker to be interested
and probably caring too.

Marker of engagement
The SFP used in both Example 1 and Example 2 is pronounced with a low
pitch, with a relatively weak accent. This low-pitch a5 can also be used to express
a generally friendly and engaging attitude toward the audience. Example 4
illustrates this usage of a5.

The male candidate in Example 4a is asking the host of the show to help him
with his courtship session on TV. The addition of seems to make the request
more engaging and worthy of consideration. The male in Example 4b, on the
other hand, is asking the audience to bear with him while he is trying to
memorize all the numbers the 24 female guests have written on their individual
pieces of paper, so that he can accurately match person to number later on when
asked to demonstrate his extraordinary powers of memory. The speaker is
foreseeing the inconvenience caused by his delay and is trying to make peace
with the audience using the a5-accompanied statement (‘It will be slow in
coming’) and the suggestion (‘Please wait patiently’). In both cases, a5 signals the
speaker’s continued interest in participating in the discourse and that the hearer’s
appreciation of this attitude is valued.
The low-key in Example 4 seems to show a relatively humble attitude in a
relatively unexcited manner. When a5 is said with somewhat more stress and in a
higher pitch, however, it can reveal the speaker’s emotional commitment to the
utterance, thereby giving it a degree of emphasis.

Marker of emotion

In Example 5a, the SFP is attached to praise – the female guests commenting
on a positive aspect of the male candidate. The addition of a5 makes the
comments ‘alive’ with feelings, revealing the speakers’ emotional state. The
emotion shown in Example 5b, on the other hand, is that of surprise.
Apart from revealing emotions that the speaker feels at a certain junction in
the conversation, also often helps express feelings generated by the other
speaker’s contribution. That is, a5 may carry out the interpersonal function of
‘showing response’.

Marker of Response
In Example 6, the host of the dating show asks the male candidate an easy
question – whether he is the macho person he earlier claimed to be. The answer
is obvious for the man so he says ‘correct’ with the marking of to indicate
the appropriateness of the answer to the question. That is, the SFP a5 adds an
extra dimension in this case – not regarding attitude or emotion but in the
structural domain, marking the current contribution as an obvious response and a
perfect reply to a question or a situation. The a5 used to make a response in this
way is pronounced with a higher pitch, possibly with a stronger stress and lasting
somewhat longer.
The male guest in Example 7 marks his answer to the female’s question with .
In this particular example, a5 seems to be saying ‘Where else?’ since its presence
has made the answer overwhelmingly self-evident. This makes sense as the
female has become famous for her witty remarks on that particular dating show.
Anyone interested enough to come to the show could be reasonably expected to
know her as a celebrity.

Like the previous two examples, the adjacency pair shown in Example 8 consists
of a question and an answer, and the answer is again marked with . Unlike the
previous examples, however, this answer is not particularly obvious to the male
asking the question. Nevertheless, the a5 still functions to make the answer seem
obvious so that the listener can appreciate the underlying logic (that is, she
seldom acts in kissing scenes so she does not have to avoid the scenes suggested
by the male candidate).

In Example 9, the SFP is integrated into an utterance where the host of the
show ‘attacks’ a female guest in fake anger. The utterance involved is a rhetorical
question and a5 is used to mark it as a response to the situation. Specifically, the
female calling the male an old man is thought to be ungrounded and the host’s
condemnation of that claim is a justified response to that situation.
Example 10 is a longer speech consisting of four sentences, where Li complains
about her father’s overindulgence of her. The last sentence is marked by ,
whose function in this instance is to respond to her own narrative (i.e. the
previous three sentences). The attachment of a5 seems to enable the final
sentence to ‘step aside’ and comment on the story, thanks to its normal function
of making responses. The SFP a5 also maintains its interpersonal function of
showing a self-righteous attitude to endorse the claim that ‘I am not so good!’
Example 11 illustrates the ‘distant effect’ of in responding to an utterance or
situation which occurred not immediately before but a little while ago. The
dialogue centers on the male’s earlier claim that he has never had a girlfriend in
his thirty years of life. From her first turn in Example 11, the female guest starts
to seek confirmation about the incredible information she has received. She asks
two questions in succession, both of which are answered affirmatively. It is then
in her third turn that she uses the expression ‘I think it is very good’, marked
with a5, to respond to the topic in question (i.e. a 30-year-old man not having any
experience of romance in contemporary society) rather than responding to a
recent verbal contribution. The fact that the topic and the female’s ultimate
evaluation can be connected conceptually is entirely due to the presence of a5
with its well established discourse function of making responses (i.e. as a DM
working in Schiffrin’s Exchange Structure).

Marker of a series
When several instances of appear successively at the end of a series of phrases
or sentences, it is serving the function of a ‘series marker’. In this case, a5 does
not come with the rich functional interpretations discussed earlier. It is merely a
marker of items in a list, signifying the speaker is providing members of a set
which are of particular interest at the moment.

Example 12 comes from the web which illustrates the usage of as a series
marker. Each item marked with a5 in this case is a lexical unit (cat, dog or child).
The intervention of a5 makes it unnecessary to introduce a short pause between
two items on a list when speaking. It also draws the hearer’s attention to the fact
that the items being marked by a5 should be treated as members of a set which
share some common properties.
There are four instances of in Example 13. The first one is marking the
statement ‘Just like other boys’ as an obvious answer to the question ‘How do
you chase girls?’. The other three a5’s are all series markers; two of them marking
verb phases while the last one marking a lexical item ‘breakfast’. The series
marker a5, like the response marker a5, is also pronounced with a higher pitch
and carries more stress and length.

Variants of a5
There are at least two variants of which carry out the same discourse functions
but are pronounced somewhat differently. One of them is ya5 and the other is
 na5.

Example 14 is similar to Example 2 in terms of the function of the SFP involved.

The main difference between and is in prosodic salience. The slightly more
complicated way of pronouncing ya5 seems to give it more emphasis than that
which a5 receives. In other words, ya5 seems to show more curiosity and a higher
level of engagement than a5.
Example 15 shows ya5 to be used as a marker of emotion, just like the a5 in
Example 5. Again, ya5 and a5 are interchangeable in this example, except that
ya5 may place a higher degree of emphasis on the host sentence than a5.
In Example 16, the expert on the show is responding to a situation – a male guest
claiming that he deliberately managed not to progress to the next level in school
in order to stay in the same year as the girl he liked. The use of ya5 in this
example is similar to Example 10 or 11 which illustrates the responding function
of a5. The use of both SFPs is interchangeable in these examples.

Example 17 illustrates the usage of another relatively rare variant of a5 – na5.

This variant seems to occur only when the previous syllable ends with the
alveolar nasal [n]. The sound of na5 is then a coarticulation of [n] and [a]. The
usage of na5 as an SFP is the same as a5. In the case of Example 17, it is a marker
of emotion.

5.3 SFP BA5

The discourse functions of seem to center around the idea of ‘uncertainty’. It
can help express the speaker’s uncertainty about something. It accompanies
requests for confirmation. It expresses sarcasm in an indirect way. It softens a
speaker’s command and transforms it into a suggestion or an invitation for
action.

Marker of uncertainty
While expresses a confident and self-righteous attitude, marks a statement
as tentative and uncertain.

The guest speaker in Example 18 is recounting a ghost story. She gets to the point
where she woke up in the morning and found the window open, contrary to what
she believed. She thought at the time that she might have forgotten to close the
window before going to sleep. This thought is marked with ba5 which often
collocates with the word ‘possible’ to mutually strengthen the uncertainty
expressed by the host sentence.
The male guest in Example 19 was asked why he behaved in a certain way
toward a particular female guest. He answers that it was probably because of the
female’s stunning beauty. He also marks this answer with b5 to increase the
uncertainty encoded by the word ‘possibly’. This has the effect of reducing the
directness of the praise which otherwise may seem somewhat cheeky and
impolite.

The female guest in Example 20 asks the male guest a question: whether he wears
tight trousers all the time. The man denies the allegation and then gives a phrase
to tentatively describe the real situation. There is no collocation involving a word
like ‘possible’ in this phrase. It is the SFP alone which gives the sense of
uncertainty. In other words, ba5 is serving the function of a hedge. The inclusion
of ba5 in an utterance lessens the speaker’s commitment to the claim they are
making.

In Example 21, the male guest is explaining himself by hypothesizing a situation.

Since the situation is hypothetical, it warrants the use of to mark the intrinsic
uncertainty of the conclusion (that he would choose to be an older brother to the
other girl rather than being her boyfriend – the latter scenario did happen in real
life). If ba5 were not present in Example 21, the main clause would sound like a
determination rather than an inclination.
The juvenile guest in Example 22 is asked by the host of a chat show whether her
celebrity father has told her not to disclose any secrets about him. The young girl
is in a dilemma. On the one hand, she should answer a respectable adult’s
question faithfully. On the other hand, she does not want to admit that her father
has indeed some closely guarded secrets. Therefore she uses ba5 to mark the
uncertain state of her mind – that she might be expected not to answer the
question honestly.

In Example 23, the male guest has just finished recounting the story of the loss of
both his parents. The host of the show asks him whether he misses them. Upon
this, Ma answers that he cannot afford to think of them. His reply is marked with
ba5 to show the indecisive nature of his mind rather than the uncertainty of the
statement; that is, he presumably wants to think of his parents but is too sad to
do so.

In the previous examples, marks the speaker’s cognitive and emotional state
with a degree of uncertainty. In Example 24, ba5 is shown to mark the speaker’s
judgment about others’ behavior. In cases like this, the speaker is not necessarily
unsure about their opinions. It is probably a way of showing respect to others,
admitting the unlikelihood of knowing other people’s thoughts completely.
Example 25 shows ba5 again used to mark speculation about the thinking of
others, this time to create a humorous effect. In this case, Hsu is referring to other
guests’ supposedly ill-intentioned wish to see the hostess fall on the slippery
catwalk. As the remark itself is an accusation of an unfriendly demeanor, it is
suitable to add ba5 to reduce the credibility of the sentence so that it is turned
into a joke rather than a serious accusation.

Marker of request for confirmation

Since the basic function of is to show uncertainty, it is often used to mark a
request for confirmation, especially in the form of a tag question. When ba5
accompanies a statement like that in Examples 18 to 25, it characteristically gives
a sense of uncertainty, whether out of sincerity or just being tactful. When ba5 is
used to tag a question, however, the speaker is usually fairly certain about their
proposition and only requires a minimum of confirmation from the listener.
Example 26 shows two tag questions used on two different occasions to request
confirmation from the addressee on the correctness of a certain proposition.
When ba5 is used in a tag question like this, the speaker is usually quite certain
about the proposition, and the answer is normally ‘yes’. In the case of Example
25a, for example, the host of the show already knows from his script that the
male guest is going to perform a dance. In the case of Example 26b, the speaker is
reconfirming a piece of information he received earlier from the female guest
whom he is now questioning.

In Example 27, the host of the show is referring to a behavioral pattern normally
associated with a female candidate on his show – that the palms of her hands will
sweat when she sees a male she likes. Li has earlier expressed her fondness for
the current male candidate, which means her hands are probably already
sweating; hence the host Qiu’s request for confirmation that she is already doing
so. As in Example 26, a question tagged by ba5 shows the speaker’s confidence in
the proposition. The presence of ba5 only makes the utterance into a request for
confirmation, not a real yes/no question that expects either a positive or a
negative answer. And the female guest does give the expected confirmation.
Example 28 is a typical adjacency pair involving the use of a ba5-marked
question as the first pair part, and an a5-marked answer as the second pair part.
Since the request for confirmation issued by ba5 normally expresses the speaker’s
strong belief in the proposition (in this case, that the female guest’s father would
be willing to go to his daughter’s graduation ceremony), it makes sense for the
listener to attach an a5 (marking something as an obvious response to a question
or situation) to her positive answer. The a5 helps approve the correctness of the
response and endorse the former speaker’s judgment about the obviousness of the
situation.
The dialogue in Example 29 takes place after the host of the dating show reads
out some computer jargon and messages printed on the male candidate’s T-shirt.
Having inferred that the young man must be a computer professional, Meng goes
on to ask the question ‘You work in a computer related occupation, right?’ to
which the male candidate readily answers with three instances of ‘correct’ and a
paraphrase (changing ‘computer’ to ‘IT’). Thus, a question marked with ba5 often
elicits conforming answers unless it is used to mock or challenge.

In Example 30, the hostess of the chat show presupposes that the female guest
must be a popular person in school, her father being a legendary singer. The
presupposition is subsumed in a ba5-marked question to mitigate its force in the
conversation. Even so, the request of confirmation is no more than a formality
and it is difficult for the addressee to give a negative answer, or to argue against
the presupposition. That being said, it is imprudent and impolite for a person to
admit their own popularity in school. Therefore, the female guest uses the vague
expression ‘count as one’ as a compromise (see also 5.11 for la5 as a marker
of dismissal). This shows how powerful ba5 can be in extracting a positive
answer in conversation.
In Schiffrin’s model, ba5 would function in multiple domains. For example, in
the Exchange Structure, ba5 is used in the first pair part which demands a certain
kind of response. In the Participation Framework, the use of ba5 may signify the
speaker’s superior position in knowledge, reasoning ability or authority.

Marker of satire
In some cases, is used to mark a question that does not require an answer. That
is, it is used in a rhetorical way. The purpose is usually to mock the addressee in
order to hurt them or to create a humorous effect.

The dating show involved in Example 31 requires the four female guests to turn
around if they like a certain male candidate based on his brief self-introduction
and without looking at him. One female did not turn around for a supposedly
good-looking male, and the hostess mocks her by issuing the rhetorical question
‘Surely you regret it now?’ The hearer normally need not answer such
a question, but is free to construct their reply in whichever way they like (e.g. by
offering an explanation).
Two instances of ba5 are involved in Example 32. The first ba5 marks a request
for confirmation, to which the listener does give a positive response. However,
the guest’s reply that father and daughter often ‘sleep together’ seems slightly
ambiguous. The hostess of the show spots the chance to mock and makes a witty
comment marked with the second ba5. Given the context, this utterance is
quickly perceived by the audience as a satire rather than an uncertain statement
or a request for confirmation.
In Example 33, Zhong jokingly attacks the other female guests by naming them
‘the best bad friends’ for the male candidate due to their harsh criticism of him.
The host of the show, however, retorts that it was Zhong who launched the first
attack. This is a typical satire marked by ba5, taking an unexpected or especially
poignant perspective of the issue to create a damaging or humorous effect.

Example 34 is extracted from the dialogue of a TV drama. It is a ba5-marked

rhetorical question used by a wife to challenge her estranged husband in a
quarrel. Although a rhetorical question marked by ba5 used to challenge often
constitutes a sentence in itself, sometimes it can also be incorporated in a longer
sentence, as Example 35 shows.
In Example 35, the female guest is challenging a male guest’s outrageous
behavior in having two girlfriends simultaneously, on the grounds that one of the
girls needs help. She first gives a hypothetical condition – that the extra girl the
male took under his wing is replaced by an older, unattractive woman. She then
asks whether he would still be with her. She believes that he would certainly not
do so and she marks this belief with ba5 to turn it into a strong rhetorical
question.

Marker of invitation
When is used with an imperative sentence, it has the power to soften the
command and turn it into a suggestion or invitation, which is subject to refusal
or lack of response.
The Chinese sentence in Example 36a does not contain the word ‘please’ per se. A
proper translation without the SFP would be ‘Turn around for me quickly!’
However, the inclusion of ba5 in this sentence has mitigated the force of the
command, making it sound like a plea. Being soft and non-obligatory are the core
features of a ba5-marked imperative sentence. This makes it a promising
candidate for use in a light-hearted setting where a command is given as a joke
rather than with serious intention. An example of this is shown in 36b, where the
speaker issues a command to a male candidate (for him to admit that he adores
her, contrary to his behavior) in a pretentious way.
The speaker in Example 37 is pleading for the male guest to stop embarrassing a
female guest. Both sentences in Example 37 are imperatives starting with the
second person pronoun ‘you’. The use of ba5 at the end of a series of commands
seems to soften the overall tone of the speech, making it friendlier and less
compelling.

As in English, the subject of an imperative sentence can also be the first person
plural (i.e. the inclusive ‘we’). This kind of imperative sentence is often marked
with ba5 in Chinese, as is the embedded sentence in Example 38. The sentence is
then understood as a warm suggestion, an invitation for a joint venture between
friends.

The host of the dating show in Example 39 is pretending to match himself with a
male guest due to their common interests and suggesting they leave the stage
together as a couple. The colloquial usage ‘I; we’ or ‘we’ is an inclusive
kind of ‘we’ (that is, including the speaker and the hearer or hearers), while the
formal usage ‘we’ can be either inclusive or exclusive (i.e. excluding the
hearer or hearers). The expression ‘we both’ in Example 39 refers to both the
host and the guest of the show, and the sentence is a suggestion made jokingly, to
achieve a funny effect. This kind of imperative sentence is typically accompanied
by a gesture or a bodily movement in line with the proposed action.

The speaker in Example 40 is addressing the entire group of 30 female guests,

asking them to be kind to the current male candidate – that is, do not turn off all
the lights so he has some hope of taking home a date. The subject of this
imperative sentence is ‘everyone in hearing range’. The addition of ba5 at
the end in this case makes the request more sincere and earnest.

Marker of ending
A distinct usage of is to mark a contribution which is meant to bring an end to
a particular strand of conversation. This would be what Fung and Carter (2007)
called the ‘structural’ function of the discourse marker – opening or ending a
topic. The expression which bears the marking of ba5 may be a word of farewell,
a perfunctory remark, a compromised statement, a proposal to leave the current
venue, and so on.
The male guest in Example 41 is answering a previous question about why he
does not have a girlfriend now. In his answer, he refers to a routine of playing the
male suitor’s video. He means to indicate that the answer can be found
somewhere in the video. Since there seems nothing more left to say on this topic,
the host of the show acts accordingly, using two short ba5-marked sentences to
conclude this strand of conversation. The first sentence is a short expression
‘OK’ which is typically given as a sign of compromise after some sort of
argument or confrontation. The second is an imperative sentence with the subject
‘we’ omitted. The marking of ba5 not only reduces the command to a polite
invitation but also concludes this segment of the conversation.
Example 42 is extracted from the dialogue of a TV drama. There has been a
quarrel between a husband and wife in front of a group of friends. The husband
said something which turned her tears into smiles, whereupon the argument
ends. The expression ‘let’s go!’ marks a critical turning point in the
husband’s concluding remark. It not only proposes the physical action of walking
away from the scene, but also attempts to bring an end to the
interaction/confrontation. The first function is clearly made possible by the verb
. The second function is entirely due to the presence of ba5. The speaker’s
intention to wrap up the whole scene would not be successful if ba5 were not
present or were replaced by other SFPs such as a5.
The female guest in Example 43, having found her ideal dating partner, is bidding
farewell to her colleagues on the show. Since they have appeared on the show
together for several months, the bond is strong and it is hard to say goodbye.
Nevertheless, she manages to put together a short speech and concludes it with a
ba5-marked imperative sentence – ‘You all see me off, will you?’ Again, the
presence of ba5 makes it clear that this is the final remark in the current strand of
discourse. No more need be said.

5.4 BEI5
The SFP bei5 is a variant of ba5 that is currently heard mainly in China and
not in Taiwan. Its usage largely follows ba5 but it does introduce a more lively
tone due to its pronunciation (i.e. being a diphthong ending in a high vowel).
Consequently, it is often attached to a light-hearted remark to introduce a
cheerful mood. Even if bei5 accompanies a more serious statement, it shows the
speaker’s intention to make the content ‘easier to digest’ for the audience.

Marker of uncertainty
Like ba5, one of the functions of bei5 is to express the speaker’s indecisive
attitude or to mark something as uncertain. In Example 44, the male guest is
answering a question about the current state of his grandfather’s illness. His first
sentence involves a false start and then a repair. This already shows his uncertain
stance about what is coming next. ‘Continue with the treatment’ is a somewhat
vague expression and works well with the uncertainty marker bei5. More than its
predecessor ba5, the SFP bei5 introduces an even softer and light-hearted tone,
thereby making the serious topic sound less gloomy.

Marker of request for confirmation

Example 45 shows a longer discourse consisting of two Q-A adjacency pairs. The
first is a wh- question asked by the female in the hope of finding out how much
dowry is needed to marry the male candidate. When the male answers that there
is no definite criterion for evaluating the adequacy of the dowry, the female
obviously thinks that no dowry is also possible. Therefore she asks the second
question, which is a hypothesis marked with to request a confirmation. As this
is a somewhat cheeky question, it is suitably marked by the bei5 rather than the
relatively serious ba5.
Marker of satire
In Example 46, the female guest is commenting on the male guest’s behavior. She
noticed earlier that he pretentiously turned his head to one side and covered his
face with both hands, not wanting to see how many girls had turned off the lights
(i.e. not wanting to date him). After the girl finishes her description, the host of
the show says something like ‘He is trying to look innocent’ and marks the
utterance with bei5. The function of in this instance is to introduce a satirical
light-heartedness so that the host’s comment can be understood as a good-
natured mocking.
In Example 47, the two female guests are ostentatiously fighting over the current
male candidate, each accusing the other of using heavy makeup. Liu first dares
Cai to remove her eye shadow, while Cai demands that Liu erase her lipstick. The
use of bei5 greatly reduces the aggression that may otherwise be felt in Cai’s
command, and the whole interaction turns into a fun-making event.
Prior to the dialogue in Example 48, a special event was featured by the reality
dating show, where the program was visited by a young couple. The female was
once a guest on the show and she is now married to Liu Ru. After a warm
welcome, a video recollection of the past events concerning the woman on the
show, and some conversations and joking, the host of the show asks what the
newly wedded couple intends to do next. Upon that, Liu comes up with the witty
remark shown in Example 48: that they will try to present an ‘artistic work’,
which in that context means a baby. This witty reply was marked by bei5 to
reflect the light-heartedness and the pleasant atmosphere.
The dialogue in Example 49 happens in a quick Question and Answer session
where each preliminarily matched couple ask each other questions and answer
them as best they can in 30 seconds. In this particular exchange, the female
intended to ask the male about a moving experience which is most likely a
positive one. However, the male ends up sharing a negative experience – a
poignant moment for him when he was dumped by his girlfriend. Nevertheless,
in the convivial atmosphere of the dating show, it is not suitable to mention such
a miserable experience without any modification. This is where bei5 comes in,
which, to some extent, helps lighten up the remark.
Incidentally, we see a appearing in Zhang Chun’s speech, which is considered
here as a CFP rather than an SFP. This is because ya5 (as a variant of ) is not
performing a function normally associated with ya5/a5 at the end of a sentence,
but is simply used here as a pause filler, somewhat like a ‘list marker’ as
discussed earlier in the a5 section.

Marker of invitation
Like its close relative , the SFP is also used to soften a command, making it
more like a suggestion and making the suggested move seem easier to carry out.
In Example 50a, the female is asking the host to follow the example of a male
guest who just performed a talent show. The host of the dating show is a parent
figure on this show and is widely respected; hence it is appropriate for the female
guest to use bei5 to soften the somewhat unscrupulous suggestion. In Example
50b, the female makes a cheeky move of asking the male to praise her. This kind
of request is also a good candidate for the marking of bei5.

Marker of ending
Finally, also inherits the function of ba5 to signal the speaker’s intention to
close the current strand of conversation. In Example 51 below, the female guest
becomes interested in a particular male candidate, and advises him to stop the
selection process and just take her away. This is an impossible proposal; the
marking of bei5 is therefore appropriate as it makes the proposal seem a joke
(which is indeed the case).
In Example 52, the male guest is pre-scheduled to perform a talent show to
impress the ladies so that at least one of them will pick him as her date. At some
point there was a discussion as to when to perform the show. The man wishes to
put it off until later but the host suggests doing it immediately. The man gives up
his original position and agrees to perform straightaway. He marks his final
sentence (‘Let it be now then’) with bei5, which duly concludes the discussion.

5.5 SFP NE5

The main function of ne5 is to manage ideas and information in discourse. It
works on the basis of contrast – contrasting two opposing views, known and
unknown information, real and hypothetical circumstances, and so on.

Marker of contrast
When ne5 is used to mark contrasts in discourse, it can mark either a question or
a statement, a sentence or a phrase. When ne5 is marking a phrase, we obviously
cannot call it a Sentence Final Particle. Instead, I will call it a Constituent Final
Particle (CFP), which means it can be at the end of any constituent of a sentence,
be it a word or a phrase.

The speaker in Example 53 is responding to a criticism of her style of talk on the

show. Her contention is whether you like her speech or not depends on how you
look at it. On the one hand, you can criticize her for lack of insight; on the other
hand, you can praise her for the ability to examine her thoughts carefully before
speaking. There are two instances of ne5 used in her speech, each marking one of
two opposite points of view (i.e. good vs bad).
The male candidate in Example 54 has just been criticized by the female guest for
his look. The man thinks it is his shoes which causes the problem. However, the
girl quickly points out that it is not the shoes but the trousers that are causing the
problem. The girl uses two parallel structures to express the contrast – ‘I did not
mean the shoes; I meant the trousers’ and marks the second sentence with ne5 to
emphasize the contrast between the two objects.
In Example 55, there is a contrast between the girl’s being beautiful to her father
in daily life and being ugly on TV. The second situation is marked by ne5 to
highlight the difference.

In Example 56, the female guest has just been rejected by the male candidate.
When she has the chance to speak, she asks the audience if anyone wants to be
her date instead. Again, ne5 is used to mark the contrast between two situations –
‘on stage’ and ‘off stage’ in this case.

At first glance, the ne5-marked sentence in Example 57 does not seem to have
another expression to contrast with. In fact, the host of the show has just asked a
question which is difficult for the female guest to answer (he asked why all the
other girls in Harbin city do not accumulate fat as the girl claims to – like herself,
due to the cold weather). The girl suddenly realizes her theory is unworkable and
has a hard time finding the words to say. The host therefore says he is just
teasing her in order to ease the embarrassment. The addition of ne5 helps
highlight the contrast (between being serious and joking) and maximizes the
ability of the expression to ease tension.

Marker of incomplete information

Another function of related to its ability to contrast ideas or circumstances is
for it to form a question used for requesting information. The ne5 used for this
function often attaches itself to a constituent of a sentence, and demands that the
listener supplies the other constituent(s) loaded with the missing information to
complete the sentence. The listener has to work on the basis of contrast to know
what information is expected in their reply.

In Example 58, ne5 is attached to a structure containing a conjunctive adverb (

‘as for’) and a noun ( ‘female name’). Since this is a sentence fragment, it
cannot be made a question by adding , which must be attached to a full
sentence. In addition, the fragment does not contain a wh- word. Therefore,
structurally speaking, the reason can be understood as a question is
entirely due to the presence of ne5. In other words, while attaches to a full
sentence to form a yes/no question, attaches to a sentence fragment to form a
wh- question (in this case, the function of ne5 is equal to how about).
To take Example 58 further, we want to know how ne5 works when it helps
form a question. At the point of Ma’s second turn in Example 58, the information
he has at hand and what he is concerned about is as follows:

Subject Predicate

Madame Ai fine, slightly crippled

 Madame Ai fine, slightly crippled
Xiaofen (unknown)

The function of ne5 in Ma’s second utterance, then, is to mark Xiaofen as a piece
of the puzzle waiting to be placed on the board, and to invite the listener to
suggest where to put it. In this case, the required information is the where-abouts
and condition of Xiaofen.
A sentence fragment marked by ne5 to form a question is often an NP, such as
the case in Example 58, but it need not be so. The following is an example of an
adverbial clause tagged by ne5.

In Example 59, the first speaker, Mr Luo, suggests that the lack of romantic
feelings in a parentally arranged marriage can be improved with time. As a
response, the second speaker, Miss Yi, asks a question to challenge Luo’s position.
The question consists of an adverbial clause expressing a condition. What the
listener has to do is to supply the result of the condition as the missing
information. The contrast between the two ideas is illustrated below.

Condition Action

No romantic feelings Improve situation by time

Incompatible couple (unknown)

In the case of Example 59, the ‘unknown’ part is actually quite obvious to the
speaker – that some sort of disastrous consequence will result from the parentally
arranged marriage if the man and woman are not suitable to each other. Thus the
question formed with ne5 in this case is used to challenge, somewhat like a
rhetorical question to which the speaker does not expect an answer.
Like other SFPs, a ne5-marked expression does not often target a particular
utterance in the previous conversation, but is responding to a situation instead.

The host of the dating show in Example 60 is responding to a situation where a

male guest has just given each of the 24 female guests a small present. Mr Meng,
jokingly or wishfully, asks, ‘Where are ours?’ meaning the two resident
specialists and himself. The relevance of ne5 in this case needs to be understood
against the background of contrast between the 24 gifts for the female guests and
no gift for the host of the show and his associates. In appearance, it would seem
the speaker is using a ne5-marked question to dig out the information about their
gifts. However, this is in fact just another joke the host makes at the expense of
the male guest.

Subject Predicate

24 female guests each receives a present

host and specialists (unknown)

In the following example, the speaker asks a ne5-marked question and goes on to
answer the question himself.
Prior to the male guest’s speech in Example 61, the female guest whom he is
wooing expresses concerns over certain men’s negative attitudes about marriage.
In an effort to comfort her and yet to refrain from making a commitment, the
man suggests they get together for a period of time. If they feel good about each
other, they will consider further possibilities. Note that the ne5-marked adverbial
phrase is similar to the one in Example 59. The difference is that in Example 61
the speaker has already prepared the answer, and the ‘question’ is really just a
more emphasized statement of the condition. Also, the situation being contrasted
in Example 61 is implied but not spoken; that is, if the man and woman do not
get along, then of course there will not be ‘a next step’.
The kind of we saw in Example 61 is an oral rhetorical device we often hear
in Chinese discourse, where ne5 is used to highlight a particular condition for
something to happen.
In Example 62, the host of the show is commenting on the art of speaking. Using
his own experience, he argues that as we grow older and wiser we should be
more careful about our words. Two stages of life are contrasted in relation to the
typical amount of talk at each stage, as the table below shows.

Stage Amount of talk

small talk without full understanding

older say only what you know

Thus, the ne5-marked expression in Example 62 is not used to request any

information, but to highlight the contrast in talking styles between different life
stages and emphasize the correctness of the later approach. Note in Example 62
the ne5 still marks an incomplete piece of information (‘Later when I grow up a
little’) and the speaker can legitimately stop at ne5 and make the adverbial clause
sound like a question (‘What about when I grow up a little?’). He can then
answer his own question after a brief pause or wait for someone to complete the
sentence.
This kind of usage of ne5 further develops into its function as a kind of
‘attention getter’, where it is placed at the end of a conjunctive device or a
thematic structure to create some kind of suspension and to signal some
important message is coming.
In Example 63a, the speaker inserts a ne5 between the topic of the sentence (i.e.
his hobbies) and the comment (i.e. there are plenty). The presence of ne5 seems to
wrap the structure in a significant package that both creates suspense and
forecasts the coming of an important message. The same thing happens in
Example 63b, where the topic of the sentence (i.e. work) is marked with ne5 to
generate listeners’ interest, and the comment on work follows to fulfill the
expectations. In Example 63c, the ne5 is placed after a conjunction instead of a
nominal or an adverbial element. By doing so, the speaker leaves in suspense the
entire sentence rather than just part of the sentence.

Marker of expectation
Although can be used to form a question out of a sentence fragment, it is also
used to mark an existing question, that is, a question which is already a question
without the addition of ne5. In these cases, the marking of ne5 often shows the
speaker’s expectation or presupposition of some sort (e.g. expectation of a
contrary situation).

The co-host of the dating show in Example 64a asks the male candidate a
question based on the man’s personal data. Since he works in show business, a
natural assumption is that he will be surrounded by plenty of beautiful girls, and
that it is easy for him to ‘get one’. However, the fact is that the man is still single,
and that he is on a dating show trying to get a date. Therefore, the question Mr
Right asks is embedded in the assumption, or the expectation, that the man will
already have a girlfriend. The SFP ne5 is representative of that assumption and
expectation. It gives a sense of incredulity to the question. It shows the speaker’s
desire to find the answer to something which defies their expectation. The same
mechanism applies to Example 64b, where ne5 helps highlight the contrast
between giving up a fabulous job in Shenzhen and returning to Jinzhou without a
job.

In Example 65, the host of the show asks a female guest if she would like to share
her secret with the current male candidate. The girl’s rejection means she is not
interested in dating the man. The host then asks ‘Why?’ which he tags with ne5.
Likewise, this ne5 also shows the host’s incredulity at the girl’s response, since it
is the host’s duty to match couples successfully. Any rejection is against his
expectation and intrinsically disagreeable to him.
The kind of which is laden with expectations is often used to chide someone
for failing to meet the expectations of the speaker.
The female guest in Example 66 is about to be rejected by the male candidate,
who has just taken the resident specialist’s advice to choose another girl. She feels
disappointed and criticizes the man for ‘not having any principles’. The marking
of ne5 reflects her belief that a man should have his own principles and not
blindly follow other people’s advice. The SFP ne5 is an agent carrying the girl’s
expectation, used here to reprimand the man’s unacceptable behavior.
Sometimes what is expected need not be the opposite of some current
situation. The expectation assumed by the existence of ne5 can serve as a
foundation for further elaboration.
In Example 67, the female speaker is assuming that a man will always give a gift
to the girl on their first date. On that basis, the girl asks what present the man
will give on his first date with a girl. Like the previous three examples, the
question shown in Example 67 is still a question without the presence of ne5 and
is likely to get the same response. However, the addition of ne5 seems to make
the question more pertinent and more demanding, not least because it
incorporates the speaker’s assumptions and expectations.

Marker of elaboration
Another, related usage of is to help highlight an elaboration – a statement or a
question built upon previously established information and relevant expectations.

In Example 68, the specialist on the dating show asks the male candidate a
question. The question is built upon the man’s earlier claim that he is not a
highly sociable person and has only one friend. The specialist wants to know,
given such circumstances, what particular merits the unique friend has that
attract the male candidate. The presence of ne5 seems to highlight the relevance
of the existing background information to this question. That is, what the speaker
seeks to understand will constitute a helpful addition to existing knowledge.
The female guest in Example 69 is complaining about a German friend pestering
her about every detail of the famous Chinese novel Dream of Red Chamber. The
second and third sentences are reported speech, simulating the questions asked
by the German. In principle, both indirect questions can be marked by ne5
although only the second question is actually marked. As in Example 68, the use
of ne5 helps maintain the relevance of the current utterance in relation to what
has been established in discourse (i.e. the German friend’s annoying questions
about the fictional Grand View Garden).

What happens in Example 70 is that someone has just finished commenting on

something, and the host of the dating show wants to hear a second opinion. He
uses a very short sentence ‘No. 12, you say’ to delivery this request. Given the
succinctness of the structure, the use of ne5 is the only way to connect the
sentence back to the previous circumstance; that is, to help the listener
understand that feedback based on the previous comment is being sought.

The man in Example 71 is a chef and reminds the female candidate that he can
cook many delicious dishes. On that basis the girl asks the man what dish he
thinks she resembles. Again, ne5 marks the question as being relevant to the
previous utterance and is an elaboration to bring further information into the
discourse.
The male guest in Example 72 first says he is going to sing a song for the
audience. In the second sentence, he asks ‘What is the name of the song?’ and
then goes on to give the answer. The rhetorical effect of this question and answer
format is different from a statement like ‘The name of the song is …’ as the ne5
not only creates a sense of suspense but also adds to the interest of the audience
in finding out more information about the song.

The male guest in Example 73 asks an A-or-B question and the first option is
tagged by ne5, which helps maintain the attention of the listener for the second
option to come, so that they can choose one option from the two as required.

Marker of challenge
Based on its ability to contrast ideas and circumstances, ne5 is often used to
challenge the listener in discourse.
In Example 74, the female guest is accusing the male candidate of lack of patience
with his ex-girlfriends. In order to make the accusation maximally effective, the
speaker contrasts his lack of patience toward humans with the abundance of
patience he has with dogs. The use of ne5 shows that the speaker is highlighting
the contrast, is imposing the normal expectation that humans are more important
than pets, and is demanding an explanation from the listener.
Example 75 is very similar to Example 74 in that they both consist of two
sentences, the first establishing the premise, the second challenging the listener
on that basis. The second sentence in both cases is a rhetorical question used to
challenge rather than really expecting an answer.

Example 76 shows a conversation between the host of the dating show and the
resident specialist. Prior to this conversation, a male suitor was asked to perform
a demonstration of his supposedly superior memory capacity. After a good ten
minutes of concentration and answering questions correctly, the man finally
succeeded in making a good impression on the female guests. As a result, the
female specialist voiced her concerns about the formidable task of finding a
girlfriend. The male host, in turn, blamed the male suitor for bragging about his
memory talent, which brought the grueling test upon himself. The host’s first
sentence is a rhetorical question marked with ne5 to contrast the situation of ‘his
bragging about memory and the subsequent ordeal’ with ‘his saying nothing and
remaining safe’ situation expressed by the host’s second sentence.
The hostess in Example 77 is challenging a dating candidate’s position that a
married couple must choose either to have a career without children or to have
children without a career. The contrast is on whether having children ‘can’ or
‘cannot’ co-exist with having a career, and the position the hostess challenges in
Example 77 is the ‘cannot’ option.
There are a couple of phonological variants of ne5 pronounced as le5 or lei5 etc.
These are variously expressed orthographically as , etc. as Example 78
shows (where the Pinyin notation associated with each character in the input
method has been kept as is, without reflecting the actual spoken forms of the SFP,
which are quite evasive in this case). Their functions are basically the same as
those discussed above.
Both SFPs shown in Example 78 are variants of and can be understood as
using the functional categories of ne5 discussed above. For example, in Example
78a, expresses the contrast between the couple of persons painted in the
picture and the host-hostess couple the speaker jokingly refers to. This is a typical
usage of – to perform a specific discourse function (in this case, making a
joke) on the basis of its ability to contrast. Likewise, in Example 78b, the host of
the chat show is challenging a conflict situation using a rhetorical question
marked with , which helps contrast an alleged confrontational situation with
the proposed peaceful condition.

5.6 SFP O2
The primary function of o2 is to give warning. It normally marks a message
which the speaker considers important to the hearer but may have been
neglected. The function of o2 is to remind the listener of the importance and
relevance of the message. It tells the listener to be psychologically prepared to
take in the information and perhaps to translate the message into immediate
action of some sort.

Marker of warning
Marker of warning
Some messages of warning marked by can be retrieved from the Internet if we
use the SFP itself as the query word. These messages are typically short and are
normally imperative sentences.

Both sentences in Example 79 can be interpreted as a command or suggestion

without the company of o2. However, the presence of o2 adds a sense of warning,
an implication that something bad will happen if the advice is not taken. The o2
is used to catch attention when commanding others to keep a secret, as in
Example 79a or to be careful around an expensive car as in Example 79b.
In Example 80a, a male suitor is advising another suitor to consider the others’
opinions when deciding whether to turn around for a female candidate (whom
others can see but not he) or not. Again, o2 turns the imperative into a warning
implying that there will be a consequence if the listener does not follow the
instruction. Likewise, in Example 80b, a male candidate asks a female guest not to
turn off the light. The implication is that she might miss a good date if she does
that.

Marker of unexpected information

Apart from being used to issue warnings of some sort, o2 can also mark an
expression as incorporating some information which is important to, and least
expected by, the listener. The function of o2 here is to hammer in the message
swiftly and change the epistemic condition of the listener regarding the current
topic in a dramatic fashion.

The speaker in Example 81 is advising a female guest on the chat show on her
suitability to become a male celebrity’s girlfriend. Since Shen is an acquaintance
of Gao, this information is disclosed as insider knowledge. The use of o2 marks
the sentence as incorporating an important and unexpected piece of information.
The speaker in Example 82 is a male suitor hoping to attract the female guests’
attention in order to get a date. He advertises himself by referring to the muscles
and curves on his body, which are covered by clothes. The use of o2 helps
strengthen the sense of ‘hidden surprise’ waiting to be discovered.

In Example 83, another male suitor, on a different dating show, is trying to

impress the female guests in a different way. In Example 82, the secret being
revealed is the male charm – abdominal muscles and Apollo’s Belt. This time, the
hidden attraction being disclosed in Example 83 is the promising business the
man owns. What o2 implies in this case is that ‘I am rich’ and probably ‘All this
could be yours if you date me’. As in many other cases, o2 represents a well-
intentioned ‘warning’ about some hidden benefits to be reaped.

The male suitor in Example 84 also reveals an unexpected piece of information

which he marks with o2. He claims that he was once a slim guy, i.e. he was not
always so fat. With o2 highlighting the importance of that secret, the implication
is that he could be slim and fit again, despite his current bad shape.
In Example 85, the resident specialist is responding to a girl’s claim that she has
pursued a man who is only 165 cm for a number of years, contrary to the
expectation of a typical Prince Charming who is tall and handsome. The
specialist therefore openly advises the short men among the audience that they
can also become extremely popular with women despite their short-coming. This
news is directly contrary to ordinary people’s expectation and the marking of o2
helps highlight the dramatic nature of this information. The slot occupied by o2
in Example 85 is reminiscent of ne5 which is used to contrast two pieces of
information, and therefore can also fit into this position. However, the use of ne5
in this position would turn the speech into an argumentation that focuses on the
present, rather than a warning that looks to the future as o2 does.
The habitual function of o2 to reveal unexpected information will indeed
create some expectations on the part of the listener (i.e. to anticipate something
unusual and interesting). Therefore, the o2-marked sentence is often used for
promotional activities of some sort.

Example 86a is a web title to catch readers’ attention so they can continue to the
test question. Without o2, Example 86a would be a simple comment without the
pragmatic implication. Example 86b is an online advertisement showing a college
student looking for a roommate. The advantage of the advertised accommodation
is its being near the university. The sentence ‘It is only one bus stop away’ is
marked with o2 to promote it as the main attraction. The speech act function of
o2 (to suggest, to invite) is evident.

In Example 87, the female candidate is trying to impress the male guest by
promising to sing him a song if he chooses her. Moreover, she adds that the song
will be composed on the spot. By using o2 the girl hopes to give the impression
that her music talent is unusual, enabling her to compose a song at such short
notice.
A related SFP, lo5, is a relatively infrequent particle which can be seen as a
combination of le5 and o2. Its usage largely coincides with the ‘promotional
function’ of o2 discussed above. The Pinyin annotation used here (lo5) is a
phonological approximation of the actual SFP in spoken form. I have used the
character to represent the sound but it is also rendered as (e.g. Chao 1968)
or something else. Some examples are shown in Example 88 below.
All three examples in Example 88 are advertisement titles on the web. Each lo5 in
Example 88 is preceded by a verb which denotes an approaching, beginning or
opening action. For each statement in Example 88, if we look closely at the
relations between lo5 and the other part of the sentence, we will find that it is
reasonable to analyze lo5 in two parts, that is, lo5 = le5 + o5. Our reasoning is
that, for each sentence in Example 88, the verb was initially followed by the
aspect marker to signal the completion of the action (i.e. ‘have come’, ‘have
begun’, ‘have opened’ respectively). The SFP is then added to help catch the
reader’s attention. Finally, and are combined phonetically to form lo5. In
fact, the combination of can also be used as is, without the sandhi. Many
examples of the two particles used together can be retrieved from the web.
As for the three examples of lo5 in Example 88, 88a announces the arrival of
the new iPhone, 88b encourages owners of motorcycles of a certain make to
revisit the servicing center, and 88c announces the launch of night fishing at a
leisure pool. All these messages are meant to be unusual and exciting news which
the reader should pay attention to.
 Apart from getting attention and promoting commodity as seen in Example 88,
lo5 can also be used to give a warning, just like its parent, .

In Example 89, the host of the dating show is giving a warning to a certain male
suitor who is getting ready to perform a talent show. The warning simply means
‘You can start now!’ but the connotation is that the success or failure of securing
a date depends on the man’s performance, so he should concentrate fully and do
his best. All these implications are embedded in the sentence-final particle.

5.7 SFP O5
The o that gives warning is a reasonably established particle in terms of both
phonological (o2) and orthographical ( ) representations. Some sentence-final
particles do not (as yet) have a fixed sound-character representation
corresponding to their functional paradigm. The o that reveals the speaker’s
emotion, which will be discussed in this section as o5, is one of the SFPs that have
not been properly identified and given unique orthographical representations. In
the previous section, we have consistently used the character to represent o2.
In actual written language, native speakers may represent o2 with a character
other than (for example, ). In this chapter, we will consistently use to
represent o5. Readers, however, should not assume the consistency of this sound–
character correspondence elsewhere in the real world (and this principle applies
to other SFPs in different degrees). The two o’s are perceptually different in
pronunciation and very different in their functions.
While is mainly used to give warning and recommendations, the primary
function of is to help mark the speaker’s strong emotions, whether out of
surprise, admiration, longing, sadness, disgust or frustration. The o5 is almost
always used in a fixed pattern of [X Y ] (meaning ‘X is so Y’), where X is a
person, object, event and so on, while Y is a descriptive unit. Note that although
we adopt to represent the particle o5, the conventional Pinyin notation for this
character is o1 instead of o5. This is because there is no Chinese character
corresponding to the o5 sound. In this chapter, we use o5 to annotate this
character but readers should type o1 if they want to get the character using a
Pinyin input method.
At the time of Chao’s (1968) writing, the existence of o5 was not identified (or
was not separated out from a generic o), and the character Chao used to represent
o2 was instead of the used here. However, Chao did identify two broad
categories of function for o – to give warnings (our o2) and to utter exclamations
(our o5). This convention is followed by Sun (2006).

Marker of positive emotion

o5 can be used to mark all sorts of emotions the speaker feels toward a person,
an object, a process or a situation. The function of o5 is to intensify the feeling of
that emotion. First, we see examples where o5 is used to mark positive emotions.
The hostess in Example 90a uses the [X Y ] formula to describe a guest after
her impressive performance. The X factor can be omitted if the speaker thinks it
is clear to the listener what it refers to. The male celebrity guest in Example 90b
is reporting the speech of some ordinary people seeing him in a restaurant and
praising his wife. Both of these examples use the [X Y ] construction to
show their positive emotions toward a person or a situation.
Note that all or most of the sentences tagged with o5 can also be tagged by o2
instead and produce a different meaning. For example, the second sentence in
Example 90b can be interpreted in two different ways depending on whether the
SFP is o5 or o2:

(o5)!
‘Your wife is so beautiful! (We really admire her)’

(o2)!
‘Your wife is so beautiful! (You need to keep an eye on her)’

The fact that the same sentence can be tagged by two different os to generate
different pragmatic implications seems to authenticate our two-o analysis as
opposed to the traditional single-o one.

Marker of negative emotion

The [X Y ] formula can also be used to describe an unfavorable person or
an undesirable situation.
Like that in Example 90a, the X variable in Example 91a is also absent, but it can
be understood to refer to a situation which just happened. The result of the
happening is obviously not up to the speaker’s expectation, hence the comment of
‘what a pity’ showing her feeling about the result. In 92b, on the other hand, the
X is clearly specified as the plural ‘you’. The o5-marked sentence shows the male
celebrity’s ostentatious disappointment at his fellow celebrities on the show who
did not support him in the way he wanted.

Marker of neutral emotion

In some cases, o5 is not used to express personal feelings of a positive or negative
kind. Instead, it is used to highlight a person’s impression of something, or to
express a wish.
In Example 92a, the female guest is commenting on a magic show performed by a
male guest, which reminds her of Halloween. In 92b, an unidentified female guest
is commenting on the behavior of another male candidate who does not answer
questions in a straightforward manner.

5.8 SFP ou5

There is a third member in the o SFP family represented as ou5 here. The
actual pronunciation of the particle is very similar to (the closest Pinyin
notation for both sounds is o5 – the o sound said with a neutral tone). However,
there are many more individual variations for this sound than for other SFPs
among Chinese speakers, in both spoken and written forms. Taiwanese speakers
of Mandarin may use hou3 or hou4 (or something else) to represent this
particle in writing.
The core function of identified in this chapter is to seek the agreement of
the listener. In most cases, a sentence with represents a thought which the
speaker thinks is also agreeable to the listener. The speaker uses ou5 to check
whether it is true that the assumption carried by the ou5-marked utterance is
shared by both speaker and listener.
In Example 93, the female specialist summarizes a male suitor’s strenuous display
of his memory talent with the comment ‘it is really not easy to find a girlfriend’.
The remark would be a declarative sentence without the marking of ou5. With
ou5, however, it is transformed into a question, to which the listener can either
simply agree or offer additional information. In this case, the host of the show,
Mr Meng, quickly blames the male suitor for bragging about his own talent,
which brings the ordeal onto himself. In offering this comment, Meng has in fact
confirmed the assumption of Huang, that the talent show is indeed hard work, as
his comment must be based upon the truthfulness of Huang’s assumption.

In Example 94, the host of the show asks a female guest whether or not she is
currently leading a happy life. He is referring to her being spotted together with
her boyfriend by the paparazzi. Since it is already on the news, the host assumes
this is common knowledge and uses ou5 to seek the agreement of the girl. The
female celebrity, however, strategically denies the assumption, as is the custom of
celebrities on TV.

5.9 SFP MA5

The SFP ma5 is easily confused with another similar-sounding particle – the
question marker ma5 we saw in Chapter 4. Although the Pinyin notations for
and are the same, their pronunciations are different. The differences are in
tone (i.e. pitch level) and intonational contour which cannot be reflected by the
Pinyin system ( is higher in tone and ‘flatter’ in pitch contour; is lower and
with a falling pitch). The question marker , as seen in Chapter 4, is mainly used
for forming yes/no questions. The SFP , on the other hand, marks the speaker’s
conceptualization about the status of certain information at the time of speaking
and how the speaker intends to use that information in speech.
The fundamental function performed by is to mark some information as
shared by the speaker and the listener in the current discourse domain. In doing
so, ma5 either accompanies some common knowledge (e.g. ‘Dogs bark’) or some
piece of information recently established in conversation. This basic function of
marking shared knowledge is then expanded to carry out further functions like
reasoning, clarifying, paraphrasing, and so on.

Marker of allegedly shared information

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of information that marks as shared by
the speaker and the listener. One is universally shared common knowledge; the
other is recently established knowledge up to the point of speaking in the current
conversation.
In Example 95a, a male guest has just performed a simple magic show. The host
of the dating show makes the comment that ‘magic is but an eye-cheating
method’ in the ensuing conversation. The in this sentence marks the speaker’s
assumption that this is commonly shared knowledge, and he is only reminding
the listeners of the fact that magic show is nothing more than camouflage. In
Example 95b, the female guest is arguing why girls have to put on makeup, one
of the reasons being for men’s pleasure. She attaches ma5 to a well-known
Chinese saying ‘A woman uses makeup to please the man who likes her’ to mark
it as shared information. In other words, signals that her contention, based on
this common knowledge, is well supported.
The girl in Example 96 wants to find out if the male suitor is a romantic person.
She bases her question on the common impression that the French are a romantic
people. Once this assumption is established as common knowledge, it makes
sense to wonder if a person living in France has also become romantic, hence the
marking of on that assumption. Unless the ma5-marked utterance is explicitly
challenged, it is established as common ground and can be used in all kinds of
ways. In this case, it is meant to support the idea that the environment may have
an effect on a person’s temperament.
We can see that in both of the examples in Example 97 the is used to mark a
piece of information gathered from the respective video recordings played on the
show to introduce each male candidate prior to the speech. The videos must have
included the crucial information referred to in both examples: in Example 97a,
the big farm owned by the male suitor and, in Example 97b, the other man’s
recent history of dramatic change. The female candidates use ma5 to mark their
respective sentences as recently established information, and then go on to ask
related questions based on that knowledge.

Marker of reason
One of the most frequently used functions of is to mark something as an
obvious reason for a certain situation or a premise leading to a certain
conclusion. When applying this function, the intermediate steps of reasoning are
often omitted, leaving the listener to fill in the gap between the ma5-marked
expression and the phenomenon it is supposed to explain.
In both examples in Example 98, is used to mark a short utterance as having
the explanatory power to resolve a mystery. In Example 98a, the girl wonders
loudly why men currently like to wear ankle-length pants. The man simply
answers ‘comparatively cool’ plus the ma5. If there had been no ma5, the
utterance could still be understood as an attempt to answer the question.
However, the connection between the answer and the question would be much
weaker. The presence of ma5 highlights the obviousness of the answer to the
question and helps bridge the gap of reasoning. Another SFP, , is also possible
here, as a5 is normally used to mark obvious responses. But the use of a5 seems
more ‘aggressive’ here, incorporating a possibly negative attitude. In Example
98b, the female guest repeats the intensifier ‘particularly’ three times to
emphasize her joy at seeing the male candidate. When questioned why, she only
answers with a monosyllabic adjective ‘handsome’ plus ma5. The presence of
ma5 is crucial in helping the listener make the necessary connection between the
two propositions (i.e. ‘He is handsome’ and ‘She is happy’) to quickly arrive at
the correct interpretation (that she is happy because he looks handsome).

Example 99 shows being used in a reasoning process which happens within a

speaker’s own turn, as opposed to being used to answer questions like that in
Example 98. In Example 99a, ma5 follows the speaker’s first sentence (‘He is only
a level 2 undergraduate’) to mark it as a premise for further reasoning. In the
second sentence, the speaker issues a command based on that premise. Example
99b, like 98a, shows the ability of ma5 to bring forth an entire set of implications
(‘To err is human’ etc.) to the monosyllabic item it accompanies , which leads
to the conclusion, elegantly and faultlessly, (‘he is bound to make mistakes’).
 Because of its frequent association with structures expressing a reason, ma5
often collocates with the word ‘because’, as Example 100 shows.

The female guest in Example 100 is offering herself to be considered by a male

candidate. Since the man has to work the night shift and has to take care of his
granny in the day, the girl kindly offers to look after the granny for him if he
chooses her. In the first sentence, the statement ‘I have my own clothing shop’ is
marked by the collocation ‘because … ma5’ which expresses the
logical relation between the reason and the result in a more strengthened way
than if either of the two collocates were to appear alone (which, however, would
still be acceptable).
In Examples 99 and 100, all the portions stating the reason appear before the
parts giving the result. It is also possible, in a speaker’s given turn, to add a
reason for a previously mentioned statement or proposal. In this case, ma5 would
be more important and indispensable for the host structure to be understood as a
reason for the previous utterance. Example 101 is an example of this kind of
usage.
The male celebrity in Example 101 is talking about some foods whose shapes
resemble certain human organs (especially the reproductive ones). In his first
sentence, the man urges the assistant of the show to feed some of these to another
celebrity. In the second sentence, he reveals the reason for such a proposal –
‘Eating food of a certain shape strengthens the body part of the same shape’. This
is meant to be a joke and ma5 is indispensable in the second sentence for it to be
construed as a reason for making the suggestion and as the punchline of the joke.
When the male guest in Example 102 is asked whether he will respect his parents’
opinion about his relationship with a girl, he quickly answers ‘yes’, and then he
offers a reason for that decision. As the reason comes after the claim, it is
important for that sentence to be tagged by ma5. Otherwise it would be difficult
for the listener to understand it as an explanation of the previous statement.

Marker of rectification
We discussed the functions of to mark allegedly shared information and to
highlight the reason for making a claim. In the examples discussed above, the
speakers assume the ma5-marked information to be obviously true and readily
acceptable to the listener. However, when the speaker feels there is a conceptual
difference between the speaker and the hearer, the speaker can still use ma5 to
mark the information which they want to share, possibly with an intention to
correct the hearer’s misconception. In cases like this, ma5 often carries an
element of impatience which is not seen in the examples of the previous kind.

The host of the chat show in Example 102 is questioning a female celebrity why
she is not presenting a photograph of her ideal man as promised. The woman
answers, a bit impatiently, that she is trying to find her cell phone (while
fumbling in her bag) in which the photo is kept. The marking of indicates the
speaker’s intention to correct Mr Tsai about the misconception that she is not
presenting the photo, by emphasizing the current visual information Tsai should
pay attention to (i.e. Kou is indeed looking for the desirable photo).
The dialogue in Example 104 centers around a female guest’s earlier comment on
a male suitor. She said that she had turned her light off because she might not be
his type. Mr Meng asked why she thought so. The girl said she was trying to be
polite, at which Ms Huang says that what the girl really wants to say is ‘He is not
my type’. Meng then offers his punchy remark on the girl’s tactfulness, which he
ostentatiously condemns. The marking of ma5 signals the speaker’s recognition of
an incorrect situation and his intention to put it right.

In Example 105, an unusually timid male suitor says he has never done the kind
of romantic things as suggested by other participants of the show. The host then
corrects the boy by saying that he came to the show exactly to do that kind of
thing. The marking of ma5 helps highlight the purpose of the host’s comment to
clarify a misconception.
In Example 106, the host of the dating show is commenting on a girl’s dancing
performance, saying it was worse than his mother’s regular dancing exercise. The
male suitor responds to this comment with the sentence ‘The person in question
is a pretty woman’. On the surface, it looks as though there is no connection
between the two utterances. However, the presence of ma5 clearly suggests an
underlying process of information addition and revision which should be drawn
upon to help interpret the message. What the male guest means is, since the girl
in question is pretty (which is the most desirable quality for a woman in this line
of reasoning), she is exempt from the expectation of superior dancing skills, so
there is no point in criticizing her for her poor dancing performance. The use of
ma5 bridges a relatively large gap of reasoning in this instance. This function of
ma5 is frequently seen in daily Chinese conversation.

Marker of paraphrase
People often feel it necessary to put things into a different perspective during
conversation to better understand a piece of information. One of the ways of
doing this is to offer a paraphrase of a previous text or a summary of a recent
discussion or happening. Due to its various functions in the information domain,
 is also used to mark this kind of paraphrase or summary in order to endorse,
illuminate or justify. Since the previous information is already established, the
speaker assumes that the paraphrase is also shared information, which licenses
the use of ma5.

The female guest in Example 107 reveals her own character as a dominant one,
just like a macho man. The male suitor shows his understanding of the claim by
characterizing the trait with a word ‘tough, combative’. He tags his
sentence with ma5 to trigger listeners’ processing of the utterance at the level of
information management (recall Schiffrin’s Information State as a discourse
module). In this case, ma5 helps mark the information as further explanation or
elaboration of the previous message. It shows the speaker’s wish for this
information to be accepted as common knowledge so as to serve its explanatory
function. In other words, what ma5 marks is a paraphrase of a recently shared
piece of information based on the speaker’s understanding of the message.
In Example 108, the female guest is referring to a virtue of the current male
suitor, who advocates the ‘emptying the plate’ movement (i.e. not leaving any
food on the plate). The girl also used the paucity of food in the poor countryside
she came from as an example to support this movement. When it is his turn to
speak, the host of the show summarizes the situation with an established Chinese
phrase ‘to manage the household with diligence and frugality’. This expression is
tagged with ma5 to show the speaker’s intention to share the information as
common knowledge and to wrap up the information accumulated so far.
The female guest in Example 109 is discussing her infatuation with a senior
student as an undergraduate. She makes a false start in the first sentence,
reorganizes herself and decides to describe the situation as ‘I idolized him’. This
description is tagged with ma5. The occurrence of ma5 after a retrospection
process and in a restarted sentence seems to relate ma5 to a paraphrasing and
summarizing function, which coincides with the nature of the expression (an
abstraction out of a narrative).
In Example 110, the female guest wants to make sure if the male suitor’s previous
comment means he is willing to change himself for her, whereupon the man
answers ‘I am listening to your suggestion’. The tagging of ma5 not only shows
the speaker’s willingness to go along with the suggestion but also helps clarify
the speaker’s stance to a certain extent. That is, he means the idea of changing is
not initiated by him but is suggested by the girl which is probably difficult to
refuse in the courtship setting. In other words, he paraphrases the information
from ‘I am willing to change for you’ to ‘I am willing to follow your suggestion’.
The ma5 carries out a double function here – to paraphrase information and to
rectify a misconception.
In Example 111, a few girls are competing over a male suitor. The host says to
one of them that she has not yet expressed her preference for the boy. There are
two sentences in the girl’s reply. In the first sentence she corrects the host by
saying that she did reveal her attitude. In the second sentence (which involves a
false start) she explains how she expressed her fondness for him. The second
sentence is a paraphrase of the first and it is marked by ma5 to show its
information status (i.e. it is previously established knowledge). The marking of
ma5 has empowered the second sentence to support the claim made in the first
sentence.
Example 112 happens prior to a routine of the dating show where a female
guest’s personal secret is revealed so the male can decide whether or not to
choose her. The resident specialist, having heard a secret of this girl in a previous
episode, says he knows what the girl’s secret is about. The host asks him what it
might be. Mr Lei then reveals his knowledge. The sentence relaying the secret is
marked with ma5 to show its information status (i.e. as formerly established
knowledge). The utterance itself is a paraphrase or elaboration of Lei’s earlier
claim that he knows about the girl’s secret. The ma5 has carried out the function
of supporting an earlier claim by sharing established information.
In Example 113, the female specialist, Ms Huang, is responding to a girl’s claim
that she rejected the suitor based on rational judgment. Huang objects to her
claim that evaluating a person based on their appearance is rational. She would
rather view the appearance-based appraisal as emotional rather than rational. She
presents this argument in a noun clause and two sentences. In the noun clause,
she refers to the idea of basing one’s fondness on a person’s look. In the following
sentence, she labels the situation as an expression of feelings. This sentence is
tagged with ma5 so it can be easily accepted by the audience as common
knowledge. In other words, ma5 helps to extend the argument by declaring the
preferred interpretation as a readily acceptable message. The next sentence then
gives the conclusion based on that presumably already shared information.

5.10 YE5
Similarly to the case of o2, o5 and ou5, there is no uniquely established
orthographical representation for the SFP ye5. It is variously written as
and so on. We adopt as the standard representation in this book, but keep
other forms in some examples intact, as they appeared in their original settings.
The fifth tone in ye5 is the ‘default tone’ for all sentence-final particles discussed
in this book with the notable exception of which is clearly uttered in the
second tone (i.e. o2). Thus, although the characters etc. are not
conventionally annotated in Pinyin as ye5, we still use ye5 to represent the sound
of these characters in the examples (as this is the closest approximation to the
sounds truly uttered in those circumstances).
The primary function of ye5 is to mark a speaker’s recent discovery as
something surprising and probably different from the listener’s expectation. In
this respect, ye5 bears some similarity to whose main function is to give
warning. The ye5 differs from o2 in that it may assume that the listener will have
a different point of view. The o2, on the other hand, does not make such an
assumption. While o2 is mainly used to introduce a new perspective, ye5 marks
something as opposite to a known assumption. Also, while o2 is more oriented
toward the listener, ye5 focuses more on expressing one’s thoughts and feelings.

Marker of something opposite to expectation

During the course of a conversation, ye5 is often used to mark something which
the speaker thinks is the opposite of the listener’s assumption.

In Example 114, the host of the chat show first declares the fish they use to scare
the female celebrity with a fish phobia is not a ‘friendly fish’. The first sentence is
tagged with o2 for it to be used as a warning. The second sentence is then tagged
with ye5 to reveal what the fish really is – a typical fish with the appropriate
shape, scales, spikes and fins, rather than a more ‘friendly’ fish with fewer
characteristics of fish (which may then be less scary to the female guest). The fact
that both o2 and ye5 are used in the same turn with similar functions reveals the
similarity in their nature. The fact that o2 comes first strengthens its main
capacity as a warning signal. The use of ye5 then declares the message as
something contradictory to the listener’s presumed wish (for a more friendly
fish).

In Example 115, the host of the chat show asks the male guest whether he has
ever tried a certain spicy hot dish before. As the conversation has been dwelling
on the male celebrity’s extraordinary ability to endure spicy food, the expected
answer might be ‘yes’. However, the celebrity has never tried that particular dish
so the answer has to be ‘no’. Thus he attaches ye5 to the less-preferred answer to
highlight the possible discrepancy between the truth and the listener’s
expectation.
Both examples in Example 116 involve the speaker saying something which they
think is against the listener’s expectations. In Example 116a, the woman is
repeating her warning to her daughter about the danger of wearing a long T-shirt
with very short pants. The speaker thinks her daughter does not realize what she
looks like to the men around her (i.e. that she appears not to wear any pants), so
she tags her caution with ye5, presumably to maximize the difference between
hearer expectation and the reality. If ye5 helps achieve the intended result, her
daughter may reconceptualize the issue and correct her code of dress. In Example
116b, the speaker is correcting a wrong observation about the gloves she is
wearing. That is, her gloves are made of leather, not of plastic. The correct
statement is marked with ye5 to contrast it with the wrong assumption.
In Example 117, the host of the show is responding to a situation where a male
suitor has produced some gifts for participants in the show. There is one more
thing in the man’s bag which is an umbrella. It looks like the man also intends to
give away the umbrella. As the sound of umbrella ( san3) is identical to that of
‘breaking up’ ( san3), the Chinese people do not normally give umbrellas as
presents for fear of being interpreted as wanting to break up with the receiver of
the gift. That is why Mr Meng says the umbrella is not a popular gift. His remark
is tagged with ye5 to mark the statement as contradictory to the male suitor’s
good will in using the umbrella as a gift.
At the time when the girl is speaking in Example 118, the participants of the
show are discussing how gullible people can be in the face of contemporary
swindlers. Xue uses an example to illustrate how innocent and even stupid she
was to believe in the advertisement of certain health products. The sentence ‘I
actually believed’ is tagged with ye5 to show how contrary it is to common sense.

Marker of new discovery

Often ye5 is used to accompany a discovery which is either new to the speaker at
the time of speaking or is one which the speaker thinks is new to the listener.
The two sentences in Example 119 each reveal something new either to the
speaker or to the listener. In Example 119a, the speaker was shown a photo of
several good-looking men surrounding a female celebrity. The scene was
particularly surprising to her and unthinkable for a married woman. The ye5-
marked expression reveals the magnitude of this new finding. In Example 119b,
the female guest was asked what kind of milk packaging would help her decide
on buying the milk. Without answering the question directly, she expresses her
surprise at the implication of this question (that packaging could have a bearing
on milk quality) with a ye5-marked sentence.
Example 120 clearly shows the thinking process of the host of the dating show.
For one moment he thought the girl named Cai Yang could be considered by a
male suitor who requires his girlfriend to be over 162 cm in height. Then he
realizes, from the back of his mind, that Cai is only 159 cm tall and is not
qualified after all. This new discovery is marked with ye5 to show the scale of his
surprise and the implication of the finding.
In Example 121, the host of the chat show is passing on an interesting discovery
to a male celebrity. The celebrity had probably been a womanizer when he was
young and the voting was about choosing the man most unlikely to have an
affair among the ten or so celebrities. The host, Kevin Tsai, must have considered
the two votes for He Dage a bit shocking to He since he himself knows best about
his own history. Tsai therefore marks his announcement of this discovery with
ye5 to reflect its potential to surprise He Dage.

In Example 122, the speaker, Huang, had just made the discovery that the
‘catwalk’ the show prepared for them was really slippery. The ye5 helps her put
this new discovery into words. Hsu, on the other hand, uses ye5 in her utterance
to caution Huang about the possible misconception that this was a real catwalk
(i.e. it was a fake designed to embarrass the guests). Thus the two ye5’s are
slightly different in function (i.e. making a discovery vs revealing unexpected
information).
Since the core function of ye5 is to announce a new discovery or present
something unexpected, it often adds emphasis to an expression when it is used to
respond to a statement or a question, whether in a preferred or less-preferred
way.

Marker of endorsement
A ye5-marked expression is often used to respond favorably to a previous
speaker’s contribution. This is often just a short endorsement of the previous
speaker’s idea or proposal. It is as if ye5 is saying ‘you have spoken my mind’ in
these cases.

In Example 123, the host of the chat show asks his co-host what she thinks is the
most shocking thing she has learnt from the day’s chatting. Hsu says it has to be
the unusual thing an older celebrity says about never holding his spouse’s hand.
Upon that, Tsai quickly agrees with a ‘me too’ marked with ye5, which is an
agreement accompanied by genuine surprise (about both hosts coincidentally
holding the same opinion).
In Example 124, Mr Tsai asks his co-host how she thinks about putting celebrities
Julie and Alex together as a couple on the show. Hsu readily agrees and her reply
is tagged with ye5 to introduce a sense of freshness to the agreed proposal. The
newness of the proposal lies in the fact that the spouses of both celebrities are not
present on the show, so the idea of the new partnership seems unconventional
and thought-provoking.

Marker of retort
On the one hand, ye5 seems to increase the authenticity and the immediacy of an
endorsement as aforementioned; on the other hand, ye5 can also lend its
momentum to a negative response used to counter a claim or reject a proposal.
In Example 125, a female guest, Guan, is rejecting a male suitor on the grounds
that he is not the ideal muscular man for her. The other female guest, Xue, shouts
out a retort reminding Guan that the man is actually a fitness coach. The retort is
marked with ye5 presumably to remind the listener of an important piece of
information which has been neglected. Note Example 125 is a dialogue observed
on a Chinese TV show. The orthographical representation of ye5 (here ) used
by the TV subtitlers in Example 125 is different from the one used more
frequently on Taiwanese TV shows ( ). However, it should be noted that other
orthographical representations for ye5 are also present in Taiwanese chat show
subtitles, such as the in Example 123, and mainland chat shows also transcribe
ye5 as in some cases, such as in Example 120.
In Example 126, the host of the chat show uses an analogy to show that
professionals never do in their leisure time what they do for a living. Just like an
actor does not perform at home, so a singer does not sing at KTV. However, the
guest of the show, Mr Zeng, quickly points out that he, being a singer, also sings
at KTV. This seems to undermine Mr Xie’s generalization as the ye5-tagged
sentence offers an exception to the assumption.

5.11 LA5
The primary function of la5 is to dismiss an idea or object as unimportant or
unworthy of consideration and possibly also to express an attitude of contempt or
disapproval. However, it can also be used to express something positive,
especially against certain adverse conditions or after some kind of
misunderstanding. The la5 is somewhat more frequently heard in Taiwanese
Mandarin than in China, possibly due to the Southern Min influence.

Marker of dismissal
The la5 often accompanies a derogatory statement with or without an impatient
attitude. It is often used to dismiss something or someone as unimportant and
unworthy of serious consideration.

Example 127 is a short exchange shown in a video clip introducing a male suitor.
A woman in the video tries to get the man to take her home. The man’s
somewhat rude remark ‘Go take the subway home yourself’ is tagged by la5,
which adds a careless and contemptuous attitude to the otherwise neutral
command.
Both sentences in Example 128 marked by la5 are used to counter a claim or
proposal. In Example 128a, the host of the dating show is defending the male
suitor who has not been trained in the same discipline as the female guest who is
criticizing him. The host dismisses the presumption that the man should possess
any technical knowledge that is not within his specialty. In Example 128b, the
celebrity Zhong is complaining about the amount of money a friend supposedly
wants to borrow from him. He condemns the amount of two million as too
outrageously large. The tagging of la5 helps express the speaker’s attitude that
the proposal is entirely out of the question.
In Example 129, the hostess of the chat show asks a celebrity father what he
thinks about his teenage daughter’s new look. Mr Wang is not particularly
impressed with his young daughter’s fashionable outfit so he answers ‘so-so’
which is tagged with la5 to show a low degree of satisfaction.

In Example 130, the host of the show asks the celebrity guest whether his wife is
worried about his having any lady friends outside of the marriage. Wang rejects
this suggestion by saying ‘She should be very much at ease now’ (because she has
all the money). This sentence is tagged with la5 to dismiss the possibility of his
wife having to worry about anything.

Marker of clarification
Another function of related to its marking of dismissal is to help make
clarifications. This may be to clarify the truth of information or to clarify one’s
stance after a possible misunderstanding.

In Example 131, the female guest has just commented positively on the
appearance of the male suitor in this session. She said that when they stand side
by side, the man did not appear any weaker than the tall and handsome host of
the show. Upon that, the host challenges her by saying ‘Do you mean I am the
one who looks weaker then?’ The girl quickly denies the accusation, using a la5-
marked sentence to clarify herself and diminish the implication.
Example 132 occurs at the beginning of the chat show, when the hostess uses, as
the ice breaker, a Chinese idiom: ‘Time pushes people to grow old’. This is not the
most pleasant greeting for the row of middle-aged celebrity guests on the show,
who all hate to be referred to as being ‘old’. The hostess therefore quickly denies
the possibility that she is targeting the celebrities. Instead, she says she is
referring to their children who are all young grown-ups now. The sentence used
to deny the allegation is marked with la5 to sideline it.
In Example 133, the hostess of the chat show involves a senior celebrity’s son by
referring to his trouble-laden private life. This young man has been caught in
many awkward situations such as having a dubious girlfriend, being repetitively
issued with parking tickets, being out of a job frequently and so on. To help
alleviate the situation, the assistant of the show suggests a rephrase – that he is
just a bit busy. The use of la5 to accompany this sentence carries out a
clarification function and helps dismiss the negative connotations in the previous
speaker’s contribution.

Prior to the talk presented in Example 134, Miss Lin has been talking about how
stern her father was in bringing her up. For example, whenever she won a
competition in a performance art, he would say that it was nothing as she only
defeated a bunch of weak opponents. The girl realizes that she is making her
father look bad in the show, so she adds a la5-marked comment at the end of the
story to clarify the situation – ‘He only wished for us to do better’. This sentence
seems to justify her father’s action somewhat and diminishes some of the bad
connotations. This is one example of la5 marking a positive contribution in order
to reverse a bad situation.
In Example 135, the hostess of the show asks the male guest about his recently
ended job as reported on entertainment news. The young man answers with a
la5-marked correction, maintaining that it is not an ended job. He then goes on to
explain the complicated situation about the company he last served in.

The speaker in Example 136 has been recounting a ghost story she personally
encountered years ago. She and her girlfriend rented a cheap room from an older
lady where they saw a number of apparitions. After they ran away at midnight
never to return, they learned from a neighbor that the house was actually located
in the vicinity of a cemetery. The final words she gives in Example 136 represent
an awakening of some sort, a correction of the previous misconception that it was
just an ordinary residential neighborhood.

Marker of digression
Due to its core usage for dismissing a claim or proposal, la5 is also used in the
cognitive domain to mark a digression in thought in the process of reasoning or
narration. In other words, la5 is sometimes used to mark a short side sequence
within a person’s longer turn.

The female guest in Example 137 was telling a ghost story she had personally
experienced. Note how the la5-marked sentence acts like a footnote in this
narrative. The footnote explains her assessment of the material brushing across
her face as a result of intellectual thinking. This is a different process from the
story-telling process itself, and the la5 usefully sets the sentence apart from the
narrative. Also notice how an unfinished phrase starting with ‘made of
fabric’ is cut off by the ‘footnote’ and resumes after the inserted remark,
repeating the three beginning morphemes . (A phrase which is cut off in
the middle and later resumed, will resume from the beginning rather than from
the point where it was cut off; see Fromkin and Bernstein-Ratner 1998.) This
further supports the view that the la5-marked portion is an inserted sequence
generated from another cognitive process.
In Example 138, the speaker is explaining why his father did not see him off at
the train station years ago when he was joining the army. As he is recounting the
incident, he stops in the middle of the story and inserts a side sequence – ‘It was
the reason he gave me anyway’. The footnote status of this phrase is marked by
la5 as it shows the speaker stepping away from the historical account and
offering an evaluative comment from the current standpoint. Note again that
‘therefore’, the word which introduces the structure before the side
sequence, is repeated straight after the insertion, signifying the speaker picking
up a previous point after an interruption.

Marker of concession
Since la5 normally functions in a domain which involves some kind of adverse
condition, it is also used to mark a concession, to express something as a final
resort or a compromised stance. In doing so, it seems to embody the attitude of a
person able to see both the negative and the positive sides of the issue in
question, especially the ability to find certain merits inherent in adverse
conditions.

In Example 139, the hostess of the show is referring to a male celebrity’s struggle
in making his way to the current status of an established singer. The female
guest, Huang, responds by saying that it is an arduous journey, but one must
persist in order to succeed. The portion of her speech marked by la5 is one that
expresses a compromising attitude – that you have to endure the hardship if you
want to be successful.
What happened before the speech in Example 140 was a fruitless discussion on
whether the girl or her mother should take off their clothes in front of the
camera. The hostess of the chat show comes to the conclusion that the girl’s
father was right in saying that neither of them is equipped to do so. The la5
marks a good point (i.e. the father was right) as a compromise out of a pointless
discussion.

Prior to the occurrence of the speech in Example 141, the show staged a prank
phone call. A young singer was asked to call his celebrity father to borrow a large
amount of money. The father did not agree to lend the money readily and the call
ended without a solid conclusion. Afterwards, the host of the show comments
that even if the son really wanted to borrow money from his father, the father
would not have the money anyway (based on the host’s understanding of the
celebrity). The remark ‘I will be honest with you’ is tagged with la5 to indicate a
compromising attitude, meaning that it was not so bad that the father did not
agree to lend money, as he did not have the money anyway.

Marker of desirable or overdue action

When la5 appears together with an imperative sentence, it often marks an action
as highly desirable for the speaker and as probably long overdue. The speaker is
therefore showing some impatience when giving the command, suggestion, or
request. Two examples retrieved from the web are shown in Example 142 to
illustrate this function.
The speaker in Example 142a tells someone to move away from them speedily.
The command is still effective without the la5 but the presence of la5 gives a
strong sense of impatience, signifying the speaker’s desire for the action to
happen. Likewise, the speaker in Example 142b orders someone to brush their
teeth right away. The la5 aggravates the undesirable condition and increases the
urgency of the desirable action.
Example 143 shows la5 used in TV chat shows to tag commands, giving them a
sense of urgency and desirability. The speaker in Example 143a tells his daughter
to slow down in reporting a difficult situation over the phone. The la5 commits
the speaker to the message content, urging the listener to do as they are told. The
la5-tagged command in Example 143b is reported speech, where the listener is
advised by the original speaker to become a monk due to his well-endowed
Buddhist nature. Some humorous effect is achieved by the impatient attitude
created by la5 in the reported speech on top of the urgency it introduces.

Marker of impatience
Sometimes a speaker uses la5 simply to express an impatient attitude and nothing
more. The usage is impolite and often derogatory. Two examples retrieved from
the web are shown below.

As can be seen from the English translations of the two sentences in Example 144,
the addition of la5 to certain expressions creates a swearing effect. These
expressions are mostly used in confrontational settings.
Sometimes the impatience is ‘faked’ and the la5-marked expression seems to
exude some feminine charm instead of sounding impolite. The effect is usually
applicable only to relatively close friends, couples or family members.
Example 145a is probably said by a female (or a male acting in a feminine way)
when upset by someone close in a mild way. In Example 145b, the ‘other
person(s)’ can refer to the speaker themself or some other person(s) the addressee
of the sentence happens to be staring at. If refers to the speaker, the speaker
is normally a woman and the la5 will exude some feminine charm rather than
real impatience.

La5 as a variant of le5

There is a homograph of which is phonologically similar and
orthographically identical to the la5 discussed in the above strands, but is entirely
different in ‘meaning’ and function. In most cases, this particle is a variant of
used as a sentence-final particle (not as an aspect marker as seen in Chapter 3 –
see 5.11 below). Some examples of this kind of la5 retrieved from the web are
shown below.
Both instances of in Example 146 are phonological variants of , or are end
products of the sandhi process of le5 + a5. Hence, they do not have the usual
characteristics of la5; that is, they do not function to dismiss, to clarify, to step
aside from the main storyline, or simply to show impatience. They are mostly
used as serving the function of a sentence-final particle instead. For example,
the la5 in Example 146a comes with a positive evaluation. The la5 in 146b marks
a question – it is probably a combination of le5 and a5 (i.e. ) in this
case, and the question is formed using a5’s question marking capacity.
A la5-marked sentence, if read orthographically instead of being heard
phonologically, can be ambiguous if it appears in a slot where both the ‘genuine’
and the disguised as can fit in. One such example is shown in Example
147.

If pronounced, the pitch level of the in Example 147b will be somewhat higher
than that in Example 147a and with a flatter pitch contour. The in Example
147a, pronounced with a stronger initial accent and a falling pitch, is the
‘genuine’ la5 which in this instance marks a highly desirable action to the
speaker, like Example 142. The in 147b, on the other hand, is meant to be a le5
surfacing as la5 (note the similarity in pronunciation), which essentially marks a
completed action in this case as well as a change of marital state for the couple
from single to married. While Example 147a could have been said by a woman
desperate to get married to her boyfriend, 147b is an announcement made by a
couple who have just got married.

5.12 LE5
We discussed le5 as the marker of completion in Chapter 3; that is, it comes
after a verb and marks the action as having completed in the real world at the
time of speaking or up to a point in a hypothesized situation. Two short sentences
including le5 as an aspect marker are shown below.

Both examples in Example 148 have in the middle of the sentence, directly
after the verb, which clearly shows its status of being an aspect marker. In this
case, they both show the action represented by the verb (‘make friends’ or
‘destroy’) as a completed action at the time of speaking. However, the le5 as
aspect marker need not always appear somewhere within the sentence. It can also
appear at the end of the sentence, if that is where the verb happens to be. Two
examples of le5 as aspect marker appearing at the end of a sentence follow.
Both sentences in Example 149 each have a verb (‘escape’ and ‘reprove’
respectively) followed by as the aspect marker showing the action to have
been completed at the time of speaking. Both instances of le5 appear at the end of
their respective host sentences. In some cases it is not always clear whether the
le5 at the end of a sentence is an aspect marker or a sentence-final particle. An
aspect marker le5 simply marks the verb as representing an action that has
already happened at the time of speaking; an SFP le5 shows the speaker’s overall
cognitive placing and the pragmatic connotation of the entire expression. Such a
le5 may also serve both functions at the same time. Conversely, some sentences
may come with both an aspect marker le5 and a sentence-final le5. Two examples
are shown below.
The first le5 in Example 150a advises the listener that the action of ‘adding the
soy sauce’ was completed sometime in the past. The second le5 adds the
implications of this action to the present – that the dish is now ready to be
served, i.e. it represents the so-called ‘currently relevant state’ of Li and
Thompson (1981). Likewise, Example 150b shows aspect marker le5 being used in
a hypothetical condition – ‘going to the night club’. The speaker argues that once
one enters a night club, one certainly wants to drink alcoholic beverages. The
argument portion is tagged with a sentence-final le5 to show the speaker’s
commitment to the proposal.
Thus, when le5 appears within a sentence, it is definitely an aspect marker
marking the completion of an action. When le5 appears at the end of a sentence,
it could be an aspect marker or a sentence-final participle or it may be serving
both functions. A sentence can come with both the AM le5 and the SFP le5.
When serving the function of SFP, le5 can add different meanings or
implications to the sentence it attaches to. The core function of le5 as an SFP, it
seems, is for the speaker to express their evaluation of, and attitude toward, the
current situation as a result of recent happenings in the surroundings.

Marker of change of state

The SFP is often used by the speaker to indicate a change of state that they
become aware of during the course of the conversation. The change could be
related to the environment ( ‘It is dark’), a personal circumstance (
‘I am rich!), an object ( ‘The computer is broken’), an issue (
‘The problem is solved’) or something else. More examples are
shown below.

A sequence of two sentences, both tagged with , appears in Example 151. These
are spoken by the host of the dating show after he heard the male suitor praise a
female guest. The man has been extraordinarily shy and not good at pursuing
girls. However, the host has tried to teach him what to do here and there in the
show. When he saw the boy praising the girl, Mr Meng recognized this as a sign
of improvement, and announces that the boy has changed – he is curable now as
he has transformed from a timid boy to a sociable person. Such an expression of
change of state would not have been possible without the presence of le5.
Moreover, the sense of change is doubly increased with two expressions both
tagged by le5 carrying out the same function.

In Example 152, a question and answer session has just rendered a male suitor
speechless as he does not know how to respond to a girl’s questions. The host of
the show takes over the floor by commenting on the man’s behavioral change
(i.e. from being a normal person to someone who does not know how to speak) in
order to fill in the silence. The sentence ‘He does not know
how to speak’, without the accompanying le5, could have meant the person
cannot normally talk. With the addition of le5, the sentence in Example 152
correctly means that the speechlessness is a new state the young man has
recently lapsed into.
The girl in Example 153 is asking a young man whether his previously failed
relationship has made him permanently incapable of pursuing love. The
sentence-final in Example 153 is not an aspect marker since it does not refer to
the timing or state of completion of the verb ‘love’ in any way. Instead, the le5
refers to the entire clause of ‘not knowing how to love’ and marks it as a new
state transformed from a previous state (i.e. from ‘not daring to love’ to ‘not
knowing how to love’).

Reconceptualization
The function of to mark a change of state enables it to work in the cognitive
domain. That is, le5 is often used to show the epistemic change one’s mind goes
through before the utterance is made.
Example 154 shows how helps to express a piece of recently acquired
knowledge as the result of a process of reconceptualization. In Example 154a, the
host of the chat show gradually realized, during the course of the conversation,
why a celebrity did not send his children to the Taipei American School. The le5
helps convey this epistemic change, i.e. from being oblivious to the reason to
finally realizing it. If there was no le5 in Example 154a, then the sentence
‘I know why he does not go to the American
School’ would simply mean the speaker has this knowledge all along. In Example
154b, on the other hand, the speaker is modelling the epistemic transition of
another person and articulating the result of his observation. Mr Qiu, the host of
the dating show, was introducing a new male suitor who was extremely tall.
Knowing Cai Yang to be a petite girl, Qiu teases her by saying ‘You know now
what it is like to look at someone facing upward, don’t you?’ The le5 is essential
in adding the extra dimension of assumed conceptual change to the sentence. The
role of another SFP, , in Example 154b is to make the statement into a
rhetorical question. We can modify the sentence in three different ways, as
shown in Example 155 with Example 154b resurfacing as Example 155a.
First, both and have been stripped off sentence Example 155b, which
simply means ‘X knows what Y means’ (where X = Cai Yang; Y = ‘look up at
something’). Example 155c keeps ba5 but is short of le5; therefore it does not
imply a conceptual change but is still a question (‘X knows what Y means,
doesn’t she?’). Example 155d loses ba5 but keeps le5, which gives it an entirely
different meaning from 155b – ‘X now knows Y’, i.e. ‘X did not know Y before’.
Finally, for the sake of comparison, the original sentence reproduced as Example
155a means ‘X now knows what Y means, doesn’t she?’ as compared to other
sentences in this paragraph.
The combination in Example 155a illustrates the phenomenon of two
‘sentence-final’ particles making an appearance together, self-contradicting the
definition of SFP. In fact, the ‘dual SFP’ situation happens only when the first SFP
is le5. It is not possible to say, for example, and so on (but
etc. are perfectly fine). This seems to set le5 apart as a different and
unique category of functional item from all the other ‘genuine’ SFPs.

In Example 156, the young man apparently has been watching the TV programme
hosted by Mr Qiu. He is now on the show and sees the host in person. He
compares the real Mr Qiu with the one in his imagination and says that Qiu is
more handsome in person. The signifies the transition from being ‘less
handsome’ in memory to ‘more handsome’ in person to the speaker’s mind,
which is revealed as a compliment to the TV host. Again, the le5 in this case is
not associated with any action and is clearly an SFP providing additional
information in the cognitive and pragmatic domain.
Prior to the host’s speech in Example 157, there has been confusion and a
discussion about an object sticking out from the pocket of the male suitor’s shirt.
Seen from a distance, it looked like a stalk of grass to most of the people in the
show. However, a video recording was then played which introduced the man as
the owner of a peacock farm. After the video, people started to reconsider the
grass-like object in the man’s pocket. The host of the show finally speaks out for
everyone: ‘Now we know this is a peacock feather, isn’t it?’ (indeed it is). If there
had been no le5 in this sentence, it would simply mean ‘It looks like this is a
peacock feather, doesn’t it?’ and the original meaning regarding the knowledge
reconstruction process would have been lost.

Closing statement
There is a pragmatic function for in conversation, which is to serve as a
marker of closing or a pre-closing signal for the current topic. This is not
surprising as le5 is often used to express the speaker’s awareness of a change of
state or a reconceptualization process. The function of le5 to help present a
closing statement is a natural extension of these capacities.

Prior to the resident robot’s speech in Example 158a, it has tried to introduce
several female guests to the male suitor, all of whom he rejected. After these
failed attempts, the ‘human-disguised’ robot concludes the session by saying ‘I
can no longer help’. If le5 were not present, the sentence would simply mean ‘I
cannot help’ with no reference to previous endeavors. The existence of le5 is
essential for the sentence to serve as a concluding remark, summing up the
situation and showing the speaker’s lack of interest in pursuing the topic any
further. Example 158b is a routine command given by the host of the dating show
when one or more female guests are willing to go away with the male suitor. The
command ‘You must make a final decision now’ signifies that the end point of a
process has been reached and a conclusion must be drawn. Similar to Example
158a, if there were no le5 in Example 158b, the sentence would mean ‘You must
make the final decision’ but it would not mean ‘You must make a decision
NOW’. Nor would it come with the historical implication – that the decision-
making is the result of a relatively long process of interaction and selection.

The celebrity guest in Example 159 is referring to the performance of an assistant

at a warm-up activity to the chat show. He dismisses the first few acts as
uninteresting and advises the program to keep only the last act, which he thinks
is great. The le5 in the third sentence is essential in conveying the sense of
finality and the speaker’s inclination to wrap up the issue.
Example 160 is an ultimatum given by someone to their lover in a video
recording. The le5 is important in generating a sense of closure to the proposal.
Although the sentence would sound roughly the same without le5 due to the
presence of other functional elements (i.e. ‘from now on’ and ‘no more’), it still
relies largely on le5 to convey the speaker’s attitude and determination in
wanting to put an end to the relationship.
The male suitor in Example 161 is sharing a list of characteristics his future
girlfriends should have with the 30 female guests on the show. He gives three
points and then concludes the list with a le5-marked expression. Although the le5
is not essential for this expression to serve as a concluding statement due to the
presence of ‘roughly’ and ‘just is’, it is still up to le5 to create the sense of finality
and convey the speaker’s intention to end the list.

Evaluation
Apart from the cognitive function of expressing a change of state and the
pragmatic function of giving a sense of finality to speech, is also used to
accompany an evaluation. That is, le5 can help tag an expression with the value
the speaker wishes to set down for a person, object or situation after a period of
observation.

Both examples in Example 162 contain a sentence marked with to express the
speaker’s evaluation and their stance toward people or things. Both sentences
also come with the structure meaning ‘too X (in my opinion)’, where
X is a descriptive phrase of some sort. The speaker in Example 162a, for example,
is rejecting the male suitor on the grounds that he talks too slowly. Although the
meaning of the sentence remains largely the same without le5, the presence of le5
does show the speaker’s firm commitment to the comment and there seems no
way to reverse the judgment. Likewise, the speaker in Example 162b criticizes a
male and a female guest for complimenting each other too much. The le5
strengthens the verdict by giving a sense of finality, as if saying that the case is
closed and there is no room for further discussion.

Prior to Example 163a, someone from the audience has just finished praising the
host of the dating show, saying he looks much younger in person than on TV. Mr
Meng responds with an evaluation of the guest’s comment. The marking of
reinforces the sense that the comment is the result of a long period of observation
rather than a whim. The same TV host in Example 163b is responding to a male
guest who just brought a present for the show – a kind of colorful sculpture made
of clay and originating from Tianjin. The same city is also famous for a snack
called Ma Hua. Mr Meng apparently prefers something edible, so he says that it
would be even better if the guest had brought some Ma Hua as well. This
comment is marked with le5 to enable a ‘backward comparison’ between the
preferred Ma Hua and the previously mentioned clay sculpture. In both cases, the
evaluation would seem less contextualized (i.e. short of historical reference)
without the tagging of le5.
5.13 INDEPENDENT PARTICLES
In addition to sentence-final particles (SFPs) and constituent-final particles
(CFPs), Chinese speakers also use what I call, in this book, independent particles
(IPs). They most frequently happen at the beginning of an utterance and are
normally phonologically separate from the ensuing sentence. In other words, they
are not as integrated into the sentence as an SFP is. Although IPs come in
different phonological forms, their functions are fairly limited and are decidedly
less versatile than SFPs. The independent particles are frequently used to express
an emotional surge that the speaker experiences at the time of speaking, emotions
such as wonder, shock, happiness, embarrassment, gratitude, sadness and so on.
They are alternatively called ‘interjections’ (e.g. Li and Cheng 2008, Yip 2000) or
‘exclamative particles’ in Chinese linguistics literature. In this brief section, we
will look at a few examples of IPs representing different emotions.

As can be surmised from the meaning of the sentence, both independent particles
in Example 164 express the speaker’s surprise at the sight of an external stimulus.
In Example 164a, it is the cockroaches that cause the girl to scream. In Example
164b, it is the pleasant surprise of seeing a macho man. In both cases, the
independent particle helps the speaker ‘let off steam’, so to speak, and there
seems nothing more to it. The two particles in Example 164 can in principle be
exchanged as the difference is mainly phonological.
Similar to Example 164, the three independent particles in Example 165 help the
speaker let out the emotional surge at the time of speech. In Example 165a, the IP
emanates a feeling of happiness which the girl apparently feels at the compliment
of a male guest. In Example 165b, the girl cannot find the right words to say and
feels momentarily embarrassed. She uses the IP to lead the involuntary
‘explosion’ of an emotional surge, explaining why she cannot talk normally (i.e.
being too nervous). There may be some differences between and in
terms of the nuances of emotion expressed on top of the phonological differences,
but in principle these two particles are also interchangeable.
Example 166 shows how a female guest uses ai1ya5 to start her response to a
male suitor’s compliment. The particle acts like a precursor that both reflects the
emotional impact the man’s compliment has on the girl and announces the
coming of a fuller response.

Similar to exmple Example 166, the girl in Example 167 is responding to a

compliment. Probably because the compliment is inevitable, since the girl
practically asks for it, and because the girl is expecting the compliment, the
response is somewhat exaggerated, with a trisyllabic particle leading the turn.
The does not add much to the shorter versions of or except
longer duration of exclamation and perhaps more dramatic effect. An even longer
unit in this series is ai1you1wei4ya5 – a quadrisyllabic particle which
can convey the speaker’s feeling of surprise, anger, pain, or sometimes pleasure in
a maximally dramatic way.
The highlighted particle in Example 168 is represented by a symbol taken from
the Zhuyin phonetic system used in Taiwan, which is pronounced as ei1 with a
rising tone, as if asking a question. The Zhuyin symbols normally do not appear
in formal writing but are occasionally used in casual writing to represent sounds
or replace certain characters for fun or other effects. In this case, since there is no
Chinese character corresponding to the pronunciation of ei1, I have taken the
liberty of representing this particle with . This IP normally shows the speaker’s
surprise as it happens; that is, the sound is often uttered at the same time as the
surprise is received. In Example 168a, for example, the speaker says ? the
moment he sees a pretty woman, who probably should not show up there. In
Example 168b, one of the four male suitors, Mr Chen, thought they had used all
the opportunities to choose female candidates. Therefore, it comes as a surprise
when the host of the show declares that they can continue to choose girls in the
next round. Chen utters ? the moment he hears the announcement. This
exclamation is then followed by a question which spells out the surprise and the
doubt.
The particle is rather similar to the oh used by English speakers. One of its
functions in Chinese discourse is to signal understanding, as both examples in
Example 169 show. The character adopted here for this particle is by no
means universally established for this function. The corresponding Pinyin
annotation used here for this particle (ou5) is also approximate. Like many other
particles discussed in this chapter, the pronunciations for some particles as well
as the written forms may vary from individual to individual and from
community to community.

5.14 CONCLUSION
We have discussed a wide range of Chinese SFPs and other particles like CFPs
and IPs. The large number of examples in this chapter show how versatile the
Chinese SFPs are and how complicated their functions may be, despite their light-
weight appearance (i.e. each only one syllable in length). The dozen or so
sentence-final particles function in the Chinese discourse to help organize ideas,
request information, offer suggestions, give evaluation, issue warnings, reveal
emotion, seek agreement, build alliances, close conversations, and so on and so
forth. Together they help achieve the most effective conversation by catering to
the speaker’s cognitive, emotional and interpersonal needs during the course of
the conversation.
Some pragmatic functions decisively rely on the presence of the relevant SFPs,
such as giving warnings ( ), showing admiration ( ) or surprise ( ), giving a
reason ( ), marking a statement as the result of a process ( ) and so on. Other
SFPs are only marginally required for carrying out the function associated with
the utterance as a whole; for example, the used to mark a question
redundantly, or the used to give more emphasis to a statement. SFPs are
primarily used in spoken language but they also show up in informal writings
such as text messages and postings on social networks. All in all, sentence-final
particles and the like are an indispensable part of the Chinese language. They
work in tandem with sentence-based grammar to make the Chinese language
more sensitive and productive.
CHAPTER 6
Chinese neologisms on the web

6.1 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we consider Chinese neologisms on the web. In particular, we
examine a number of new words currently active on Sina Weibo – the most
popular social networking tool among Chinese netizens today, which boasts over
500 million registered accounts at the end of 2012. We divide these words into
categories and investigate their meanings and usages. By doing so, we hope to get
a glimpse of what the Chinese language looks like in one of the busiest sections
of contemporary society today. We also hope to learn about some of the current
concerns of the Chinese people and society from the new words sampled and the
contexts of their usages.

6.2 CATEGORIES OF NEW WORDS

‘Chinese neologisms’ are defined here as words that have been created or have
acquired new meanings roughly from the late twentieth century (say after the
1990s) up to the present day, especially after the internet became popular in
mainland China (despite being heavily censored) in the twenty-first century.
Many of the new words selected here are also referred to as neologisms by
various online resources such as Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu search engine and
miscellaneous webpages.
This chapter divides the selected new words and phrases into six categories:

• those used for online social networking

• those representing newly conceived classes of people
• those invented to represent new concepts
• newly formulated descriptive words
• newly formulated action and interaction words
• new colloquial words and phrases.

Each category of neologism is explored in the following sections, in an item-by-

item fashion. The discussion on each item includes its meaning, etymology
(where available) and socio-cultural implications (where possible). Items which
are obviously generated from the same root word are grouped together in the
same space for discussion.

6.2.1 Social networking

This category of new words is used predominantly for online networking
purposes. The words selected for discussion below refer to either concepts or
behaviors that are prevalent on contemporary Chinese social networking
websites.

Group 1
(Network relations)

fen3si1 ‘fans’
qiu2fen3 ‘beg-fans’
hu4fen3 ‘mutual-fans’
hui2fen3 ‘return-fans’
zhang4fen3 ‘swell-fans’
you3fen3bi4hui2 ‘have-fans-must-return’
nao3can2fen3 ‘brain damaged fans’
guan1zhu4 ‘show concern’
V da4v ‘big V’
ai4te4 ‘to @ someone; to include as recipient of a message’
la1hei1 ‘pull-black’

The first seven words in Group 1 all originated from the first item, , which is
itself transliterated from the English word fans. The meaning of is largely
the same as that of fans in English (though as with all Chinese nouns, it can be
used in either the singular or the plural sense). On the Weibo social network,
every user can have admirers who are attracted to them by their postings, their
photo, their personality, their reputation and so on and become their ‘fans’. The
more fans one has, the more respectable one is likely to be in both the virtual
world and real society. The number of fans also seems to provide social
networkers with feelings of satisfaction and security, and the motivation to
continue to take part in social networking.
Because of the importance of fans to Weibo networkers, many new words are
created around the concept of fans, as demonstrated in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1 shows three kinds of words evolving from the concept of ‘fans’.
Firstly, there is the group of words denoting network participants’ online
behavior. means to ‘beg for fans’, a word used in Weibo users’ postings to
invite other networkers to become their fans. means to mutually become
each other’s fans. means to return the act of becoming a fan.
means ‘if you become my fan, then I will definitely become your fan as well’. All
the terms in this group denote actions centering around the idea of increasing the
number of one’s fans on Weibo.
The second group, currently only one word that I am aware of, reflects the
system’s behavior with regard to network participants’ number of fans. Thus,
refers to the increase of the number of fans affiliated to a person, especially
a sudden increase of large numbers of fans.
Figure 6.1 New terms evolving from the word ‘fans’

Another extension of the core concept is the kinds of fan available on the web.
or the ‘brain-damaged fans’, can refer to very loyal fans of a celebrity or
can be used to accuse some fans of zealous pursuit of worthless celebrities.
The next word in Group 1, ‘to express concern’, is not a new word, but
an old word acquiring new meanings in contemporary society. When used in the
Weibo social networking environment, it has the technical meaning of ‘adding
yourself to the fan list of someone’. When someone has a huge number of fans in
their Weibo space, they are called V ‘the big V’, where V stands for ‘verified’;
that is, a verified member of Weibo whose phone number has been confirmed
and who has a certain number of fans. A V may have millions of fans on
Weibo and is very influential in the social network.
 The penultimate term, , is the transliteration of @ ‘at’. The symbol is used
in Weibo to mark someone as the recipient of a message. The transliteration of
the English word ‘at’ then evolves into a Chinese verb, , which means to
alert someone with a message. The last word in the group, , means to add
someone to the ‘blacklist’ of one’s networking space, so that this person can no
longer get in touch.

Example 1a shows how a Chinese disyllabic unit , evolving from the symbol
@, is now used as a regular verb on the web. The second sentence illustrates the
usage of another newly formulated verb , which can only be understood
against the social networking background.

Group 2
(Message posting)

ding3yi2xia4 ‘butt-once’
 bang1ding3 ‘help-butt’
bang1zhuan3 ‘help-forward’
sha1fa1 ‘sofa’
ban3deng4 ‘stool’
guan4shui3 ‘fill with water’
qian2shui3 ‘diving’
lu4guo4 ‘pass by’
piao1guo4 ‘drift by’
wu2yu3 ‘no language’
wu2yan2 ‘no words’
qiang1wen2 ‘gun-article’

Group 2 words are used for responding to messages posted on social networks.
The core concept is represented by the character in this group, which
originally means ‘to push something upward with the head’, like heading in a
football game. However, in the context of message responding, means to push
the message upward one notch among the array of postings on a message board
so it becomes more noticeable. That is, the message is pushed upward on a
vertical stack. Therefore, , or all mean lending support to the
message so that the message stays longer on the board. , on the other hand,
means passing the message on to another social networking space to increase the
width of the distribution.
The next two terms, ‘sofa’ and ‘wooden bench’, are both existing
common words in Chinese. In the context of discussion forums, however, they
acquire new meanings in terms of the priority status of one’s response to a
posting. More specifically, and represent the first and the second
responses respectively to a new posting. Both are significant places as people
normally do not scroll too far down the rows of responses after reading the
message itself.
Moving on to the second half of the Group 2 items, is an existing word,
originally meaning ‘to pour water into a container (to cause flooding)’. In the
context of message posting, this word acquires the new meaning of ‘inputting
plenty of (meaningless) postings’ to state one’s opinions or simply to help
increase the visibility of a supported posting. , on the other hand, means
‘reading without making any response’, just like someone diving underneath the
surface of the water without being noticed.
The next few terms in Group 2 are words often used to fill in the content of a
posting on a message board. This happens when a person finishes reading a
message and does not feel like making any serious response. A comment of some
sort is required, however, due to the system’s regulations, the demand from the
owner of the posting or for the commentator’s own good. In such cases, the social
networker often simply inputs, in a perfunctory fashion, ‘passing by’,
‘drifting by’, or (both meaning ‘no comment’). These are not
generally regarded as respectful postings in online communities.
The last item in Group 2, , refers to an article posted to the social network
written by someone else rather than the self-proclaimed author. The term is
probably derived from an existing word, ‘gun-hand’ which means ‘ghost
writer’, often used to refer to an author who writes for others or an impersonator
taking an exam for someone else.

Group 3
(Politics related)

mei3gou3 ‘American-dog’
wu3mao2 ‘five-cents’
tian1chao2 ‘imperial kingdom’
he2xie2 ‘harmonious’
he2xie4 ‘river-crab’
kuo4san4 ‘disseminate’
qiu2kuo4san4 ‘beg-dissemination’

An issue which many people are interested in discussing on social networks is

politics, treacherous as the topic may be in China. Due to the large population
and the incompatibility and clashes between different political thoughts, the
positions people take are often extreme. The extreme nature of these is reflected
in the political jargon created for use on the web. The Group 4 new words (or
words with new senses) in the social networking category all have to do with
political identities, political censorship and petitions.
The first item in this group, , refers derogatively to pro-America and pro-
democracy netizens. Conversely, those who speak for the communist government
are labeled , which derives its meaning from the alleged fifty-cent reward
from the government for every pro-government posting made. Two sentences
extracted from Weibo below illustrate how the two terms are used to label people
who take up radically different political positions, the pro-American as
‘American dog’ in Example 2a and the CCP followers as ‘fifty cents’ in Example
2b respectively.

The next word in the politics group, , is an older word acquiring a new
meaning. The item used to refer to the imperial court that historically governed
the whole of China. Nowadays it is used to refer to the central government of
China formed solely and controlled fully by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The following three sentences from Weibo postings illustrate its usage.
Example 3a shows to be used in a relatively calm statement, showing a
netizen’s understanding of how the ‘imperial nation’ is run. 3b, on the other
hand, shows the word to be at the beginning of a bitter criticism. The same
word used in 3c, however, is free from political implications. The user in this
case, like many other examples seen on Weibo, has accepted the term as equal to
the word ‘China’, much as they have accepted the CCP as the supreme (and
for some, acclaimed) governing body of the nation.
The next two terms, ‘harmonious’ and ‘river-crab’ are near
homophones and recently-made synonyms, the latter being developed to replace
the former to avoid its political connotations. Both words refer to the censoring
actions taken or directed by the government to remove postings with
‘dispreferred’ contents; i.e. anything that involves the questioning the authority
of the CCP or the running of the central government, certain government policies
and their execution, radical advocacy of democracy, or any proposal or report on
large scale mass protests, government failures, local riots, and social injustice (see
the relevant discussions in Kuhn 2010, Miao 2011 and Wright 2011). The extended
usage of this term also includes the justified removal by site moderators of
inappropriate materials such as nude pictures, obscene language and so on. Some
example usages of the words extracted from Weibo are shown in Example 4.
Example 4a reports a typical result of Chinese censorship where a piece of
information survives only a few minutes on a medium (e.g. on TV or the web)
before being removed for good – especially posts on social media that involves
‘collective action potential’ (King et al. 2013). The word is used as a verb
and is preceded by the passive marker , meaning ‘having been harmonized’ (as
a euphemism) or ‘being removed’ in essence. The word is used in the same way
in Example 4b except that it refers to the censoring act of the site moderator
rather than the government. The word is used as a near homophone of
in Example 4c, referring to the possible removal of Google from Hong
Kong in future.
When removed by Weibo censorship, the original posting is replaced by an
official text shown in Example 5, according to the practice at the time of writing.

The last two terms are based on the word, , which is also an old word
acquiring a new meaning on social networks. The original meaning of ‘expand
and spread’ is now concentrated on the spread of an appeal for help or for
participation in the work of a charity. Two example usages are shown below:
Both message senders in Example 6 are pleading for readers to help spread the
message. In 6a, the poster asks the readers to help find their lost belongings. In 6b,
the message sender asks the readers to support the victims in a hit-andrun
accident.

6.2.2 Person naming

This category of words concerns newly conceived terms for people of different
social classes, identifiers, traits and functions. All of these terms are used in large
quantities on Weibo. Some of them are also active in daily spoken Chinese.

Group 1
(Social class)

gao1fu4shuai4 ‘tall-rich-handsome’
bai2fu4mei3 ‘white-rich-beautiful’
qiong2ai3cuo1 ‘poor-short-ugly’
tu3fei2yuan2 ‘crude-fat-round’
tu3hao2 ‘local tycoon’
diao3si1 ‘dick-fans’
nv3shen2 ‘goddess’
sheng4nv3 ‘remnant-woman’
The first two terms in Group 1, and , refer to promising young
men and women of the highest possible social order – men who are tall, rich and
handsome, women who are fair-skinned, rich and beautiful. The next two terms,
and , refer to men and women at exactly the opposite social
stratum, who are either poor, short and ugly or vulgar, fat and round. The word
‘local tycoon’ is not new, but has gained new popularity with the recent
economic boom of China and the rise of ultra-wealthy individuals. An opposite
term is , which is created from blending a taboo word with the word ‘fans’
and refers to young men who come from underprivileged family backgrounds
and generally look unimpressive. The word is used either in a derogatory sense or
in a self-effacing way.
Example 7a contrasts the fortune of the tall-rich-handsome class with the
misfortune of the miserable underclass of . 7b contains another social elite
term, , which means young people with very rich parents. A male
is well placed to marry a because of the match in social status.
In Example 7c, a is advised to acquire some skills in managing their meager
income; otherwise, they cannot even find a woman to marry from the same social
class.
The penultimate term in this group, , literally means ‘goddess’. As can be
imagined, it is normally used to refer to a charming and beautiful woman,
especially a celebrity. The final word, , on the other hand, refers to women
over or around 30 years old who are still single. Its use is somewhat derogatory.
Example usages of these two words are shown below:

The sentence in Example 8a is extracted from a Weibo posting (which is itself

copied from another media source) in which the refers to Nicole Kidman
who attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the Oriental Movie Metropolis
in Qingdao, China on September 22, 2013. Example 8b offers a contrast between
two opposite social strata – one symbolizes the most desirable women in the
world and the other those left on the shelf.

Group 2
(Personal identity)

yu4jie2 ‘imperial – older sister’

xiao3luo2li4 ‘little Lolita’
zheng4tai4 ‘lovely young boy’
wei4niang2 ‘false-woman’
 ji1you3 ( ji1lao3) ‘gay man’
fu3nv3 ‘woman who likes gay men’
xiao3san1 ‘little-three’

This group of new words is more related to a person’s identity rather than to a
social class. The first term in the group, , means a young woman with a
dominant character. It is exactly the opposite of , which refers to a lovely
young girl aged 8–14 or thereabouts. The next term, , is the male
counterpart of , meaning a lovely young lad. A man with a feminine
appearance or female dispositions is called a , a gay man is called a
and a woman who is attracted to gay men is referred to as a (literally
‘rotten woman’).
Example 9a contrasts the two terms and with ‘appearance’ and
‘inside’, which are antonyms of each other. 9b also contrasts the term with
the word ‘mature’. Example 9c demonstrates how the word is thought of;
that is, a real girl does not want to be called a ‘fake woman’. 9d is obviously
posted by a woman, who claims to have no boyfriend but is surrounded by gay
men friends. Finally, Example 9e demonstrates how the word is used.
According to the message poster, since the French teacher sympathizes with a
gay movie, she must be a lover of gay men as well.
is a relatively recent term in comparison with ‘second wife;
mistress’, both referring to the woman a married man has a sexual relationship
with outside the marriage. Both terms are normally used in a derogatory sense.

Example 10 shows the extreme measures taken by both wife and husband in
dealing with an incident involving the husband’s extramarital affair, costing the
wife her life and the husband imprisonment (not shown in the example).

Group 3
(Personal trait)

dai1bi1 ‘dumb cunt’

sha3bi1 ‘foolish cunt’
ku3bi1 ‘bitter cunt’
niu2bi1 ‘formidable cunt’
niu2ren2 ‘formidable person’
er4huo4 ‘a fool’
chi1huo4 ‘eat-stuff’
song3huo4 ‘coward’
There are three subgroups of new words in Group 3, divided by the ending
morphemes. The words in the first subgroup all end with the morpheme bi1
‘compel’ which is a euphemistic homophone of bi1 ‘cunt’. The first two terms,
and , are similar in meaning; both are nouns referring to persons
lacking in intelligence or common sense. is primarily used as an adjective
or adverb, but also sometimes used as a noun. Its meaning is no different from
the monosyllabic item which means ‘bitter’ and normally implies a lot of
suffering. The only positive term in this subgroup is , which is also used as
an adjective meaning ‘extremely impressive’. The second subgroup in Group 3
has as the ending morpheme. is the only noun example in this subgroup,
and it refers to someone who is very extraordinary or outstanding. Some
examples illustrating the usages of these terms follow.
Example 11a is the beginning of a story about a person’s hilarious experience of
taking photos without removing the lens cover, thereby complaining about the
new camera. in this sentence is an old term acquiring a new function of
being an intensifier. 11b illustrates how is used, which is a synonym of
. Both these terms are used in a derogatory sense. The shown in
Example 11c is used as an adjective, describing the hard conditions people
endure. The word in Example 11d, on the other hand, is equal to ‘awesome’
in English, describing impressive persons or experiences. A related term is
in 11e, which in this instance refers to an extremely high achiever in her
academic career (detail not shown in example).
The third subgroup of words in Group 3 all share the ending morpheme ,
whose original meaning is ‘commodity’ or ‘cargo’. The terms in the group are
used to refer to persons. means someone who is a bit foolish. The
morpheme itself can be used as an adjective. For example, describes a
person as simple-minded and clumsy. While is normally used in a
derogatory sense, the term , sometimes used to refer to oneself, simply
means ‘one who likes to eat’. The last item in Group 3, , refers to a cowardly
person.

Examples 12a and 12b illustrate the usage of , referring to someone whom
the speaker is not satisfied with, hence they are being called ‘stupid’. The verb
in 12b is often used today to imply that someone is ‘abnormal’ in some way
(e.g. being crazy, stupid or forgetful) and requires medical attention. The word
in Example 12c refers to a person who enjoys eating so much they will
jump at any opportunity of a good meal. Example 12d illustrates the use of the
word , which refers to a girl who does not have the courage to approach a
boy. Interestingly, the sign in Example 12d is used as a verb, synonymous to
from Example 1a.

Group 4
(Social function)

zhuan1jia1 ‘so-called expert’

du2she2 ‘poisonous-tongue’
mei3mei2 ‘pretty-eyebrow’
gui1mi4 ‘boudoir-friend’
tong2xie2 ‘classmate’
ping2tou2bai3xing4 ‘common people’

The fourth and final group of new words in the person naming category have to
do with the roles and functions people take up in society. The first term in the
group, , is a popular orthographic variant of ‘expert’ on Weibo.
Experts are people to be ridiculed and jeered at on the web, especially on China’s
social networks. One reason may be that so-called ‘experts’ in China often appear
on official media to defend government policies rather than giving unbiased,
professional opinions or delivering criticisms. The morpheme ‘brick’ which
replaces the original ‘specialized’ probably comes from another new word
‘concrete brick’. has become a fashionable term on social networks
which acquires the abstract meaning equivalent to a message posted on the web,
especially a punchy message used to attack people or simply to impress others.
The evolution of into , then, is a derogatory process, probably taking
the meaning from to imply that the so-called ‘experts’ are only good at
making a lot of ungrounded claims. The opinions of are just as cheap as the
millions of messages netizens throw around on the web every day. Two examples
follow to illustrate the usage of on Weibo. In Example 13a, the ‘experts’ are
regarded as less useful than pigs. In Example 13b, experts are thought to be as
simple-minded as local tycoons.
The word refers to someone who likes to pick on the faults of others and
damage other people’s confidence. Two example sentences are shown below:

Example 14a shows being used as a verb which means ‘to verbally abuse’.
The same word in 14b, on the other hand, is used as a noun, referring to someone
in the habit of making scathing criticisms.
 , literally ‘beautiful eyebrow’, is a near homophone of which means
‘younger sister’. keeps the core meaning of – a young girl, but adds
the extra implication that a girl qualified for this term should be reasonably
good-looking. The word refers to a girl’s best friends with whom she can
talk. Example usages of these two words follow:

The word tong2xie2 ‘child-shoes’ (also originating from Taiwan) is often

used nowadays to replace its near homophone tong2xue2 ‘classmate’ in
informal writing. Interestingly, although the original term can only be used
in educational settings, the reference group of is now expanded to cover
people from any walk of life, so long as they have something in common.
Examples are shown below to illustrate this point:
Example 16 shows how the title is used to address different groups of
people who share something in common. For example, in 16a, addresses the
professionals rather than the students as the term ‘being fat due to
overwork’ is normally associated with professional jobs rather than schoolwork.
In Example 16b, the title is used to address whoever suffers from stomach ache,
not necessarily students. The same is true for 16c, where everybody who is
currently trying to lose weight is the potential addressee. Thus, the term
‘mate’ keeps some of the implications of the original word for example, the
social network can now be viewed as a large classroom where some conditions or
rules of the school apply. At the same time, the addressed groups of become
diversified and dramatically expanded.
The item is normally used in a contrastive sense, to focus on the
disadvantages of being a civilian in comparison to the more powerful
government officials and the elite groups. The item is normally used by the
underprivileged class rather than by the political elite. Two examples illustrating
its usage follow:

Example 17 shows the predicaments common people may be facing in China. In

Example 17a, the fact that civilians are being bullied by those in power (who are
therefore rich) is implied. Example 17b, on the other hand, implies that the
minimum goal of a civilian of living a safe and uneventful life is unattainable.

6.2.3 Concepts and terms

Nominal words that represent newly evolved (or popularized) concepts involving
government, society, individuals and family are discussed in this section.

Group 1
(Government)

zheng4fu3 ‘is rotting’

cheng2guan3 ‘city-manage’
fang2shu2 ‘house-uncle’
biao3shu2 ‘watch-uncle’
The new word has been used by netizens as a substitute for its homophone
zheng4fu3 ‘government’ in a derogatory sense. The word itself consists of
two morphemes of which is a present continuous aspect marker and means
‘rotten’ or ‘to rot’. Together means ‘currently in the process of rotting’.
Replacing with gives obvious implications. As this word is on the
‘blacklist’ of Weibo search, examples cannot easily be found there. The following
examples are derived from Google.

Example 18a is a general criticism of the ‘government’ (as being hopeless). 18b,
on the other hand, shows why the government is thought to be bad – that is,
government officials allegedly flock around the place where there is money to be
collected.
The word ‘urban law enforcer’ can refer to the City Urban
Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau or officers employed by the bureau
to carry out the mission of maintaining the order and the outward appearance of
the streets. In practice, the word is more often associated with employees of the
bureau patrolling the city. Since their job is to crack down on any unauthorized
civilian setups or activities which affect the orderliness of the city, they often
clash with street vendors, vagabonds and so on and are noted for their use of
brutal force. Two examples below illustrate the usage of the word;
Example 19a involves an incident where a street vendor was arrested by a couple
of law enforcers. The vendor later claimed that he was attacked by the two
officers back in the bureau and accidentally killed both of them out of self-
defense. He was sentenced to death and was executed a few years later. The
incident provoked a lot of discussions on social networks and called into question
the rightful existence of . The user in Example 19b, for example, expresses
their wish to live in a city in China without ‘chengguan’, although this is
impossible.
The next two words, and , were coined as new names for two real
people who were government officials. , ‘Uncle House’, on one hand, was
exposed by netizens to own more than 20 properties under his and his family’s
names. , ‘Uncle Watch’, on the other hand, was spotted wearing many
expensive watches in his various official appearances, including one where he
smiled happily while being interviewed as a government representative at the
scene of a traffic accident. Both and were later suspended as a result
of investigations. The two terms live on after the incidents and may be used to
refer to someone else with the same traits.

Group 2
(Society)
 qian2gui1ze2 ‘hidden rules’
zhong1guo2meng4 ‘China-dream’
tao1bao3ti3 ‘scoop-treasure style’
yuan2fang1ti3 ‘Yuanfang style’
zhen1huan2ti3 ‘Zhenhuan style’
si1mi4da2 ‘Korean (honorific)’

‘hidden-rule’ refers to the implicit rules players adhere to once they are
committed to joining or remaining in the game – which could mean a job with
the government or a private corporation, an academic or professional program,
an examination or inspection, and so on. The most well-known example is
probably where TV or movie actresses have to sleep with directors and producers
in order to act in their films. Similar situations might have occurred in
government and educational institutions. The term is originally a nominal unit
made of a verb/adjective ( ) and a noun ( ), although it is also used as a
verb later on. Two examples of its usage follow:
The two sentences in Example 20 see the word ‘hidden rules’ apply to the
educational setting (i.e. male professors making females students sleep with
them) and the business of marketing (i.e. formula milk sellers bribing the nurses
so new-born babies become dependent on a certain brand of dried milk). The
word is used as a verb in Example 20a and as a noun in 20b.
‘China dream’ is a term proposed by the leader of the CCP in 2013 as a
national goal for the next few decades. The term spawned a lot of bureaucratic
toadying, online discussions and a relatively small number of sarcastic comments
on Weibo. As the term is very generic, poetic and idealistic, it seems to help hide
the weaknesses of authoritarianism and creates a ‘mesmerizing effect’ for the
general public. It is, so to speak, less prone to verbal attack due to its linguistic
incompatibility with ‘harsh words’. Some examples of socio-political criticisms
making use of this term can still be found on Weibo at the time of writing, as
shown in Example 21 below:
Example 21a interprets ‘China Dream’ in an intentionally narrow way to reflect a
social issue the speaker is obviously keenly aware of. Note that collecting
recyclable materials from the garbage and reselling them for money is a way of
earning money for many underprivileged people (especially older people) in
Chinese societies. 21b is extracted from a message condemning a child-molesting
kindergarten teacher in China. ‘Too many China Dreams’ is suspected, and
therefore degraded, by the author to be the reason for such perverted behavior.
Example 21c accuses the CCP leader of further undermining freedom of speech
since he ‘ascended the throne’ (rightfully reflecting the nature of the communist
sovereignty). Thus, according to the author, everybody knows what China Dream
means – that you are indeed ‘dreaming’ about obtaining reasonable freedom of
speech and independent thinking under the current political regime.
The three terms, ‘Taobao style’, ‘Yuanfang style’,
‘Zhenhuan style’, each refer to a special way of writing or speaking using
particular linguistic features or key phrases. The first term, , originated
from the Taobao Marketplace, the largest online shopping platform in China.
Taobao style refers to the online sellers’ intimate way of communicating with
their customers, which involves the oral address ‘darling’ and generous use of
sentence-final particles. Both and originated from TV dramas.
The mainly involves the use of a question
‘Yuanfang, how do you look at (the matter)?’ often asked by the protagonist
detective of his sidekick in the drama. The , on the other hand, involves
the use of many archaic forms of speech such as , (forms
women used to address themselves in the imperial court) and so on.
Example 22a offers a brief comment (i.e. ‘very fashionable’) on the admissions
letter issued by a university written in Taobao style. The actual notice (followed
by my translation) is as follows:

“Dear, congratulations! You are admitted by our university, d’y’ know? Darling,
be sure to report on September 2! Offer letter will be ‘shipped’ tomorrow, ok?
Darling, the full score is five! Give a good feedback, will you?”
The author of Example 22b summarizes the comments of netizens about the
result of a particular episode of the TV singing contest ‘The Voice of China’,
exploring the possibility of an under-the-table arrangement for a weaker
contestant to win. The summary is followed by a question written in ,
‘How do you look at it, Yuanfang?’ As the assistant Yuanfang always answers ‘I
think it is suspicious’ in the original detective story, the use of implies
there is something underhand in the event under discussion. Example 22c shows
how popular TV dramas can influence people in their styles of speaking and
writing nowadays.
is the transliteration of a Korean honorific ending which has no
content meaning. Chinese language speakers find this interesting and sometimes
add it to the end of a sentence just for fun or for imitating the Korean way of
speaking. The word is also used to refer to Korea or Korean people.

Example 23a is self-completing without the sentence-final element . The

term used in this way does not seem to add any pragmatic implication except
perhaps to signal an association with, or awareness of, the Korean element. The
used in Example 23b though, is different. It clearly replaces the canonical
‘Korean’ as a more contemporary, casual, and possibly amusing, variant.

Group 3
(Person and family)

guo3zhao4 ‘naked photo’

ya1li2 ‘pressure’
hui2tou2lv4 ‘head turning rate’
 xiao3que4xing4 ‘small and assured fortune’
shi1du2jia1ting2 ‘lose – only child – family’

The first term in this group, , is created from the existing word ‘naked-
photo’. Readers will notice that the character ‘fruit’ is the character ‘bare’
minus a radical (the 145th radical of the 214 listed in Paton 2008) which means
‘clothes’. Therefore the morpheme is reinterpreted as without clothes,
which means ‘naked’. This gives the netizens a fun way of referring to an
interesting concept on social networks.
The word , literally ‘duck pear’, originally meant a kind of pear. As it is a
near homophone of ya1li4 ‘pressure’, at some point Chinese netizens began
to substitute for and the term has caught on since then. A related
term is (itself a near homophone of the standard Chinese translation
for the English name Alexander, or ) which means the pressure is ‘as
big as a mountain’.
The new term refers to the likelihood of people turning around to look
at you while walking past you. The term reflects people’s concerns about their
appearance nowadays, especially the younger generation who are now able to
afford fashionable clothes and accessories.
Example 24a is a netizen’s typical promise to do something dramatic (in this case,
upload their naked photos) once their number of fans passes a threshold. 24b
demonstrates how the new word is used where conventionally is
expected. Example 24c is extracted from an advertisement for iPhone 5S cases
posted on Weibo.
The word is a combination of three morphemes, each representing a
distinct concept. means ‘small’, is a short form for ‘definite’ and is
the short form of ‘happiness and well-being’. Together the term means
‘small but definite happiness’.
The term means a family which has lost its only child, normally
referring to older parents who have lost their grownup son or daughter and have
no more progeny to depend on. The possibility of this happening is greater in
China than in other countries of the world because China is still largely
maintaining its one-child policy begun in the 1970s.
Example 25a shows how the term is used to represent every little
happiness achievable in daily life. 25b is an informal statistic of the number of
families which have lost their only child up to the year 2012.

6.2.4 Descriptions
In this section we discuss new words which are mainly used as adjectives. The
words are grouped into three subcategories depending on whether they normally
imply a positive evaluation, a negative evaluation or no such evaluation (i.e.
neutral).

Group 1
(Positive description)

niu2 ‘awesome’
meng2 ‘cute’
gei3li4 ‘inspiring’
you3cai2 ‘talented’
you3fan4 ‘gracious’
 diao1bao3 ‘blockhouse; awesome’

The morpheme , originally meaning ‘cow’ as a noun, has now become a

popular adjective capitalizing on the distinct traits of the animal: sturdy,
persevering and sometimes awe-inspiring. The morpheme is now used to
describe someone or something as particularly awesome and highly impressive.
In actual usage it normally couples with an adverbial element such as ‘very’,
‘excessively’, ‘especially’ and ‘super’.
The adjective morpheme appears with various adverbial elements in Example
26. It is translated into different English words to reflect the influence of context
on its relatively flexible meaning. In 26a is used in a predominantly positive
sense, and is thus translated appropriately into ‘very remarkable’. In 26b, the term
is not necessarily a compliment; it only describes something as unusual,
hence the translation of ‘extraordinary’. The term used in 26d describes an
extraordinary event at the highest possible level (here referring to a girl ducking
under a car to avoid being hit). Again, the term is used to express amazement and
no appraisal is obviously involved.
The morpheme can sometimes be used in a negative sense, implying that
someone or something is being extraordinary in a bad way. For example,
Example 27a refers to the rather inconsiderate behavior of a bus company (i.e. the
unpredictable change of bus routes) in an unpleasant way. Example 27b, on the
other hand, applies the term to a student who was insolent enough to ask the
invigilator of an exam how to answer a question.

The item ‘lovely’ is another single-morpheme adjective which has recently

become popular. It is primarily used to describe younger people, especially girls
who appear to be cute and innocent. However, the item is also increasingly being
used to describe animals, objects and situations, moving from objective
observation to subjective feelings.
Example 28 shows the morpheme incorporated into two frequently used
expressions: ‘play the cute’ and ‘incredibly cute’. The morpheme can
also come after standard adverbs to form descriptive units like ‘excessively
cute’, ‘super lovely’ and so on.
, literally ‘give power’ means ‘refreshing’, ‘stimulating’, ‘energizing’,
‘inspiring’ and so on. Its primary usage is serving as an adjective but it is also
used as a verb. The negative form, , meaning ‘unimpressive’ or ‘not as
expected’, is said to have come into fashion first and seems to have distinctive
meaning and usage.
The author of Example 29a is referring to the USA Green Card Lottery Program,
recommending his fellow netizens should make an application as obtaining a
Green Card in this way is much better than winning a lottery. The author of 29b,
on the other hand, is complaining about the speed of the Internet. It can be seen
that although is a very positive adjective (used to describe something better
than winning the lottery), its antonym, , is only moderately negative.
Both ‘gifted’ and ‘graceful’ are positive terms describing a person’s
talents and charismatic appearance respectively. As Example 30a shows, is
often used to describe someone behind an impressive piece of work, such as a
video, a joke, a song, an article and so on. , on the other hand, praises
someone for their outward appearance or performance. The term is often used in
clothing or accessories advertisements, as exemplified by Example 30b.

‘fort’ is a near homophone of ‘cock-burst (amazingly great)’. Because

involves a taboo word, its orthographical substitute was picked up by
social networkers at some point and it caught on. Both forms are interchangeably
used on the web today, their meanings and functions remaining largely the same.
The author of Example 31a uses the adjective to express wonder at the
magician’s skills in manipulating the pigeons. The author of 31b, on the other
hand, uses to praise a chocolate maker’s handcraft. Both terms are
essentially interchangeable.

Group 2
(Negative description)

bei1cui1 ‘tragic’
dan4teng2 ‘egg-sore’
hei1xin1 ‘black-heart’
zhong4kou3wei4 ‘heavy taste’

The word is normally used to describe a tragic happening, often one

experienced personally by the author, and provides a comic touch like so many
social networking new terms do. The first morpheme of (literally ‘egg-
ache’) refers to the male private parts. The word is therefore mostly used by male
authors, although female speakers are using this term increasingly. The word
initially means ‘being bored’ but as it becomes more widely used, it also takes on
other meanings like ‘not knowing what to do’ or ‘having a headache’.
Although the author of Example 32a reports the incident of diarrhea as a ‘tragic
happening’ using the word , this kind of posting is often intended to achieve
a self-teasing and comic effect rather than share a truly saddening experience.
Example 32b shows the word used in the sense of ‘being bored’; while the
same word in 32c most likely means ‘being annoyed’. The author of sentence 32c
happens to be a female Weibo user complaining about her own appearance.
The term , literally ‘black-hearted’, is a long-standing word, originally
referring to a person who is ‘lacking a conscience’, ‘heartless’, ‘merciless’ and so
on. The term has recently acquired an extended meaning due to a series of
industrial scandals in both China and Taiwan where food products and articles
for daily use were found to contain a variety of health-damaging materials. The
word became used extensively for, and understood to mean, commodities
or services sold by unethical manufacturers or rogue traders.
The recently popularized term also develops new meanings from an
original meaning centering on food. The term used to refer to very spicy or salty
food or taste. While keeping the original usage, it is now also used in other
settings, referring to a person’s relatively unusual inclinations and preferences in
other aspects of life.

The author of Example 33a complains about a bad hotel stay experience, where
the problematic quilt caused allergic reactions. The word in this instance is
generally understood to mean the questionable filling of the quilt (
‘black-hearted quilt’ was widely reported in China to contain industrial and
medical wastes and other waste materials inside the well-presented cover and
sold as new). Example 33b illustrates the usage of , referring to an artistic
performance involving complete nudity. Although the context of Example 33b
does not generate a negative interpretation overall, the term itself does
normally imply something unusual, such as the nude performance in this
example.

Group 3
(Neutral description)

jiong3 ‘embarrassing’
kou3nian2 ‘pitiful’
lei2ren2 ‘stunning’
xiu1she4 ‘shy’
jin4bao4 ‘astounding’

The character has only acquired lexical status in recent years. Previously it
was an ancient character very rarely used if ever. Nowadays it has become a
popular symbol in the media and social networks due to its distinct shape (like a
perplexed human face). Its meaning is roughly the same as another character
with the same pronunciation: ‘embarrassing or being embarrassed’. The
morpheme can be used alone or it can form a disyllabic unit with a preceding
adverb like ‘very embarrassed’ or a following noun like ‘embarrassing
thing’ in Example 34a.
The item , on the other hand, is a nonsensical combination of ‘mouth’
and ‘year’ used to substitute its near homophone ke3lian2 ‘pitiful’. An
example usage of this item is shown in Example 34b.
The new term, literally ‘thunder-person’, refers to something stunning and
causing speechlessness. xiu1she4, another netizen’s play of similar sounding
characters, replaces its near homophone xiu1se4. Both mean ‘shy’ but the
new item has sexual connotations due to the association of ‘shoot’ with the
concept of ‘ejaculation’. thus implies a flirtatious nature underneath the shy
appearance. The newly popularized adjective, meaning ‘powerfully
explosive’ can often be found in news, sports or entertainment contexts to
emphasize a certain event, person, or object. The word is also used in commercial
advertisements to attract potential buyers’ attention.

Example 35a shows the adjective ‘stunning’ independently used to describe

the ensuing event: a lady breastfeeding a child while riding an electric bike. The
author of 35b, on the other hand, shares her feeling of shyness on seeing a
handsome young man. The new term more competently expresses her
underlying flirtatiousness than the canonical word . Note that the item
is a ‘spoof’ version of (a supposedly cute, feminine way of referring to
oneself), assimilated into mainstream Chinese via a Taiwanese accent. Example
35c is a warning for readers to beware of the video enclosed within the Weibo
post which contains violent dog fighting scenes.

6.2.5 Action and interaction

This section deals with new words that are primarily used as verbs (though like
other Chinese verbs, many of them can also be used as nouns). For easy
presentation, the words are divided into five groups based on the functional
domain of their meanings.

Group 1
(Love and marriage)

luo3hun1 ‘naked-wed’
shan3hun1 ‘quick-wed’
shan3li2 ‘quick divorce’
si1fan4 ‘rice porridge; like’
kai1fang2 ‘check into a hotel room’
ren2liu2 ‘have an abortion’

The first three terms in Group 1 have to do with marriage. ‘naked wedding’
means a marriage without any materialistic conditions being required by the
bride’s parents of their future son-in-law, such as a property, a car or a sum of
money. A ‘naked wedding’ can even do away with a wedding ring and keeps
only the marriage certificate. ‘lightning marriage’ means to get married
soon after a couple’s first meeting (from one day to three months, for example).
‘lightning divorce’ is the opposite of , meaning an agreed divorce soon
after the marriage (e.g. from one month to a year). Some example usages of these
terms are shown below:
Example 36a illustrates the situation where a man would like to have a ‘bare
wedding’ but the prospective mother-in-law would not agree. That is, she expects
something from the future son-in-law as a guarantee for her daughter’s
happiness or as a reward for her raising the child. The author of 36b expresses
their opinion about female celebrities’ romance patterns, specifically, their
inclination to get married quickly after breaking up with their ex-boyfriend. The
subjectless sentence in Example 36c is part of a story where a couple divorced
each other after being married for two months.
The next item xi1fan4 ‘rice gruel’ is a fairly ‘distant’ near homophone of
xi3huan1 ‘like’ and is a fashionable replacement for the latter on social
networks like Weibo. The phrase is not a new combination but, like many
other new terms, has acquired new meanings in contemporary Chinese society.
In most cases, means a couple (generally single or not spouse to each other
if married) checking into a hotel room and having sexual intercourse. The term
is a short form for ‘artificial abortion’ and has become much
more frequently used than the full form. can also sometimes be used to
mean ‘human flow’ or large crowds of people.
Example 37a shows being used as a verb, replacing the canonical word
‘like’. The used in 37b clearly demonstrates the implications normally
associated with the word. That is, the reason for the woman to be blackmailed
must have something to do with the earlier event of , which is understood to
involve sex and sometimes (secret) photographing or videotaping of nudity. In
Example 37c a 19-year-old unmarried girl was reported to have posted on the
web the ultrasonic pictures of her unborn twin babies. The reported abortion was
later verified by the hospital upon the enquiry of a journalist.

Group 2
(Life and society)

bei3piao1 ‘Beijing-drift’
shang4fang3 ‘up-visit’
 qiang2chai1 ‘forcefully take apart’
wei2quan2 ‘maintain-right’
wei2wen3 ‘maintain-stable’
shuang1gui1 ‘double-regulating’

The term , literally ‘north-drift’, refers to the migration of people from all
over China to Beijing to work, study or do something else. means to bypass
the local jurisdiction and directly appeal to the central government in the hope of
achieving justice. Some examples are supplied below:

Example 38a illustrates some aspects of the concept ‘drifting to Beijing’;

that is, it might occur at a turning point of one’s life, such as upon graduation
from university. Also, it takes determination to do so, implying it is likely to be a
tough process. The author of Example 38a is most likely a young man with a
long-term girlfriend whom he intends to bring along to Beijing, probably to set
up a career together and ultimately a family. Example 38b shows a different kind
of trip to Beijing with a completely different purpose. Here means for
civilians to communicate with higher authorities (the highest being the power
center in Beijing) than the local government about an injustice they might have
suffered which is impossible to correct under the current jurisdiction. is
rarely effective. In fact, it could be fatal, as Example 38c shows, where a civilian
was illegally jailed by the local jurisdiction and beaten to death after many failed
attempts to ‘up-visit’, hoping for intervention from higher authorities which
never arrived. The term , literally ‘grandparent’s country’ or ‘motherland’,
is a clever adoption by the communist party to imprint patriotism and inspire
loyalty from Chinese people who are unable to separate their love for the
homeland from the authoritarian government running it.
The term ‘forcefully demolish’ is very poignant indeed for the people
involved in this process, which refers to the forceful action taken by property
developers to demolish old buildings with the approval of the government,
usually with disproportionally meager compensation for, and despite protests
from, existing residents. ‘defend rights’, is another newly evolved term in
the twenty-first century due to the partial opening of the socio-political
environment of China. It refers to the actions taken by civilians to defend their
homes, properties, and other basic human rights. At the other end,
‘maintain stability’ is the primary method adopted by the CCP government to
tackle the new domestic issues which have arisen due to improved
communication and people’s awakening. Essentially, this means the elimination
of mass protest activities of all kinds to strengthen the control of the government
and ‘maintain the stability of society’. The word ‘double regulating’ is an
administrative procedure imposed on members of the CCP who may be involved
in government corruption or other unlawful activities. The process is a kind
of ‘house arrest’ which effectively keeps the suspect in custody for an indefinite
period of time (perhaps until they break and confess). ‘Double’ refers to the
designated place and time in which to confine the subject and ‘get the truth’.
Example 39a describes a tragic scene of self-immolation in protest against
enforced demolition. Other widely publicized incidents involving include
civilians being run over and ‘flattened’ by bulldozers while protesting the
demolition. Example 39b reports a similar incident where villagers trying to
defend their rights were brutally expelled from the scene. Example 39c is a Weibo
netizen’s posting, apparently as a result of their long-term observation and
retrospection. The word ‘maintain stability’ collocates with ‘high
suppression’ in Example 39c, implying known oppressive measures such as
suppression of dissent and surveillance of potential activists with possible illegal
arrest, imprisonment and torture. Example 39d is another Weibo user’s
observation regarding people’s raised suspicions about due to increased
awareness about human rights and the country’s need for independent legal
systems.

Group 3
(Vulgar)

bao4ju2 ‘explode-anus’
zhuang1bi1 ‘pretend-cunt’
lu1guan3 ‘rub-tube’
da3fei1ji1 ‘strike-airplane’

The term is derived from ju2hua1 (chrysanthemum), which is a

synonym for ‘anus’ due to their similarity in shape (NB this is a vulgar usage, as
are the other terms in this group). means the anus ‘explodes’ as a result of
forceful penetration. is also written as B (the same is true with
B) and is used to refer to a person who is disgustingly pretentious,
for example pretending to be knowledgeable, innocent and so on. Both and
mean (male) ‘masturbation’.
Example 40a refers to a procedure in a health examination where the doctor
probes into the rectum with a finger to see if there are piles. is a fun way of
referring to this process. The term is also used in sexual settings and for cursing
others (by wishing their anus to be ‘broken’ somehow). Example 40b shows how
the word is seen as an undesirable behavior associated with the lower
classes. It generally refers to people of lower status trying to look more important,
rich, pretty or innocent than they really are. Example 40c is a joke that connects
masturbation to porn viewing. Example 40d, on the other hand, compares
masturbation with another activity (i.e. hanging out) and finds it a better option.
There are many other terms which mean the same thing, but currently and
are in fashion.

Group 4
(Casualty)

bao4tou2 ‘explode-head’
keng1die1 ‘entrap-father’
da3qiang1 ‘hit-gun’
 zhong4qiang1 ‘sustain-gun’
tang3qiang1 ‘lie-gun’

The word ‘headshot’, like many other new terms, is believed to originate
from game playing contexts (e.g. a zombie receiving a gunshot in the head, which
explodes). It is now widely used to refer to homicide scenes, such as in Example
41a, or traffic accidents involving serious injuries to the head. means
something like ‘I have been cheated’ and is used to denounce a person, product or
experience. Example 41b is a complaint against a commercial product ‘milk
partner’ advertised in China, accusing it of being more damaging than useful.

The word , literally ‘strike the gun’ or to fire a gun, means to reject, defeat
or slander someone. It often means to reject approaches from a person of the
opposite sex. Example 42a, for example, is said by someone mocking their friend
for being turned down by a girl while trying to get a date. Note that the verb
morpheme ‘unoccupied’ in this example is possibly an ‘intentional mistake’ of
‘pick fault’, which is a homophone and the correct verb in this context. Using
intentional mistypes and playing on homophones for fun is a common behavior
on Chinese social networks today.
The word means something like ‘to be hit by a stray bullet’; that is, one
probably has not done anything wrong but sustains damage anyway. It is used
predominantly in a non-physical sense, referring to a verbal attack rather than a
bodily injury. Example 42b illustrates a usage of , where five of the cities in
China are said to be on the list of the 20 most flooded cities in the world. The gun
metaphor helps generate an image of five cities (along with China) being hit by
bullets, sustaining injury.
‘receiving a gunshot while lying down’ means essentially the same as
‘receiving a gunshot’. A person who is said to , though, is even more
unlucky and undeserving. Example 42c, for example, shows the victim of the act
being already dead. However, he is still dragged out from his grave and verbally
attacked. A longer version of is ‘getting shot while lying
down’, Example 42d, shows how this phrase is used to describe the bad luck of a
student – getting hit by a car on the sidewalk.

Group 5
(Action and reaction)

pen1 ‘spurt’
tian1luan4 ‘add-confusion’
shi2hua4 ‘petrifaction’
hui3san1guan1 ‘destroy-three-view’
hold hold bu2zhu4 ‘cannot hold’

The monosyllabic verb originally meant to ‘spit’ or ‘spurt’. In the social

network context, it has come to mean ‘verbally abuse’. Example 43a is a
‘disclaimer’ which rules out the possibility that the article in question represents
a serious opinion. Therefore, the author should not be subject to any verbal
attacks. The verb means to ‘add more trouble on top of existing confusion’.
An example usage is shown in Example 43b.
The word literally ‘turn into stone’, describes a person’s reaction to
something extraordinary. That is, the person is shocked and rendered immobile
and speechless. The term ‘destroy three views’ describes something very
extreme, very extraordinary and totally incomprehensible. The three views are
generally thought to mean a person’s views about life, the world and values. The
term hold means to ‘lose control’ of oneself or the situation at hand. The
opposite term is hold or hold , which means to ‘keep oneself or things
under control’.
In Example 44a, the word describes the reaction of the author at the sight of
a magnificent sunflower field. The author of 44b feels amazed at the unusual
phenomenon of many people defending a homicide perpetrator. Example 44c
shows the author being unable to control their emotion (of admiration) when
seeing a lovely child or small animal.
Group 5
(Media exposure)

tu4cao2 ‘vomit-trough’
bao4liao4 ‘expose-material’
zi4pu4 ‘self-expose’
 zhuan4yan3qiu2 ‘earn-eyeball’

The term literally ‘vomit into the trough’, means to openly reveal
someone’s weaknesses with no regard for their feelings. ‘offering explosive
materials’, means to expose something irregular, unlawful or things like celebrity
gossip to the general public. ‘self-expose’ means to reveal one’s own
secret(s) to the public. The term ‘earn the eyeball’ means to catch the
public’s attention through media exposure.
Example 45a shows how the word is used to describe a group of students’
unrestrained criticisms of their new school. Example 45b may be the title of a
piece of gossip news, where refers to the revelation of an alleged weakness
of a celebrated idol. Example 45c illustrates how the word is used in context
where someone willingly or involuntarily reveals a secret about themself which
is otherwise unlikely to be found out. Example 45d demonstrates a situation
where the term is often used; that is, staging some kind of lively
performance or visually appealing scene to catch people’s attention.

6.2.6 Colloquial expressions

This category of new words involves colloquial expressions and newly assembled
phrases to express novel concepts, complicated ideas, or taboo items on the web.
Four groups of new terms are distinguished in this section to facilitate discussion.

Group 1
(Swear words)

ni2ma3 ‘you-mother’
TMD (ta1ma1de5) ‘his-mother’s’
wo4cao2 ‘oh-fuck’
ci4ao4 ‘fuck’

The words in Group 1 are new combinations used by netizens to denote taboo
meanings. replaces which is a short form for cao1ni3ma1
‘fuck-you(r)-mum’. TMD has come to stand for ta1ma1de5 or literally
‘his mother’s’ used for light swearing. is a euphemistic replacement for
wo3cao1 ‘I-fuck’. and can sometimes be seen together as
(or ) on the web, which would be the strongest swearing
form in this strand. is synonymous with which probably came about
through a ‘reverse sandhi’ process (that is, the original sound cao was split into
two sounds ci and ao).
The various sentences in Example 46 show the swear words being predominantly
used as an independent element at the beginning of a sentence and they do not
participate in the syntactic formation of the ensuing sentences. Since they are
euphemized forms, they also seem less offensive than the original forms.

Group 2
(Dialect)

shen2ma3 ‘what’
jiang4zi3 ‘like that’
zhong3mo5yang4 ‘how about’
you3mu4you3 ‘yes or no’
This group of words is mostly nonsensical combinations which, on the surface,
do not offer good semantic interpretations. This is because they originate from
nonstandard Chinese dialect pronunciations transcribed in similar-sounding
Chinese characters. The characters are meant to represent original accents, which
nevertheless express meanings different to those normally represented by the
orthography. For example, literally ‘god-horse’ is a phonetic assimilation of
 shen2mo5 ‘what’ pronounced this way in a certain dialect. ‘sauce-
purple’ means ‘like so’, a phonetic assimilation of zhe4yang4zi5 (spoken
quickly and with a Taiwanese accent). Likewise, (nonsensical) is an
assimilation of ‘how about?’; ‘have-wood-have’, that of
‘have-not-have?’. Example usages of these items are shown in Example 47.

Example 47a shows appearing in an idiomatic structure

(originally ) meaning ‘everything is transient and temporary’. The
nonsensical character combination, , a ‘spoof’ version of , means
‘like this’ in 47b. The term ( ) ‘how about’, Example
47c, is used to form a question. The A-not-A structure in 47d, a dialect version of
, also makes the sentence into a question.

Group 3
(Fixed expression)
 ni3dong3de5 ‘you understand’
shang1bu4qi3 ‘cannot afford to be hurt’
给跪了 gei3gui4le5 ‘kneel before you’
zhang3jian4shi4le5 ‘knowledge increased’
ruo4ruo4de5wen4yi2ju4 ‘timidly ask a question’

Items in Group 3 are mostly short sentences or phrases that can be used
independently. is a short sentence which assumes mutual understanding
between the author and the reader(s). When this item is used, it usually implies a
lot is left unsaid, which the readers should automatically understand.
describes a person or persons as fragile, who ‘cannot afford to be hurt’. is
a short form for ‘I hereby kneel down before you’ and is used
when one feels awestruck and speechless. ‘(my) knowledge is
increased’, usually co-occurs with a sentence incorporating a new discovery the
author has just made. ‘feebly asking a question’ expresses a self-
effacing attitude accompanying what seems a very stupid question.
The author of Example 48a, by using , implies that his long-term friend
knows what he wants to say. The in 48b reveals the fragile nature of
humans in the face of a natural disaster. Example 48c refers to a 6-panel comic
where a panda transfers some of its blackness to a white horse, turning it into a
zebra. shows the author’s feeling of awe after viewing the comic – utter
admiration and some dumbfoundedness. The author of 48d, on the other hand,
obviously thought street vendors only existed in China. After discovering they
also live in foreign countries, the author uses the term to show the
increase in their knowledge and the impact of this process on their mind. Finally,
the author in 48e asks a seemingly unimportant and stupid question. Note that
when using the author is normally asking a genuine question
whose answer they are eager to know. They use the expression because they
think the answer must be obvious to everyone else.
Group 4
(Abbreviation)

he2qi4liao2 ‘why giving up treatment?’

shi2dong4ran2ju4 ‘very touched then reject’
nan2mo4nv3lei4 ‘man silent woman cry’
ren2jian1bu4chai1 ‘life is hard: be considerate’
bu4ming2jue2li4 ‘not understanding but find formidable’
lei4jue2bu2ai4 ‘feel tired and can longer like’

The new terms in Group 4 are each an ‘abbreviation’ of a longer phrase, much
like English abbreviations. This is a striking new development in the Chinese
language as a result of web-based written communication. for example,
is an abbreviated form of ‘why give up treatment?’
stands for ‘Although extremely moved, still declining (the
offer)’ and is primarily used for a woman to turn down the advances of a man
despite his touching courting behavior. means
‘Men fall silent; women weep’ after reading a story. is more difficult to
interpret. The phrase originated from the lyric of a pop song
‘Life is hard enough; try not to expose certain
things (i.e. at least to maintain some dignity)’. introduces an
interesting concept ‘Although the message is
not understandable, it seems powerful and profound’. is the short form
for ‘I am so tired I feel I can no longer fall in love
again’. Example 49 shows how these extraordinary new terms are skillfully used
in real-life settings by a new generation of Chinese speakers.
The author in Example 49a uses to imply that the girl who made indiscreet
phone calls all over the dormitory in the night was a psycho and should really
resume her treatment (in a mental hospital). in 49b is used to describe
the unhappy ending of a courtship, where the procedure was touching but the
result was disappointing. Example 49c refers to the sad story behind a name (a
man naming his daughter after his previous girlfriend whom he deeply loved but
could not marry). The phrase refers either to a sad story like this or to
any story that contains a negative element which the author feels unable to do
anything about. The in 49d is mainly used to lament a sad situation and
perhaps to call for some sympathy. originally used to refer to a post on
the web which looks abstruse but seems profound, is applied to people admiring
an intriguing foreign object in 49e. Finally, the author of the weibo (as an item of
posting on Weibo is called) from which Example 49f is extracted, first complains
about several unpleasant incidents she encountered in Paris (passport and money
getting stolen, being unjustly fined in the underground, undelivered bank cards,
weird landlord …) and then concludes with the remark that she can no longer fall
in love with Paris, using the phrase to express the frustration.

6.3 METHODS FOR CREATING NEW WORDS

There are several routes from which the new words and phrases discussed in 6.2
are created. Most of the word-formation methods discussed here are only made
possible through the web – it is a written language based platform and large
quantities of information spread quickly.

6.3.1 Homophones and near homophones

As there are fewer than 2,000 usable syllable-tone combinations in Chinese, many
slots in the syllable-tone matrix are incredibly crowded with homophones
representing different meanings. For example, the syllable sha1 (first tone alone)
has 30 homophones, some frequently used ones being ‘sand’, ‘shark’
and so on, all spoken in the same way. Also, as most of the Chinese input
methods are sound-based (using Pinyin), it is easy to pick up homophones instead
of the intended characters when typing into the computer. As a result, intentional
or unintentional creations of new words appear on the web every day, some of
which catch on and become established alternatives to existing words.
A notable example is bei1ju4 ‘cup-utensil’ originally meaning ‘glasses’ but
now widely used in place of bei1ju4 ‘tragedy’ in informal, mostly web-based
settings. Sometimes only one character is replaced, such as the nonsensical new
combination of min2zhu3 ‘people-cook’ in place of the canonical
min2zhu3 ‘democracy’ in some web postings.
Still more difficult to interpret are the near homophones which do not sound
exactly the same as the intended units; for example, pen2you3 ‘pot-friend’
has become a fashionable replacement for peng2you3 ‘friend’ on social
networks. zhang3zi1shi4 ‘swell-posture’ is also a new invention, used by
some netizens to replace zhang3zhi1shi4 ‘grow knowledge’ which is itself
a new term.
In some cases, the new terms differ from the old ones only in tones; for
example, you2cai4hua1 ‘canola flower’ is used as a replacement for
you3cai2hua2 ‘have talents’ by some netizens. A similar case is
cao3ni2ma3 ‘grass-mud-horse’ which is used to replace the swear word
cao1ni3ma1 ‘fuck-you(r)-mum’.
Through using homophones the writer allows the reader to access the exact or
similar sounds of the intended lexical unit, but the reader fails to retrieve the
correct entry immediately due to a mismatch between the meaning represented
by the orthography and the meaning dictated by the context. The reader is forced
to reprocess the sentence through a direct interaction between phonology (i.e.
reconsidering the sounds of the incompatible unit) and the result of sentence
processing (i.e. a semantic-pragmatic representation of the rest of the sentence) in
order to retrieve the correct item (i.e. the intended lexical unit) from the mental
lexicon. By this time the intended effect will have been achieved (i.e. for fun, to
baffle the reader, to show one’s wit and so on).
By using homophones, the authors also seem to distance themselves from the
emotional or attitudinal involvement embedded in the original words. In some
cases, using homophones also helps the authors avoid political implications, or
bypass the Weibo keyword-based censorship (so the message is not filtered out
because it contains politically sensitive words, such as ‘is rotting’, ‘June
4’ and so on, before posting, and can be retrieved after posting by the general
public via the Weibo search function as it is not on the blacklist).
Another way of forming new words is to create new meanings for old words
or phrases. In other words, an original orthographic representation acquires a
new meaning on top of existing meanings. For example, ‘horse-armor (vest)’
acquires the new meaning of ‘socket puppet account’, referring to the extra IDs a
person registers on a forum or social network to support the original account or
for other purposes. The phrase ‘coincide with each other by accident’
acquires the new meaning of ‘unable to get a date so become homosexual’.

6.3.2 Derivational process

New words are also created from derivational processes, as Figure 6.1 shows,
where a morpheme in a lexical unit is used to create related words centering
around the core concept represented by the original word. When a new word is
created, especially when it represents a new concept, more new words will be
spawned based on that word and the concept it represents. Again, the example of
‘fans’ illustrated in Figure 6.1 is relevant.
The easiest way to create new terms is perhaps to take the initial portion (e.g.
the first morpheme) of a word and add a second part to create a fresh
combination. For example, when literally ‘rotten woman’, meaning ‘women
who fancy boy-boy love’, establishes itself as a new term, new words like
‘rotten-book (gay book)’, ‘rotten-culture (gay culture)’, ‘rotten-
country (referring to the UK due to its gay culture fancied by the Chinese
netizens)’ follow.
Using the last element of a new term to generate a battery of similar words is
also a common process. For example, is one of the first new terms to be
adopted in the ‘stylistics’ strand of neologisms, all of which contain a suffix-like
morpheme ‘style’. Other new words include , – see Example 22,
‘shouting style – a style of writing which uses a lot of exclamation
marks!!!’, TVB ‘a talking style imitating characters in popular dramas
broadcast by Television Broadcasts Limited Hong Kong’ and so on.
A term quickly coming into fashion, ‘green-tea-prostitute’, was coined
after the Hainan Sanya Rendezvous sex party scandal disseminated on Weibo in
April 2013. The term refers to the many fashionably dressed young lovely girls
(looking like pure green tea) appearing on the photos of the suspected sex party
allegedly waiting to be picked up by rich and male celebrities. Since then a
number of similar terms have appeared using the same ending, such as
‘Starbucks whore’, ‘man whore’, ‘strawberry whore’ and
so on.

6.3.3 Local accents Romanized

Some new terms are Romanized items from regional dialects which share the
same meaning with their counterparts in Mandarin but have somewhat different
pronunciations. The most popular term may be , seen in Examples 29a and
47d, which is equivalent to the Mandarin version ‘have or not have’.
Some of the dialect-based new words are easily recognizable if the regional
accents for these terms are reasonably close to Mandarin pronunciation, such as
the above. Others will not be so easily recognizable and will have to be
learned; for example, ou3 is wo3 ‘I’ pronounced with a Taiwanese accent.
The most difficult new terms based on dialects are words and phrases that
exist only in that dialect. These have to be learned the hard way, even by native
Chinese speakers. The sentence in Example 50, for example, contains a
nonstandard lexical unit which most Chinese native speakers will not know the
first time they see it.

The term ‘cat-bored’, a (popular) typo of ‘cat-urine’, is said to

originate from the Beijing indigenous dialect, meaning something hidden, dodgy
and suspicious. In Example 50, the author speculates about the underlying
reasons for some recently planned ‘world No. 1’ constructions in China, using the
word to imply possible foul deeds.
Another interesting process of forming new words, similar to dialect
Romanization, is through the direct transliteration of English expressions. For
example, nao4tai4tao4 stands for ‘Not at all’, a term coined by netizens to
ridicule a Chinese singer’s English pronunciation in his song.
ai4lao3hu3you2 ‘love-tiger-oil’ stands for ‘I love you’.

6.3.4 Media catchphrases

6.3.4 Media catchphrases
A lot of new terms and expressions are extracted from TV dramas or certain
widely disseminated postings on the web. Often the initial phase of creation
involves the direct transportation of the phrase from the media to a post, such as
‘Yuanfang, how do you look at this matter?’ taken from
‘Detective Di Renjie’. The second phase then sees the original form
being modified, usually into a more compact form; for example, is removed
from the original script and the shorter form becomes the
more popular version. In the third phase, a keyword from the new expression
may be further extracted to stand alone and represent the essence of the initial
concept or to combine with other elements to form new expressions. For
example, in ‘Yuanfang, how will the dean
make his judgment?’ where only the keyword is kept. This process is
graphically illustrated in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2 The three phases of media catchphrase adaptation

 Weibo is itself a giant machine for creating neologisms. A famous sentence,
‘I and my little companions are all terribly
shocked’, appears in a weibo in 2011, originally posted as part of the handwritten
and photographed text composed by a primary school student. While the original
form is still widely used for its idiomatic essence and comic value, netizens
quickly developed a compact form ‘I-companion-dumb’, which is an
abbreviated version of the original expression. At the application stage, related
expressions using the core elements appear, each with some additional elements
nonexistent in the original construction, for example,
and so on.

6.3.5 Abbreviations
Abbreviation as a method for creating new terms has become fashionable
recently. The prototypical process is to collect a group of 3–4 words or phrases,
and take one character from each word or phrase to form an acronym. For
example, the new term ‘happy, big, general, run’ is extracted from the
set taking the first character
from each quadrisyllabic unit. Sometimes the process is reversed, and an existing
term is given a new interpretation. For example, ‘egg-white-material
(protein)’ has been reinterpreted by some netizens as an acronym extracted from
the set of three words ‘stupid-egg (fool), white-mad
(idiot), nerve-material (apprehensive)’.
Another method in this strand is to take a longer phrase or sentence and select
a subset of characters from it to represent the phrase or sentence.
mentioned in 6.3.4 is an example. Other examples include ‘human-do-
matter’ abbreviated from ‘Is this something a person is
capable of doing?’ and ‘detailed-think-horrible-extreme’ for
‘If you think about it carefully, you will feel
extremely terrified’. For these new terms, it is almost impossible for the novice
reader to derive their meanings independently without referring to the original
expression.
Some new phrases can be expanded into full sentences, such as , or
more accurately ‘fire-prior-leave-name’, being interpreted as
‘leave my name (in the comment region of a
promising post) before it gains widespread popularity (so my name will be
noticed too)’. However, unlike the term itself can be
understood without referring to the fuller expressions, therefore it is an original
term rather than an abbreviation.

6.3.6 Orthographical play

Many Chinese characters are put together by radicals and other basic characters.
For example, ‘bright’ is composed of ‘sun’ and ‘moon’. ‘plum’
comprises a ‘wood’ character on top of ‘son’. This aspect of Chinese
writing is taken advantage of by the netizens to create novel orthographical
representations in a fun way. For example, ‘strong’ can be rewritten as
and ‘god’ as The new dual-character representation takes double space
and confounds the reader not used to reading this layout, achieving the desired
effect. This is also said to be a deliberate tactic to defeat the Weibo censorship
when certain keywords become politically sensitive and are included in the black
list.

6.4 Conclusion
We have examined around 150 new words and expressions in this chapter, with
an extensive range of real examples selected from Weibo to illustrate how the
new terms are used in context. New words are being invented and disseminated
every day, and new ways of creating new words and expressions discovered
every now and then. By familiarizing ourselves with the current neologisms and
the different machineries for creating them, we are one step closer to the future
Chinese language which may look even more different from traditional Chinese
in 100 years’ time.
As the main source of new words discussed in this chapter (i.e. the Sina Weibo
social networking website) only came into existence in 2009, the work presented
here is of a highly pioneering nature. Therefore, the classification method is
tentative and the inclusion of new words is by no means exhaustive. In 10, or
even as short as five years’ time, some of the new words and expressions
discussed here will have gone out of fashion. Some will stand the test of time,
while still more neologisms will be invented. The Chinese language is evolving at
an accelerated speed with the help of the internet.
The Chinese virtual community is a formidable powerhouse, pushing for
change in both language and ways of life. This chapter only touches upon
vocabulary in a superficial fashion. More subtle and long-lasting changes in
syntax and morphology may also be happening which are worthy of further
investigation. Obviously, the changes brought about by online social networks
are not limited to language. With more and more Chinese people looking for
truth, fairness and sustainability in society, cultural and political changes are not
only possible but inevitable. Language on the web, while constantly transforming
itself, is helping to change everything involving the use of language – which
means all human activities in society.
Bibliography

Bai, J. (2009). Chinese Grammar Made Easy: A Practical and Effective Guide for Teachers. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words. London: Routledge.
Chao, Y. R. (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Dr. eye dictionary. Available online at www.dreye.com/en/
Duanmu, S. (2007). The Phonology of Standard Chinese. 2nd edn. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Flynn, D. (2010). Learning Chinese: Pinyin or Zhuyin? Chinese Hacks. 19th June, 2010. Available online at
http://chinesehacks.com/blog/study/learning-chinese-pinyin-or-zhuyin
Fromkin, V. and Bernstein-Ratner, N. (1998). ‘Speech Production’. In Gleason, J. and Bernstein-Ratner, N.
(eds). Psycholinguistics. 2nd edn. New York: Harcourt Brace. pp. 309–346.
Fung, L. and Carter, R. (2007). ‘Discourse Markers and Spoken English: Native and Learner Use in Pedagogic
Settings’. Applied Linguistics. 28(3): 410–439.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
He, P. (2004). Hanyu Chengyu Cidian. Chengdu: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Press.
Heselwood, B. (2013). Phonetic Transcription in Theory and Practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
King, G., Pan, J. and Roberts, M. E. (2013). ‘How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but
Silences Collective Expression’. American Political Science Review. 107(2): 1–18.
Kuhn, R. L. (2010). How China’s Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China’s Reform and What This Means for
the Future. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd.
Li, C. N. and Thompson, S. A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Li, D. and Cheng, M. (2008). A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners. Beijing: Beijing Language and
Culture University Press.
Lin, H. (2001). A Grammar of Mandarin Chinese. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Loar, J. K. (2011). Chinese Syntactic Grammar: Functional and Conceptual Principles. New York: Peter Lang.
Miao, D. (2011). ‘Between Propaganda and Commercials: Chinese Television Today’. In Shirk, S. (ed.).
Changing Media, Changing China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 91–114.
Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Packard, J. L. (2004). The Morphology of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paton, S. (2008). A Dictionary of Chinese Characters: Accessed by Phonetics. Abingdon, Oxfordshire:
Routledge.
Reiss, K. (1981). ‘Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision Making in Translation’. Poetics Today. 2(4):
121–131.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Shei, C. (2005). ‘Fixedness in Genre-Specific Language and Intercultural Differences: Comparing English and
Chinese Fire News Corpora’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 10(2): 199–225.
Shei, C. (2008). ‘Discovering the Hidden Treasure on the Internet: Using Google to Uncover the Veil of
Phraseology’. Computer Assisted Language Learning. 21(1): 67–85.
Shei, C. (2010). Translation and the Web: Theory, Practice, and Norm. Taipei: Winjoing Publisher Co. Ltd. (in
Chinese) Shei, C. and Pain, H. (2000). ‘An ESL Writer’s Collocational Aid’. Computer Assisted Language
Learning. 13(2): 167–182.
Shi, Z. and Chen, Q. (2011). China’s Culture. Singapore: Cengage Learning Asia Pte Ltd.
Sun, C. (2006). Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The International Phonetic Association. (1999). Handbook of The International Phonetic Association. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, D. C. (2011). The History of China. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.
Wu, R-J. R. (2004). Stance in Talk: A Conversation Analysis of Mandarin Final Particles.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Xiao, R., Rayson, P. and McEnery, T. (2009). A Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: Core vocabulary
for learners. Routledge: London.
Xiao, Z. and McEnery, A. (2004). Aspect in Mandarin Chinese: A corpus-based study. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Yip, P-C. (2000). The Chinese Lexicon. London: Routledge.
Yip, P-C. and Rimmington, D. (2004). Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge.
Zhao, X-R. (2001). Dictionary of Chinese idioms. Taipei: Liu Tong Cultural Enterprise Co. Ltd. (in Chinese)
Index

A-not-A 70, 177–80, 369

accent 209, 303, 355, 368, 375
acceptable 53, 83, 98, 104, 106, 127, 132, 170, 199, 272, 274, 281
acronym 377
adjacency pair 212, 223
allophones 17
alphabet 3–4
alveolar 14–19, 217
ambiguity 3, 19, 108, 176
ambiguous 19, 29, 31, 33, 61–2, 226, 302
ambiguously 3
antonym 75, 350
antonyms 159, 192, 332
approximant 21
articulation 14–17, 24
aspect marker 69–70, 80–1, 102, 115, 120, 206, 261, 302–16, 339
aspirated 1, 18–19
aspiration 16–17
auxiliary verbs 60

Baidu 77, 319

bare wedding 356
Beijing-drift 358
bilabial 14–15
blacklist 321, 339, 374
blending 328
blog 117
bottom-up 38
bound morpheme 4, 6
boundaries 5, 96–7, 129, 161, 163
buzzing 20

Cantonese 27
cardinal 58
CCP 11, 324–5, 341, 343, 359
censorship 324, 327, 374, 378
chengguan 340
China-dream 340, 342
classifier 6, 54–6, 58–9, 84, 88, 102, 184, 189, 191
classifiers 51, 54–5, 88
closure 16–18
cluster 13, 34
co-occur 119, 370
coarticulation 217
cognitive 143–5, 147, 205, 221, 296–7, 304, 307, 309, 312, 318
cohesion 159
cohesive 159, 167
coined 340, 375, 376
collocation 43, 159, 219, 272
colloquial 32, 59, 188, 191, 200, 229, 319, 367
comma 10, 95, 97, 136, 157, 161, 163, 166–8
command 34, 169, 171–2, 174, 177, 194, 218, 228, 231, 234, 236, 256, 271, 291, 299–301, 310
commissive 174, 176–7
complement 6, 63, 84, 86, 102–6, 108, 118, 183, 193
complementizer 149–50
complex sentence 62, 149, 155, 163, 165, 168
compositional 35, 41–2
compound 4–5, 7–8, 31
conjunction 70–2, 74, 77, 93–4, 157, 160, 163, 170, 246
consonant 1, 3, 13–18, 20–1
contour 25–6, 267, 303
coordinating conjunction 73, 155–6, 168, 180
copula 87, 98, 103, 118
countable 51, 189
couplet 49

Dalai-Lama 155
dating show 210–11, 224–5, 229, 235–7, 243, 247, 250–1, 254, 258, 262, 268, 276, 280, 286, 292, 305, 307, 313
declarative sentence 178, 185, 207, 266
degree adverb 35, 106–7, 196, 199
demonstratives 57
dependent clause 100, 149, 151, 156–7, 159, 160, 163, 168
derivation 4, 38, 127; -like 6, 7, 41; morphemes 4, 7, 41
derogatory 291, 301, 328, 330, 332, 334–5, 339
dialect 8, 368–9, 375–6
diphthong 19–21, 23, 232
discourse marker 10–1, 102, 230
disyllabic unit 27, 29, 31, 34–5, 40–2, 44, 59, 87, 91–2, 110, 142, 180, 322, 354
ditransitive 102–3

embedded sentence 100, 151–4, 229

endocentric 5, 37
ergative 89, 121–2, 124–6
euphemism 77, 327
evaluation 194, 214, 302, 305, 312–14, 318, 347
existential 70, 89, 114, 118–21, 179
expressive 112, 174–6
extended sentence 129, 160–1, 163–8

felicity conditions 176

finite verb 94
four-character idiom 44–5, 47, 72
frequency 25–6, 186, 206–7
fricative 15–17
fronted 134, 135, 136
functional item 53, 93, 101, 127, 132, 150, 192, 308

glides 21
glottal 16
Google 60, 117, 124, 147, 186, 206–7, 326–7, 339
grammar 9–10, 168, 318, 381
grammaticality 150

habitual 39, 134, 142, 259

head noun 40, 89, 92–3, 97, 102
headwords 31
honorific 110, 171, 340, 344

ideograph 7
idiom 30, 42–3, 48–9, 87; idiomatic 42, 201, 369, 377; idiomaticity 42, 87
imperative sentence 48, 109–20, 170, 172–4, 228–30, 232, 299
independent clause 100, 149, 156–7, 159–60, 163, 168
independent particle 204, 314–15
indirect object 102, 130
infinitive 144–5
inflection 4, 38, 94, 144–6; -like 6
intensifier 62–3, 88, 107, 117, 271, 334
interjections 314
interpersonal 145–6, 205, 210, 213, 318
interposed 181
intransitive 92, 101–3, 132

labial 14
labialized 21
labiodental 15
less-preferred 283, 288
lexicon 39, 42, 51, 374
logographic 3
low-pitch 209

measure 190–1
metaphor 48, 364
minimal pair 17
modal auxiliary 51, 60–3, 88, 138, 174
monosyllabic 2, 5–6, 30–5, 40–2, 50–1, 54, 65, 74–5, 77, 84, 87, 199, 204, 271–2, 333, 364
morphological 38–9, 145
multisyllabic 30–1, 33, 42, 49–50, 87

nasal 14–16, 20, 23, 217

negation 192–3, 197–8, 203
neologism 319, 375–6, 378
netizen 319, 324–5, 339–40, 345, 350, 367, 374–8
neutral 25, 27, 29, 83, 119, 207, 265, 291, 347, 354
neutralized 41, 163
nominal 35, 108, 149–50, 168, 246, 338, 341

object-fronted sentence 125–7

oral cavity 14, 16–17, 19
ordinal 58–9
orthographic 3, 4, 7, 184–5, 335, 374
orthography 11, 33, 368, 374

palatal 17, 21
passive marker 51, 83, 128, 133–4, 327; sentence 121, 127–30, 132–3, 135; structure 83, 127, 129–31, 134
pause filler 236
phoneme 1, 16–17
phonemic inventory 1, 14
phonetic 1, 3–4, 7–8, 11–12, 14, 17, 25, 205, 317, 368, 380–1
phonological 32, 255, 261–2, 302, 314–15
phonotactic 13–14
phrase-structure 7
phraseological 39
pictograph 7
Pinyin 3–4, 11–12, 14, 17–21, 23–4, 29, 38, 205–7, 255, 261, 263, 265, 267, 281, 317, 373
pitch 23, 25, 209, 211, 215, 267, 303
plosive 15–17
plural marker 4, 6, 51, 55
pragmatic 33–5, 121, 167–8, 260, 264, 304, 309–20, 312, 318, 345
pre-closing 310
predicate 6, 43–8, 69–70, 75, 77, 90–3, 98, 100, 106–8, 113–, 124, 132, 140, 143, 165, 242, 244
prefix 59, 102, 192; -like 7
preposition 9, 49, 63–6, 68–70, 80, 83, 93, 127, 130, 184, 186
presupposition 225, 247
pronoun 54, 102, 109–10, 149–51, 172, 174, 200, 229
pronunciation 12, 14, 17, 20, 27–8, 30, 232, 262, 265, 303, 317, 354, 375–86
prosodic 134, 216

quadrisyllabic 27, 30, 42–9, 87, 147, 192, 201, 316, 377
quantifier 117

relative clause 53–4, 149–50, 152; pronoun 54, 149, 150, 151
resultative 84
rheme 134

sandhi 27–9, 262, 302, 367

sarcasm 218
satire 225, 226–7, 234
self-effacing 328, 370
semantic-pragmatic 168, 374
semivowel 1, 12–14, 21, 23, 29
sibilants 17, 20
sideline 294
singular 6, 51, 111, 320
subjectless 89, 109–13, 169, 357
subjects 9, 110–11, 113, 125, 135, 155
subordinate conjunction 62, 149, 154
SVO 8, 92–3
syllable 2, 4–5, 7, 13–14, 16–18, 20–3, 25–31, 33–4, 40, 57–8, 72, 178, 180, 184, 192, 217, 318, 373
syntactic 27, 28, 30, 32, 42, 44–7, 50, 72, 87, 89, 94, 97, 100, 150, 201, 368, 380
syntax 8–10, 96, 100, 106, 379

Taiwan 1, 8, 11–12, 21, 35, 52, 163, 205, 232, 317, 337, 353
Taiwanese 8, 11, 27, 163, 205, 265, 290, 355, 368, 375
Taobao style 343–4
theme 121, 134–5, 167
TMD 367–8
tone 4–5, 7, 17, 20, 23–9, 229, 232, 265, 267, 281, 317, 373–4
toneless 25
topic-comment structure 9, 46, 48
topicalization 136
transcription 3, 11
transformation 103, 106, 269
transliteration 321, 344, 376
trisyllabic 27, 30, 32, 34, 40–2, 49, 87, 192, 316

ungrammatical 74, 87
unrounded 17, 19

velar 14–15, 21
velum 16
verb-complement 6, 37, 193
verbless 93, 100, 106–8
vocal cords 17
voiced 16, 19, 21, 254
voiceless 1, 16, 19
vowel 1–4, 12–14, 18, 19–21, 23, 29, 34, 232

weak accent 209

weakened syllable 29
Weibo 117, 319–21, 324–8, 330, 335, 337, 339, 341, 346, 353, 355, 357, 361, 373–6, 378
Wikipedia 319