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Lesson
1, Basic PatternVariations on the basic sentence pattern introduced in Lesson 1 are listed below:
As you begin learning Chinese, you will notice a few similarities and some major differences between the structure of Chinese and English. Unlike English, Chinese is not an inflected language, rather it relies on word order to convey meaning. Sometimes, words classified as verbs in Chinese are rendered as other types of expressions in English. Word order can also vary between the two languages, especially with questions. In Chinese, the basic syntax of a question is the same as that of a statement, whereas in English it usually is not.
So far, you have learned three verbs that can fit into the basic pattern. Here are more examples, with the English rendered somewhat literally so that you can see the structure of the Chinese.
| Basic Pattern | ||
|---|---|---|
|
N-V-Obj.
|
我是中國人。
他叫王朋。 我姓李。 |
I am
a Chinese (person).
He is called Wang Peng. I am surnamed Li. |
|
N-Adv-V-Obj.
|
我不是中國人。
他也不姓李。 |
I am
not a Chinese (person).
He isn't surnamed Li, either. (He also is not surnamed Li.) |
|
N-(Adv)-V-Obj.-嗎?
|
你也是中國人嗎?
|
Are you also
a Chinese (person)?
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If you can't read the Chinese characters, install Microsoft traditional Chinese font, then set browser to view character set "Big 5 (traditional Chinese)."
