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Modern
Chinese Grammar
Grammatical Units
Grammatical
Units in modern Chinese grammar are classified as: morpheme, word,
phrase and sentence, their relationship are displayed in the diagram
below.
Let's
look at each unit in more details:
1.
Morpheme - 语素
Morpheme
is the smallest meaningful unit in a language, it makes up the words.
Most
of the morphemes in modern Chinese grammar are monosyllabic.
For
example:
好
( good), 小 ( small ), 站 ( stand ), 来 (
come ), 去 ( go), 写( write )
Some
morphemes are polysyllabic.
For
example:
葡
萄 ( grape ), 蚂蚁 ( ant ), 议会 ( Parliament ), 紧张 ( nervous )
In
the case of 葡萄, ' 葡 ' is meaningless when it is separated from ' 萄',
the same with '萄'. They mean ' grape ' only when they are combined
together.
With
Polysyllabic Morphemes, each single syllable is meaningless. Only when
two or more syllables are combined together can they represent a
certain concepts, to make either a morpheme or a word.
2.
Word - 词
In Moder Chinese Grammar a Word
is the smallest unit that can be used independently in a sentence.
Depending on the syllable numbers a word has, it can be divided into
three groups:
Monosyllabic words: a word that has only one
syllable.
For
example: 蛇 ( snake ), 北 ( north ), 高 ( tall ), 停 ( stop )
Disyllabic
words: a word that has two syllables.
For
example: 北京 ( Beijing ), 美丽 ( beauty ), 长城 ( Great Wall )
Polysyllabic
words: the word that has 3 or more syllables, it includes:
Triple: 收音机 (
radio ), 电视机 ( television ), 沙发床 ( sofa bed )
Quadruple: 广播电台 (
radio station ), 共产主义 ( Communist )
Quintuple and
more: 文化大革命 ( Culture Revolution ), 社区开发计划 ( Community Development
Project)
In modern Chinese,
more than 70 percent of words are disyllabic words.
3. Phrase
- 短语
In modern Chinese grammar, a phrase is a
combination of two or more words according to certain grammatical
rules.
For example:
公众卫生 ( community
health ), 保健食品 ( health food )
4.
Sentence - 句子
Sentence is a the
grammatical unit that is used to express a complete idea. It usually
has a certain intonation and a pause at the end.
It is the
intonation and mood instead of the numbers of syllables that classify
sentence from word and phrase. Some words and phrases can make
sentences if they are used to express a complete idea and with certain
mood and intonation.
Same as in
English, punctuation symbols like ' ? ' or ' ! ' are used at the end of
the sentences in written Chinese to express the pause and different
moods.
For example:
你好吗？( How do you
do? )
站住！( Halt! )
我喜欢学中文. ( I like
study Chinese. )
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