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The grammar of Standard Mandarin is isolating and analytic. Chinese morphemes are generally uninflected: nouns are not marked for case, number, person, or gender; and verbs are not conjugated. Grammatical information such as the function of words in a sentence are indicated through such means as word order or adpositions. For example, Chinese uses particles to indicate such grammatical categories as aspect and mood. Other features of Chinese grammar include serial verb constructions, the use of measure words and classifiers, and the use of sentence-final particles.

As Chinese is an isolating language, every morpheme generally corresponds to one word. However, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language in that every syllable corresponds to one word. Every syllable corresponds to one character, but not all morphemes correspond to one character; some may correspond to two. For example, the morpheme for "butterfly" (Chinese: 蝴蝶; pinyin: húdié) is composed of two characters; as neither character has any meaning by itself, neither character corresponds to a morpheme. Characters do not necessarily correspond to words, as some characters represent bound morphemes. Although Chinese is relatively simple morphologically and has comparatively few prefixes and suffixes, Chinese does combine morphemes into new units through methods such as reduplication.

Chinese is typically classified as a Subject Verb Object language. Though Chinese does have some of the the features typical of SVO languages, there are problems with this classification of Chinese's basic word order. Because Chinese is a topic-prominent rather than a subject-prominent language, the notion of a subject is not well defined in Chinese. Also, the topic need only provide the context for the sentence and thus may be unrelated grammatically to the other elements of the sentence. The word order of a sentence may also change based on semantic rather than grammatical factors; for example, the position of a noun or noun substantive in relation to the verb may change the interpretation of the sentence. Different constructions such as the bǎ construction may also alter the word order of a sentence. Finally, Mandarin has many characteristics of Subject Object Verb languages as well, such as prepositional phrases preceding the verb and relative clauses preceding the head noun.

Typological characteristics

Morphology

Typologically, Chinese is described as an isolating language: with a few exceptions, every syllable corresponds to one morpheme, and there is little inflection. Chinese, however, is not a monosyllabic language. Compared to European languages such as English, syllables in Chinese are "more rigidly determined" and undergo virtually no variation; John DeFrancis notes that "The syllable is held to be the type unit between a phoneme and sentence that in English is called a 'word'." This perception of syllables (and of characters, as each represents a syllable) has, according to DeFrancis and others, led to the notion that Chinese is a monosyllabic language in that each word is a single syllable. In fact, a "word" in Chinese (simplified Chinese: 词; traditional Chinese: 詞; pinyin: cí) is the smallest free form, and may be made up of one or more morphemes. Generally, every character (Chinese: 字; pinyin: zì) is monosyllabic and corresponds to one morpheme; however, characters and morphemes are not interchangeable, as some characters do not represent a morpheme, and some morphemes may be composed of more than one character. For example, the morpheme for "butterfly" (Chinese: 蝴蝶; pinyin: húdié) is composed of two characters, neither of which has any meaning in its own right. A compound (simplified Chinese: 词组; traditional Chinese: 詞組; pinyin: cízǔ), according to Rutgers professor Richard Simmons, is a combination of two or more free morphemes and is a subcategory of the word. Because of the various types of structures a compound may have, Simmons notes that the distinction between compounds and phrases is not always clear. In their Mandarin reference grammar, Charles Li and Sandra Thompson also state that the distinction between compounds and other polysyllabic combinations of morphemes is not always clear regardless of the criteria used.

Syntax and word order

As Chinese does not employ much morphology to indicate grammatical relations, it relies heavily on word order to determine each word's function in a sentence. Chinese is often classified as having a Subject Verb Object word order according to the model developed by Greenberg. However, there are problems with this classification. First, as Chinese is a topic-prominent language and not a subject-prominent language, the concept of a subject is not well-defined. A topic may be described as "what the sentence is about" and is not interchangeable with a subject. As a result, some Chinese sentences may have a topic but lack an explicit subject, a sentence may have a topic that functions as a subject as well, a sentence may have a separate topic and subject, and a sentence may lack both an explicit topic and subject. A topic need not only be a noun or substantive; a topic may also be a verb or adjective. If a topic is a noun or substantive, it must be definite or generic; it may not be indefinite. The relationship between the topic and other parts of the sentence is not always grammatical; sometimes a topic only provides background information as to the conditions of the action. Despite being classified as an SVO language, Mandarin has many features of Object Verb languages—according to Li and Thompson, Mandarin displays more features of Subject Object Verb languages than SVO languages. Unlike subject-prominent languages like English, which consists of a subject and predicate, Chinese, as a topic-prominent language, and consists of a topic and comment. The topic is always the first element in the sentence and always provides the context or background information for the action in the sentence. Unlike subjects, topics are not necessarily connected semantically with the other elements in the sentence. A topic may separated from the comment by a pause or an optional modal particle.

Though Mandarin is classified as an SVO language by Greenberg's word-order typology, the basic word order may not be easily classified, as the position of sentence elements is often determined by semantic rather than grammatical factors. For example, a pre-verbal position for topics, subjects, and objects indicates definiteness; adverbs may have different meanings depending on whether they are placed before or after the verb. Furthermore, different constructions may alter the word order. For example, a sentence normally places the object after the verb, but when the object is marked by the preposition 把 bă, it is placed before the verb.

Chinese is also generally classified as a left-branching language. Complements usually follow the head: adjectives precede nouns; adverbs and prepositional phrases precede verbs; and relative and subordinate clauses precede independent ones. However, Chinese also displays certain characteristics of right-branching languages: verbal and prepositional complements such as objects and locative phrases come after their heads.

Derivational morphology

Words, phrases, and compounds

Like compounds, phrases are combinations of grammatically related words. As noted above, there are no hard-and-fast rules to distinguish between phrases and compounds; thus, in some cases, it may be debatable whether a certain combination of morphemes is a phrase or a compound. Compounding is a highly productive method of forming new words in Chinese.

Affixes

Affixes are bound morphemes that are added to stems to form new units. Li and Thompson recognize three affixes in Mandarin, the suffix, prefix, and infix. The latter two are relatively scarce, while the former is more common.

Reduplication

Reduplication is the morphological process by which a morpheme is repeated so that the two morphemes together form a new unit, which may take a new meaning or syntactic function. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and classifiers can all be reduplicated, although nouns are not commonly reduplicated in vernacular Mandarin.

The reduplication of volitional verbs indicates delimitative aspect. In the case of monosyllabic verbs, the morpheme 一 (yi, one) may be inserted between the original morpheme and the reduplicated one to signify delimitative aspect as well. Disyllabic verbs can also be reduplicated, though not all of them can. Most disyllabic verbs cannot use 一 when reduplicated. Which morphemes of a disyllabic verb are reduplicated depends on the classification of the verb (or verb compound).

Reduplicated adjectives may either remain adjectives or become adverbs. When an adjective is reduplicated as an adjective, its meaning is usually intensified. Adjectives reduplicated as adverbs are usually linked to the verbs they modify with the particle (地) de.

Many classifiers and some nouns can be reduplicated to mean "every". For example, 天 (tian, day) and 天天 (tiantian, every day).

Sentence structure

Negation

Chinese uses three negative morphemes: 不 (bù), 没 (méi), and 別 (bié). 不 is a general negator. 没 is used to indicate non-completion; it is also used to negate 有 (yǒu) both as a verb meaning "to have" or showing existence, or as part of an adjective, as in 有趣 (yǒuqù, interesting).

Questions

Closed-ended questions are generally formed in two ways: adding the modal particle 嗎 (ma) to a declarative sentence or reduplicating the verb and adding 不 between the verb and the reduplicated morpheme (没 if the verb is 有). If the verb being reduplicated is disyllabic, usually only the first syllable is repeated.

Constructions

Chinese has two special types of grammatical constructions involving function words. The first is an accusative construction using the coverb or preposition 把 bă. This construction changes the SVO order of a normal accusative sentence, moving the direct object to a pre-verbal position by making it the object of 把. The second type of construction is a passive construction. Passive constructions use the coverbs 叫 (jiào), 讓 (ràng), 給 (gěi), or 被 (beì). The structure is generally Affected + passive coverb + optional agent + verb. Generally, Chinese only uses passive constructions when the action has an adverse effect on the affected party. Thus, the following sentence is grammatically incorrect in Chinese because the action does not have an adverse effect: 書被他寫了 (Shū beì tā xiě le, The book was written by him). The most common methods in Chinese of emphasizing the object of the action when the action is not adverse is to topicalize the object or to use a construction like the 把 construction.

Grammatical categories

Aspect and tense

Chinese verbs are not marked for tense; temporal relationships are indicated by time words such as "tomorrow" (Chinese: 明天; pinyin: míngtiān) or "now" (simplified Chinese: 现在; traditional Chinese: 現在; pinyin: xiànzài). Chinese does indicate aspect, however, mainly through the use of particles. The five aspects in Mandarin, according to Matthews and Yip, are perfective (expressed by the particle 了 le) , experiential (expressed by the particle 过 guò), progressive (expressed/indicated by the prefix 在 zài), continuous (indicated by the particle 着 zhe), and delimitative (indicated by reduplication of the verb, with or without 一 yī between the reduplicated morphemes). It is not agreed whether all of particles just mentioned actually indicate aspect or some other category: Yip and Rimmington do not count 过 guò and 着 zhe among the aspect particles.

Parts of speech

Chinese words are typically divided into two basic categories, notational words ("real" words) and function words ("empty" words). Notational words consist of substantives such as nouns and pronouns and predicatives such as verbs. function words show grammatical relationships and include prepositions, conjunctions, and particles. Though this basic classification is generally accepted (Li and Cheng, however, consider affixes, consisting of bound morphemes including prefixes and suffixes, to be in their own category), different systems vary on which parts of speech should be included in which category. A word in Chinese may be used as a different part of speech depending on considerations such as its position in the sentence.

Nouns and pronouns

In Chinese, nouns and pronouns are not inflected for gender or case. Pronouns and some nouns can be pluralized by adding the suffix ...

Verbs

Chinese verbs can generally be divided into the following categories: action verbs, stative verbs, auxiliary verbs, coverbs, and equative verbs. Chinese verbs are not inflected; they remain the same regardless of the person, number, case, or gender of the connected nouns. Verbs are not marked for tense either; time relation is indicated by time adverbs such as yesterday and before. They are, however, marked for aspect and mood through the use of particles such as 了 (le). Auxiliary verbs, coverbs, and equative verbs do not take particles. Verbs can be nominalized and serve as subjects or objects.

Categories

Auxiliary verbs are verbs that add meaning to the main verb of the clause, usually by conveying information about possibility, ability, etc. Auxiliary verbs have limitations that regular verbs do not: they cannot take aspect particles, they cannot be reduplicated, they cannot have direct objects, and they cannot be modified by intensifiers.

Equative verbs, also called copulae, are verbs that link the subject with a predicate. Unlike in English, copulae in Chinese only link the subject with nouns or substantives; they do not link with predicate adjectives. Equative verbs are also limited: cannot be reduplicated, they cannot be modified by intensifiers, and they cannot take aspect particles.

Coverbs are verbs that show the relation between the main verb and the coverb's object. Because they function essentially as prepositions do in English, some grammarians have equated coverbs with prepositions in Chinese. Helen T. Lin divides coverbs into two categories: coverbs that can function as regular verbs as well and coverbs that can only function as coverbs.

Stative verbs are verbs that describe the subject rather than show action. Stative verbs may be reduplicated, take aspect particles, and be modified by intensifiers.

Aspect

Although Chinese does not indicate tense through grammatical means, it does explicitly mark verbs for aspect, either through verbal particles or through morphological means such as reduplication. Grammarians generally recognize five aspects in Mandarin: perfective, experiential, progressive, continuous, and delimitative. The first four are indicated by the use of verbal particles, and the last is indicated through reduplication. Perfective aspect indicates that the action has been completed; it is indicated by the particle 了 (le). Perfective aspect does not necessarily correspond to past tense; 了 may be used in sentences that would be translated as future tense in English.

Verb serialization

Verb serialization (also called serial verb construction) is a construction in which two verbs are strung together in a sequence in which neither verb is subordinated to the other. In Chinese serial verb constructions, the second verb usually a complement of result or a complement of direction: it either indicates the result or the direction of the first verb.

Adjectives

Chinese adjectives can be divided into two classes: attributive and predicative. Attributive adjectives usually precede their heads and are linked to them with the particle 的 (de). Unlike in English, Chinese does not use copulae to link predicate adjectives to the subject. Moreover, predicate adjectives can take aspect particles. For these reasons, some grammarians, such as James McCawley, have posited that adjectives are just a class of verbs.

Adverbs

Adverbs are words or phrases that modify verbs.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words used to join parallel grammatical elements (for example, nouns and nouns or clauses and clauses).

Particles

Particles are uninflected morphemes that convey grammatical information such as mood or case. Grammarians generally recognize three distinct categories of Chinese particles: aspect particles, modal particles, and structural particles. Whether a certain particle belongs in a certain group is not always agreed on; however, ...

Classifiers

Main article: Chinese classifier

In Chinese, classifiers are bound morphemes that must connect numbers, demonstratives, or quantifiers to their head. Classifiers are necessary only when a noun is not counted or introduced with a demonstrative. Certain nouns are considered quantities in themselves and thus do not require a classifier. For example ... Which classifier that occurs with a certain noun depends on a number of factors...

Bibliography

• Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520066106. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• Jiang, Wenying (2009). Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3110216189. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• Ross, Claudia; Ma, Jing-heng S. (2006). Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415700108. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• Lin, Helen T. (1981). Essential Grammar for Modern Chinese. Boston: Cheng & Tsui. ISBN 978-0917056109. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0824810689. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• Ma, Jing-Heng (1994). Chinese Unmasked: Grammatical Principles and Applications. Cheng & Tsui. ISBN 978-0887271908. {{cite book}}: Invalid |no-pp=pages (help)
• {{cite book | editor1-first=Marie | editor1-last=Chan | others=Tao, Chia-lin Pao; Tao, Jing-shen| title=Excursions in Chinese Culture: Festschrift in Honor of William R. Schultz | publisher=