Mandarin Chinese - Grammar

Grammar

Chinese varieties of all periods have traditionally been considered prime examples of analytic languages, relying on word order and particles instead of inflection or affixes to provide grammatical information such as person, number, tense, mood, or case. Although modern varieties, including the Mandarin dialects, use a small number of particles in a similar fashion to suffixes, they are still strongly analytic.

The basic word order of subject–verb–object is common across Chinese dialects, but there are variations in the order of the two objects of ditransitive sentences. In northern dialects the indirect object precedes the direct object (as in English), for example in the Standard Chinese sentence

In southern dialects, as well as many southwestern and Jiang-Huai dialects, the objects occur in the reverse order.

Most varieties of Chinese use post-verbal particles to indicate aspect, but the particles used vary. Most Mandarin dialects use the particle -le (了) to indicate the perfective aspect and -zhe (著/着) for the progressive aspect. Other Chinese varieties tend to use different particles, e.g. Cantonese jo2 咗 and gan2 緊/紧 respectively. The experiential aspect particle -guo (過/过) is used more widely, except in Southern Min.

The subordinative particle de (的) is characteristic of Mandarin dialects. Some southern dialects, and a few Jiang-Huai dialects, preserve an older pattern of subordination without a marking particle, while in others a classifier fulfils the role of the Mandarin particle.

Especially in conversational Chinese, sentence-final particles alter the inherent meaning of a sentence. Like much vocabulary, particles can vary a great deal with regards to the locale. For example, the particle ma (嘛), which is used in most northern dialects to denote obviousness or contention, is replaced by yo (哟) in southern usage.