"Basic" English Grammar in Chinese

[ploor]

[quote=“bob”]
In any case such was the case in this case and I soon came to the conclusion that “be dongci” is considered a sub category of zhu3dong4ci2 so I am speculating that perhaps I can also say “have dongci” and “do dongci” if that ever becomes necessary. If I can now find the right terminology to distinguish the “auxilairies” be - do - have from the “modal auxiliaries” can, could, should, will etc. I’ll have this thing wrapped up, to my satisfaction at least.

So my question now is is there a word I can use to refer to be - do - have only and another one that I can use to refer to modals only? Please don’t strain yourself on this just yet. When I get somebody to help me with the Azar Series again I may well find that the answer was right there all along. [/quote]

modal: 情態詞 (qing2tai4ci2)

auxiliary: 助動詞 (zhu4dong4ci2)

modal auxiliary: 情態助動詞 (qing2tai4 zhu4dong4ci2)

[bob]

Ploor you are an absolute darling.

[yisha_ou]

[quote=“bob”]…I conducted the following little experiment…

I approached several Taiwanese people and, after the obligatory qing wens and bu hao yisis, told them something of my little experiment and proceeded to ask them what English words they thought of when they heard the term yi2wen4ci2. The replies I got all started with the letters - wh - and none were followed by “the fuck”. So far so good I thought, and emboldened by my success so far next asked them what words they thought of when they heard zhudongci. The replies I got were be, can, a do or two, no have, but when I asked “have shi shenme ge4zong3ci2lei4” the answer I got was zhu dongci.[/quote]
Awww, Bob, you edited it
When I first read this I had this brilliant image of you accosting random Taiwanese people and asking them questions about English grammar; had a good chuckle about how utterly terrified I would be if some Taiwanese bloke came up to me in a bookstore and started grilling me about Chinese grammar

Glad to see that you’re finding answers to your questions though!

[bob]

@yisha'ou

Awww, Bob, you edited it

I did? Oh, yeah, that’s right I went back and clarified, er, rectified… qualified? Anyway like that, yeah…

[Woodchild]

Hey bob, I read your post and thought I might be able to help out here. But I had no time reading the whole thread so if what I’m about to say is covered, just ignore me.

When I learned English in Junior High, we were taught the wh- words and How are called 疑問詞 yi2wen4ci2. The “am, is, are, was, were, be” are called Be動詞 bi1dong4ci2. To construct a question starting with 疑問詞 yi2wen4ci2, such as “How are you? Why are you here? Where are you going?”…etc, as all of us know, we have to have the sentece structure beginning with:

疑問詞 yi2wen4ci2 + Be動詞 bi1dong4ci2 + 主詞 zhu3ci2 …

To say that in Chinese, you could perhaps say:

當我們要造一個用疑問詞開頭的疑問句時，我們必須在疑問詞和主詞中間加一個適當的Be動詞。
dang1 wo3men yao4 zao4 yi2ge yong4 yi2wen4ci2 kai1tou2 de yi2wen4ju4 shi2, wo3men bi1xu1 zai4 yi2wen4ci2 han4 zhu3ci2 zhong1jian1 jia1 yi2ge shi4dang4de bi1dong4ci2.

And then you have to explain (of course you know all this) which be-verb they should have according to the subject.

I don’t know whether this is what you are after or not. Again, if it doesn’t help, just ignore it.

[Woodchild]

I went back to your post and found that I’ve missed some points…

@bob

When we make yes/no questions from statements we move the first auxiliary verb to the front of the sentence. For this I have “Deng women yao ba cong yige cun2xu3shou1ming2 gaiwei duibudui/shi bu shi de yiwenju women ba zhudongci feng zai juzi qianmian”.

What you’ve got here is not bad but you could do with some minor changes. First, we were taught in the Junior High that a statement is called a “陳述句” chen2shu4ju4, not a “純屬說明” chun2shu3shuo1ming2". So what I think you are after is this:

當我們要把一個有Be動詞的陳述句改為一個疑問句時，我們要把Be動詞移到句子的開頭。
dang1 wo3men yao4ba3 yi2ge you3 bi1dong4ci2 de chen2shu4ju4 gai3wei2 yi2ge yi2wen4ju4 shi2, wo3men yao4ba3 bi1dong4ci2 yi2dao4 ju4zi de kai1tou2.
When we are changing a statement that has a be-verb into a question, we have to move the be-verb to the beginning of the sentence.

Now, of course when the statement hasn’t got a be-verb in it, we have to put a suitable auxiliary verb at the beginning of the sentence to make it a question. We could just change the above instruction a little to say this:

當我們要把一個沒有Be動詞的陳述句改為一個是不是/對不對的疑問句時，我們要在句子的開頭加一個適當的助動詞。
dang1 wo3men yao4ba3 yi2ge mei2you3 bi1dong4ci2 de chen2shu4ju4 gai3wei2 yi2ge shi4bu2shi4/dui4bu2dui4 de yi2wen4ju4 shi2, wo3men yao4 zai4 ju4zi de kai1tou2 jia1 yi2ge shi4dang4 de zhu4dong4ci2.

So, you as a teacher have to analyse to the students what they should use according to the subject and the tense. (do, does, did, have, had, will)

If there is “can, should, would, …etc.” in the sentence, you could say:

當我們要把句子裡有 can, should, would, …等等助動詞的陳述句改為疑問句時，要把這些助動詞移到句子的開頭。
dang1 wo3men yao4ba3 ju4zili3 you3 “can, should, would”…deng3deng3 de chen2shu4ju4 gai3wei2 yi2wen4ju4 shi2, yao4ba3 yao4ba3 zhe4xie1 zhu4dong4ci2 yi2dao4 ju4zi de kai1tou2.

When we create - wh - questions from a yes/no questions we leave the auxiliary in front of the subject and place the - wh - word in front of the auxiliary. For this I have “Deng women yao ba cong duibudui/shibushi yiwenju gaiwei yige xun4xi2yi2wen4ju4 women liu zhudongci zai zhuci qianmian lan hou ba yiwen ci zai zhu dong ci qianmian”.

I covered this in my other post.

What bugs me about this is that yiwen ci seems to translate “literaly” to “question word” but there are lots of words that could be considered to be question words: be, do, have, can, could, should, will…

To my knowledge, the “wh- words and how” are taught as “疑問詞” yi2wen4ci2. “Be, am, is, are, was, were” are taught as “Be動詞” bi1dong4ci2. All the others are modal auxiliaries. They were all taught just as “助動詞” zhu4dong4ci2 to us junior high school students. (I know there are some fancy Chinese terms for the different types but I think these would just confuse the students more.) So basically if you want to make a question, you either have a 疑問詞yi2wen4ci2 or a 助動詞 zhu4dong4ci2 at the beginning.

Also zhu4 dong4 ci2 seems to work pretty well for “be” as an auxiliary but less well for “do” and “have” as auxiliaries.

I don’t quite understand what you mean here.

Whoa, this has become a very long post. I hope this has not been covered… Oh well what could I do if it has.

[bob]

Thanks woodchild.

Only for auxiliary verb you mean zhu4dong4ci2 rather than zhu3 dongci yes?