In my textbook, there is the following Q/A exchange asking about a when a person went to see his friend.
Q: 他是什麼時候去看的朋友？
A: 他買了東西，就去看朋友去了。
The textbook didn’t provide a clear explanation of the A part of this exchange, and I don’t think that I’ve seen this exact construction before, where 去 occurs twice. It seems as if the first 去看 is acting as a topic maybe, and the second 去了 is indicating the completed action. Is that right?
Why can’t we just rephrase it as follows, and use 去 only once? Does the meaning change if we rephrase it this way?
That’s textbook Chinese, I learn’t it many years ago but forgot it as people don’t really talk that way. What most people would say is probably “我買了東西後去看朋友了”, something like that.
That’s my point. The textbook is teaching language that people don’t say. Both sentences are just weird, why not teach something that learners are actually going to use?
Yes, the 的 is so weird to my brain. “他是什麼時候去看朋友的” is actually correct, based on using “是…的” in that way (god I’m having PTSD just thinking about grammar drills right now…)
It’s the old FSI “Standard Chinese” course created by the US government’s Foreign Service Institute. The course is sometimes derided as being outdated, and the sentence in question is perhaps one example of that, but on the whole, I find that the benefits of the course material (logical, structured approach with plenty of drills and full-speed listening/speaking exercises) outweigh it’s disadvantages.
The peculiar sentence in question isn’t one that was emphasized as a grammatical pattern to learn, but instead was a one-time example that happened to come up in the drills and that I had never seen before. Now I know not to worry about this odd sentence pattern since it seems to be unused in practice.
Here is another, perhaps similar, 是…的 example from the textbook’s drills, indicating that someone got on the bus, and where he got on the bus. Is the 的 placement here similarly awkward?
他上車了。他是在仁愛路上的車。
Would the second sentence be better written as, “他是在仁愛路上車的。”?
This entry from the Chinese grammar wiki seems relevant, indicating that the 的 need not always come at the end of the sentence.
Your sentence two makes sense. Sentence one again seems like a misplaced 的.
的 is dropped more often than added in Chinese, but it’s basically “pick a few to drop or the sentence doesn’t flow well”.
我的朋友 <=> 我朋友
我的朋友的媽媽 <=> 我朋友的媽媽
我們去的地方在你的家隔壁 <=> 我們去的地方在你家隔壁
These sort of examples drive home the need to hear and read more normal language content and not use courses focused on teaching specific (but also kind of wrong/trying to force weird) grammar.
That kind of special usage of the 是⋯⋯的 pattern does appear in the grammar books. Apparently, it emphasizes the word which comes after 的, 朋友. Also, if you are asking “when”, why would you emphasize ‘friend’ rather than the whole point of the question, 什麼時候？
That said, I don’t recall ever hearing that kind of usage in Taiwanese Mandarin. I’ve heard Mainlanders use it and I’ve seen it in writing (by Mainland authors).
This kind of rare usage really shouldn’t be in a textbook at the beginner or intermediate level. Also, it should be explained before being used.
