給 prepositional phrase: position

[freefall]

My textbook said that 給 + indirect object forms a prepositional phrase which appears before verbs as adverbials:

請你給我們介紹一下。

qing ni gei women jieshao yi xia.

please introduce us.

But my pocket dictionary has:

介紹給他

introduce to him

Why does gei appear after the verb in this snippet?

Thanks?

[freefall]

oops, I posted this and my other recent thread relating to grammar in the wrong forum.. sorry... didn't see a delete button.

MOD: please delete.

[againstwind]

My textbook said that 給 + indirect object forms a prepositional phrase which appears before verbs as adverbials

That's ture.

e.g.

给我写信。 Write a letter to me.

老师给每个同学发了份提纲。 The teacher gave every student a syllabus.

But not complete. When 给 is used to introduce into the receiver of transferring or delivery (給 + indirect object forms a prepositional phrase), it can appear before or after verbs.

e.g.

我留给你一把钥匙。 I leave a key to you.

信已经寄给他了。 The letter has been sent to him.

So in other words, these sentences can interconvert sometimes:

老师给每个同学发了份提纲。← → 老师发给每个同学一份提纲。

我留给你一把钥匙。← → 我给你留了把钥匙。

信已经寄给他了。 ← → 信已经给他寄了。

给我写信。 ← → * 写信给我。（* This one is informal）

Sometimes interconversions are not proper, so we need make use of "把" sentence.

e.g.

请你给我们介绍一下A。← → 请你把A介绍给我们

[freefall]

Ahh... so does this mean that all chinese prepositions can go before or after a verb (depending on context, of course). Or is gei a special exception?

[Jose]

Be careful with the use of the English word "preposition". Chinese words like 在 or 給 are actually verbs, even if they can be used in a similar way to English prepositions. They still behave like verbs, though, and that's why a lot of books prefer to refer to them as "coverbs" rather than the misleading European term "preposition".

Back to your question, there are many cases where a coverb can appear both before and after the verb, and usage can vary depending on verbs. Some general guidelines:

1. In general, a coverbal phrase in front of the main verb indicates a circumstance (like a place, time, manner, etc), in which something happens, while a coverbal phrase after the main verb usually indicates that the circumstance is the result of the action of the verb. This is better seen with an example:

在桌子上跳 = to be jumping on the table

跳在桌子上 = to jump on to the table

In the first case, the coverbal phrase 在桌子上 establishes the place where the action takes place, whereas in the second case the "on the table" position is the result of the jumping, so it naturally comes after the verb.

2. The above distinction is much less clear with verbs that don't have such obvious dynamic semantics as "jump", and there are cases, as againstwind said, where both are interchangeable. For example:

住在北京 = 在北京住 = to live in Beijing

Something similar happens with 給. In this case, usage seems to vary according to region as well. In southern Chinese dialects 給 phrases naturally occur after the main verb, whereas in northern dialects such dative expressions tend to occur before the main verb. In Beijing, people say 給他打電話 = "to give him a phone call", but in Taiwan 打電話給他 is the usual way of saying this, probably because of the influence of southern non-Mandarin dialects. My impression, but I'm no native, is that the use of 給 phrases after the main verb is much more common in Southern China than in the North.

3. Finally, sometimes it is purely a lexical thing you have to learn. Some coverbs are usually put before the main verbs, whereas others tend to be used after the main verbal phrase. For example, both 從 and 自 can mean "from" when used with verbs like 來, but the colloquial 從 collocates naturally in front of the main verb, whereas the formal 自 nearly always comes after the verb, so you can say:

從北京來 = 來自北京 = to come from Beijing

Another similar case is the pair 在 / 於 (simp. 于):

在北京大學畢業 = 畢業於北京大學 = to graduate at Peking University