你的文章寫的怎麼樣? Grammar... hmm.

[taiwanshaun]

At one point, I was working on an article that I needed to write, when my friend sent me this message:

你的文章寫的怎麼樣?

I think the meaning of this sentence is:

"How's your article going?"

But I don't understand the grammar of it.

I'm guessing it can be broken into two parts:

你的文章 = Your article

寫的怎麼樣 = How's the writing going?

However, I would have written it like this:

妳正在寫的文章怎麼樣?

Or, is that also completely off?

Thanks again!!! Slowly but surely, I'm going to understand this language!!!

-- Taiwan Shaun / 尚恩

[skylee]

你的文章寫的怎麼樣? is ok. but you may wish to know that the second 的 should have been 得. but native speakers very often use 的 instead. people understand it, though it is not the most correct way.

妳正在寫的文章怎麼樣? is not as good (unless you are doing 10 papers simultaneously and at that particular point of time you are writing one of them, I think). and of course you can use 妳, though many people (including me) don't really care if it is 妳 or 你. but I do consciously use 她 and 他 according to the gender of the person.

[chrix]

你的文章寫的怎麼樣?

can also be written this way:

你的文章寫得怎麼樣?

So this is verbal complement (補語) directly modifying the verb 寫.

Some people write the particle "de" in three ways according to function 的 得 地, and some write them all as 的.

I guess what you wrote could also be understood, but I believe the above construction to be more natural in Mandarin..

[chrix]

skylee, "correct" is in the eye of the beholder. 的, 得, 地 are just three ways of writing a particle that historically has been the same (ultimately from 之).

[skylee]

I am a beholder. And I am a user of modern Chinese. But I don't need to have the final say of everything.

[chrix]

Well, linguistic norms are set by the linguistic community as a whole, though every language user has their own norm (their idiolect as it were) as well. I just don't see a unified agreement on this issue, that's all. Certainly grammars and textbooks prescribe a tripartite distinction (which AFAIK has been artificially created based on linguistic criteria), but I've seen too many individual language users deviate from this in a consistent manner that I would be reluctant to label them all wrong

[wushijiao]

I just don't see a unified agreement on this issue, that's all.

I think that native speakers may make that written mistake a lot (especially when typing quickly), but it's similar to a native English speaker writing "there" for "their", or two other words that sound the same but have different meanings. I think that you could argue that there is indeed a "correct" version, but it is only "correct" in the sense that a language has a standardized style guide, with "language managers" and people who care about it.

[taiwanshaun]

原來如此!!!

That makes so much sense now!

I was completely confused, and I was never really clear about the formal differences between:

的, 得, and 地.

非常謝謝你們!!!!!!

- Taiwan Shaun

[HashiriKata]

In use, 的, 得, and 地 are mixed up by learners and native alike. However, I'd advice those who're still learning try to learn the differences between them. Once you've learned the rules, it's ok to break them.

[xiaocai]

Once you've learned the rules, it's ok to break them.

But why do you want to "break them" if you've learned the rules? Only those people don't know the difference will get confused and mix them up.

I'm not sure if there is a standard of the usage of 的, 得, 地 or not, but it is definitely better if you do differentiate them. At least you will not lose marks in exams for using the wrong one.

[Hofmann]

的, 得, 地 are just three ways of writing a particle that historically has been the same (ultimately from 之).

That 得 and 地 descend from 之 is a surprise to me. Care to elaborate?

[chrix]

@Hashirikata: totally agree. Learn the rules first before you know when to break them, is also a rule generations of new drivers have adhered to

@wushijiao: I disagree, "there" and "their" are of historically different origin and in carefully edited texts they're never confused. The 3 DE, OTOH, are historically from the same source, have been separated in writing in an artificial way and by some people they are partly or totally conflated in a CONSISTENT manner. This is an indicator that we have concurring rules in place here, whereas "there" and "their" there is one rule. Writing is the most regulated part of language and more often than not counterintuitive even for native speakers. So I don't think one should label a common usage wrong, but rather see them as alternative concurring options from which to choose as a language user. As long as it is consistent...

@xiaocai: because a) the rules aren't that clear, and B) in some cases, sticking to the rules (set by prescriptivists) can come off as pretentious. I'm not saying that's the case here necessarily, but if you get cases where many people are deviating from it, it's worthwhile thinking about it. English has lots of examples like that ("it is I", "whom/who" etc)

[chrix]

That 得 and 地 descend from 之 is a surprise to me. Care to elaborate?

Actually about 地 I'm not too sure myself, you get some stuff from 李白 that looks suspicious (also words like 特地). 得 doesn't seem to be used in this way until very recently,so I think the probability here is higher. I'd be interested in seeing studies about this.

It was wrong of me to press the historical argument too much, because diachrony shouldn't take precendence over synchrony in matters of language norms. Basically if those 3 particles have become one (either because they have been historically one or because they have become merged through language change) for the majority of language users, then this is sufficient to establish a new norm (I'm not saying that a majority actually uses it this way, just IF).

[wushijiao]

@chrix- you make great points and I'm not really disagreeing, except that Putonghua has been standardized (whether we like it or not) and many of these issues, regardless of the history, now have a fixed "correct" form that is used by all publishing houses, media outlets, and in academia...etc. That's why I used "correct" and not correct. However, even if something is commonly used, I'd be cautious about using it in Mandarin, since (written) Putonghua functions in a society that tends to be ok with authority in standardization coming from experts at the top of the hierarchy, not through grassroots usage.

So, I would agree with HashiriKata that, as a learner, you should learn the rules, and then when you get good enough, you can break the conventions for style or personal reasons.

[chrix]

@wushijiao, you might have noticed that the OP is located in Taiwan. It's not been fixed for 台灣國語, or at least it's not widely adhered to, you find many books published in Taiwan not following the tripartite distinction. Sometimes I get the feeling it's mostly just textbooks for the Mandarin learner....

Nonetheless, it's important to understand and learn the norm set for putonghua, but one shouldn't forget that "right" and "wrong" are always wrt a certain norm. And not all speakers of putonghua follow the official norm... In fact most native speakers are juggling several norms and registers depending on the context, and ultimately that's what learners have to do as well, not blindly follow one set of norms (I'm not saying that's what you're advocating, just trying to make myself clear).

[chrix]

Found two articles on the topic:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2008-02/14/content_7603605.htm

http://blog.caijing.com.cn/topic_article-9-635.shtml

So in one of them, they cite people defending the tripartition as part of Chinese culture, while their detractors cite Lu Xun and other famous authors not making the distinction as well

More seriously, both articles show that even in putonghua, this is controversial, and that even official institutions experimented with unifying the use completely, or partly.

The articles also touch upon different degrees of conflation, which I can confirm from personal experience:

1. 的, 得, and 地 are differentiated

2. 的 and 地 are conflated as 的, 得 is separate

3. 的, 得, and 地 are conflated as 的

These three seem to be the only acceptable ways of using those particles "out" there. But nonetheless, it's better to first know 1., before even considering 2. or 3.

[jiangping]

I might be completely wrong on this, but I thought that it was now acceptable for (Chinese) students to write 的 for all three uses in mainland China... or is this a loud of rubbish? In pre-modern texts (and still in Taiwan) people seem to just use 的 for everything.

[chrix]

in the articles I linked above, one teacher they cite says they'd still run the risk of 扣分 but I'd be interested to know how consistently this is applied across the country...

[renzhe]

This comes as a huge surprise to me.

I have never seen a source, or a published book or a magazine that is proof-read, or a textbook that suggests that conflating the three is correct or acceptable.

It also surprises me that this isn't standardised as a norm everywhere (including Taiwan).

AFAIK, separating 的地得 according to grammatical role is the "correct" way to do it, meaning, it is taught in schools, enforced by proof-readers, used almost exclusively in literature, and used by all grammar books out there (though some might be more tolerant of variants). It would be much less of a nuisance if this weren't the case, but it is. So I try to use them in this way, just like I try to use the Genitive in German and make a difference between č and ć in Croatian, and note the difference between "you and me" and "you and I" in English.

It's not a tragedy to get it wrong, but I'd like to get it right.

[chrix]

well, as I said at the beginning "correct" is in the eye of the beholder. And in this case the beholder seems to have a split personality (Also there are two different sets of official norms across the Strait, so surely you would expect to find differences even in the official standard. But I checked with friends, Taiwan seems to have the tripartition as its standard too, but the fact remains that there not only individuals, but also many publishers deviate from this standard, partly because they might be following the practice from the early years of the Republic...)

I wouldn't conflate issues of orthography and grammatical questions though. The former are much more arbitrary than the latter.

By the genitive in German, do you mean the "wegen" issue? It's completely acceptable now in colloquial speech to use the dative, I think the day is near where using the genitive with it in colloquial speech will come off as pretentious and elitist.