把

[renzhe]

Object, surely?

[Thomill]

Hello,

I am having trouble understanding the grammar of this sentence. (This appears in Rosetta Stone, Level 2.)

她上星期一把她的车卖了。

I do not understand the use of 把 here. What does this convey? Is it a verb? Is the meaning "Last Monday，Ｉ sold my car"?

I　ｄｉｄ　ｒｅａｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｔｉｃｋｙ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｆｏｒｕｍ　ｂｕｔ　ｗａｓ　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｕｎｃｌｅａｒ．

Thank you.

[skylee]

Would it be helpful if you consider the pattern as something like "have something done / dealt with in a certain way"?

Parse the sentence this way -

她上星期一把她的车卖了。

She last Monday had her car sold.

Their is also a variation of this pattern with an addition of the word 给 -> "把 车 给 卖 了". No major difference in meaning, though.

[Semper]

Would it be helpful if you consider the pattern as something like "have something done / dealt with in a certain way"?

Parse the sentence this way -

她上星期一把她的车卖了。

She last Monday had her car sold.

exactly

[WestTexas]

IMO Rosetta Stone is somewhat overrated.

[Altair]

I agree with what has been posted, but wanted to add something.

Chinese tends to put the basic "focus" or "point" of a sentence at the end and often has different ways of expressing the same thing depending on what you want to communicate. The object of a verb often serves as the focus or part of a larger structure that is the focus; however, when it does not, Chinese has various ways of getting it out of the way. The 把 construction is one of these and has the special meaning of indicating how something is "disposed of".

If you say 我上星期一卖了我的车. This primarily communicates what you did last Sunday or maybe what you sold last Sunday. The point of the sentence is not to tell you what happened to the car.

If you say 我上星期一把我的车卖了, you are primarily communicating what happened to the car, i.e. that it was sold off.

By the way, the 了 in this sentence is a little bit different from its normal meaning and usage. Here, it has more of an implication of "off" or "away" than just of "completion" and can often be substituted with 掉 (diao4). It is used in this sense with only a limited number of verbs (e.g.,　吃 (eat) and 刹 (kill)), and it is only with these verbs that it can provide the complement that is always necessary in a 把 sentence.

[imron]

Merged with the 把 thread to keep discussion in the same place.

[Michaelyus]

I tend to find that there's semantic triggers for putting something in the S把OV~ construction instead of the 'ordinary' SVO~. E.g. I don't think I've ever ever used 端...过来 as the sole main verb (with complement) in the SVO~ construction. Is there any scholarly literature on this?