你明天去不去 or 你明天去吗?

[OneEye]

If not even a typical/average chinese teacher, student, wikipedia article, and/or textbook knows about the distinction? How can anyone except a limited subset of "intellectuals" be expected to discern what this initial post means?

Sorry, this knowledge is not limited to "intellectuals", whatever you may have meant by that. It's a pretty basic fact about how Chinese works.

If your teacher doesn't know that there isn't tense in Chinese, you ought to switch teachers. But more likely is that she just calls it tense for the reasons I mentioned above, which in my opinion is doing you a disservice. My teachers here in Taiwan are quick to point out that "it isn't past tense, don't think of it like that. It's completed or not completed". The typical or average student of Chinese is not who you want to be seeking advice from, trust me. I hear more ridiculous crap about the Chinese language in the student lounge at my school than you can find in the New York Times (which is significant ).

Wikipedia is not always reliable, but that ought to go without saying. I could go to Wikipedia right now and change pretty much anything I felt like, but that doesn't mean that people ought to take what I type as the truth, especially if I don't cite any sources. At the most basic level, please don't take an article like the one you linked above, which has absolutely zero references, as being reliable. That article was marked as having no sources in 2008 (as it says at the top), and apparently it hasn't been improved in the last 3 years, so it really isn't an article you want to throw around as supporting evidence for anything. It really is no better than listening to a "random stranger". And it may even be worse, because at least you can engage this stranger in a discussion, which you can't do with a sourceless Wikipedia article.

[tooironic]

Forgive me for being brief in my original reply, but I feel when writing on forums it's better to get to the point than writing out a convoluted explanation.

I agree with OneEye; Chinese doesn't have tense. It's a pretty basic fact that should be taught right from the beginning. Otherwise, learners may be misled. For example, some teachers may explain 了 as kind of like "-ed" in English, yet in many cases the usage of 了 has nothing to do with time or tense, and is merely indicating the completion of a verb (e.g. 我快走了, meaning "I'm about to leave" not "I quickly left"). Hope that explanation was a bit more helpful.

[shinewind]

Let me put it this way:

1. Separate the sentence into 3 units:明天+你+去不去

2. Put them together in whatever order you want

3. Most of them make sense and are considered correct in oral expressions, such as 明天你去不去/你明天去不去/你去不去明天/去不去你明天...

There is no such thing as TENSE in Chinese so it doesn't matter if it was yesterday/today/tomorrow. You just have to specify a TIME.

ONE TIP:

In Chinese, “verb +吗？” can be replaced with the structure “no + verb +no?”(e.g. 去吗=去不去). NO (不) in Chinese is also known as 没、没有、无. It can be a tough word to a second language learner.

[David Wong]

Are there cases when only the "verb不verb" structure is correct or only the "verb吗" structure is correct?

Maybe 妈妈骑马，马慢妈妈骂不骂马？is preferable to 妈妈骑马，马慢妈妈骂马吗？

[jbradfor]

ONE TIP:

In Chinese, “verb +吗？” can be replaced with the structure “no + verb +no?”(e.g. 去吗=去不去).

Something tells me the OP knows this, given that the title of this thread is "你明天去不去 or 你明天去吗?"

Plus, it's “verb + no + verb?”, not “no + verb +no?”

[shinewind]

to #25:

You are right. My typo. it should be:

In Chinese, “verb +吗？” can be replaced with the structure “V + NO +V?”(e.g. 去吗=去不去).