Can someone explain where I went wrong with the 了 particle?

[Benjameno]

One of the sentences in a Chinese text I wrote and posted online read as such:

上个星期我回来家了跟父母过圣诞节。

Multiple people then corrected it like so:

上个星期我回到家跟父母过圣诞节。

I understand everything else I did wrong, but why can't I use the 了 particle here? It seems like a textbook instance where a change of state has occurred. I have taken a look at the sticky topic on 了, but I can't make out any authoritative set of rules, just endless series of seeming contradictions . If I had a nickel for every time I wished I'd been born with that native speaker intuition...

[陳德聰]

Hm...

I would have said: 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了。。。

But 了 doesn't always refer to a change of state, there are a bunch of types of 了 usage. Maybe Yale can help you.

http://comet.cls.yale.edu/mandarin/content/Lele/grammar/Lele.htm

As for your example's 了 use...

If you say 上个星期我回了家就玩游戏。 It makes sense, but not because of a change of state, but because of a completed action.

In your first example, using 了 the same way would be... grammatically almost okay, but ... is super awkward because of the clause with 过圣诞节.

上个星期我回了家就跟父母过圣诞节. <-- Sounds like after you got home you all immediately started to celebrate Christmas. Does this seem awkward in English?

I went home and then we celebrated Christmas... My family was on pause and as soon as I got in the door, somebody pressed "play" so that we could all commence the Christmas celebration.... I don't know if this is such a good explanation haha sorry >_<"

[yialanliu]

回到 in english better translates to returned to somewhere

回来 in english translates to return (here) as in the place you are right now.

You cannot use return to the place you are right now if your home is not where you are speaking locationwise.

With regards to 了，it's more complicated. The easiest explanation is in Chinese we throw 了 for a weird reason that you have to be a native to use appropriately. Thus, 了 is okay but is still considered unneccessary which means in written language, you almost never see it.

For the longer explanation of 了:

In Chinese, we prefer 2 or 4 word phrases. Rarely do we like 3 word phrases and almost never do we like 1 word phrases with more than 2 in a row.

Because of this, we can use 了 to make a 1 word phrase into a 2 word phrase making it sound better (for natives we can hear it). Thus, 我回家 does not sound as good as 我回家了 which is used when speaking. 家了 is a 2 word phrase and sounds better than 3 1 word phrases.

Using the poster above, we can break his sentece: 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了 apart

上个星期 我 回家 跟 父母 过 圣诞节了

4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 4

In reality, the last 了 is not needed.

To fullfill the 2 and 4 is good, it would recreate the sentence into:

上个星期 我 回家 跟 父母 过圣诞节

4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 4.

This then means that in books the second phrase is used because wordiness is not a good thing especially in Chinese. same could be said of english if you think about it.

When you say it though, the first one is "simpler" because the groupings of 过 圣诞节了 is a more primitive/less advanced grouping than the alternative and when your speaking, simplicity is good..

[anonymoose]

I'm not a native speaker, but...

If you have a series of verbs describing a multi-stage event in Chinese, then 了 is only placed after the final verb. In your sentence, you have two verbal constructions, 回家 and 过圣诞节, which occured in succession. Therefore, 了 could only be placed after the second of these.

Also, since 过圣诞节 is a verb-object construction, you could place 了 directly after 过.

[yialanliu]

Also, since 过圣诞节 is a verb-object construction, you could place 了 directly after 过.

Not really

过了圣诞节 can have a different meaning altogether. It would then mean, "after christmas" while it can mean the current meaning. Because of ths, the way you used it which is correct, can lead to confusion so the placement of 了 at the end is correct to prevent this confusion.

[anonymoose]

But surely which meaning is meant would be clear from context. No?

[陳德聰]

Yeah but it would sound awkward and leave you thinking "am I missing something? Should there be more information here?"

Edit: Sorry to clarify it would be like putting a "..." at the end of the sentence implying there is more information to come. "What happened after you celebrated Christmas?"

In Chinese there are tonnes of times when yeah, grammatically it could be conceivable to construct whatever sentence, but it does not always convey the desired information in the desired way, which is why it is often better to phrase things in certain ways over others.

[Benjameno]

@yialanliu So 了 needs to be omitted for the sole reason of producing a "phrase" (I don't see how you are dividing them up. By function maybe? Adverbial/ pronoun/verb/preposition etc.?) with four syllables? I'll never get the hang of this, especially if the grammar is somehow subordinate to syllable count.

[陳德聰]

@Benjameno no do not get confused here, your original example is flawed in several ways not just the part with the 了.

We wouldn't say 回来家 in this context unless you're speaking from your house, and even then I feel like it is a really awkward way of saying that when everyone would just say 回家.

So that's one edit to make. Now we have 回家了＋跟父母过圣诞节。

But if we look at this sentence, it doesn't make sense. You don't put 了 after anything but sentences and verbs.

K let's change it up again. 我回了家(就)跟父母过圣诞节。

Marginally okay now, still not really, but the feeling for me here is more like comparing celebrating Christmas to a one-off thing 'cause this sounds like a series of events! "I came home, I showered, I put on some clothes, and then I celebrated Christmas"... Does that sound weird to you? (It does to me)

So then let's change it again. 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节。

Now it is not really wrong, but just sounds unnatural based on what @yialanliu said, so you can do two things to eliminate the awkward feeling:

上个星期我回到家跟父母过圣诞节。

or the one I definitely prefer...

上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了。

[Benjameno]

Thanks for recapitulating - I understood the distinctions between 回来家／回到家／回家， etc. What surprises me, rather, looking at the two sentences at the end of your most recent post, is that it seems that 了 is optional and is inserted only to fulfill this tendency towards bisyllabic clusters, which could be done just as well with 到. I suppose I just don't want to believe that sentence rhythm takes priority over the supposed grammatical function of 了 as an aspect marker - as a learner, I'm comforted by the idea that the prescriptive grammar rules that I study can be used to produce native-like sentences, so naturally I am concerned whenever I learn that, regardless of the importance of 了, it ought to be discarded whenever the syllable-count of the sentence is uneven. I hope I'm mistaken.

[skylee]

I think the following sentences are all right, but the ones without 了 at the end sound like there should be more information following the sentence -

上个星期我回到家跟父母过圣诞节

上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了

上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节

I am unable to explain any Chinese grammar. But I have some doubt about the explanation of preferance of 2/4-word phrases. I agree with the first part of anonymous's first reply (about multiple-stage event), but placing 了 immediately after 過 does not sound right.

[陳德聰]

I hadn't really heard about the 2/4 rhythm thing either until today but I thought that was kind of nifty haha.

I don't think it's a good idea to think of it as "discarding" the 了 "whenever" though, because really this is more a case of where you can/can't put a 了...

Let's think of it this way. Say you really wanna use "了":

上个星期了我回家跟父母过圣诞节。 <- nope, for obvious reasons

上个星期我了回家跟父母过圣诞节。<- nope, for obvious reasons

上个星期我回了家跟父母过圣诞节。<- nope, see above post about action series.

上个星期我回家了跟父母过圣诞节。<- nope, sentence-end 了 goes at ends of sentences

上个星期我回家跟了父母过圣诞节。<- nope, for obvious reasons

上个星期我回家跟父母了过圣诞节。<- nope, for obvious reasons

上个星期我回家跟父母过了圣诞节。<- nope, also see above, usually leads to a feeling that something should come after

So with that said... How would you like to eliminate the last remaining possibility?

a) 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了。

Compare with:

b) 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节。

The second, (b) feels empty. This is potentially because the sentence lacks aspect altogether. The only explanation I can think of that rectifies this is to add the sentence-end 了which gives aspect by reaffirming that the situation has already happened.

[WestTexas]

上个星期我回家跟父母过了圣诞节。<- nope, also see above, usually leads to a feeling that something should come after

I don't get it. I mean obviously I'm not a native speaker but I see no way this would suggest anything comes later. This fits with every grammar rule about 了 that I know of. TBH it seems hopeless to produce native-sounding sentences without consulting a native speaker. Granted most Chinese who study English can't consistently produce native-sounding English sentences unless they were educated at an international school or went to university abroad (even then many can't). Still, it can seem a little pointless to try to improve my grammar when a sentence like 上个星期我回家跟父母过了圣诞节 which seems to make perfect sense to me 'sounds incomplete' to a native speaker.[/font]

[creamyhorror]

a) 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了。

This sounds slightly weird to me without context. Hearing the 了 at the end makes me think, "Oh, she's implying she's already done it, is she?" 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了[，不跟你们度过]。

Either that or "Oh, she's already gone home [and isn't around any more]." - compare it with 他上个星期回到老家过圣诞节了。

Therefore I prefer 上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节, which has neither of the above implications, to my ear anyway。 IANANS, though...

[Michaelyus]

I think this is a problem of definiteness and style.

From Yip & Rimmington (2004) Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar:

However, being less morphologically oriented but more functionally disposed than some other languages, Chinese syntax may further differentiate its declarative sentences into the following four subtypes: narrative, descriptive, expository and evaluative.

The aspect particle 了 (right after the verb) is usually demanded in narrative when talking about an event with perfective aspect in the past with definite reference (and none can be more definite than "I"; plus you have a very definite time reference too). Therefore 上个星期我回了家... is best seen as pluperfect / past perfect in its anteriority, which by its English pragmatics lends itself to narration: "Last week I had gone home...". Hence a feeling of incompleteness/unnaturalness. However, it seems you don't really want to fit it into a narrative scheme (although it could work, given the right context).

If it's the transitive verb 过+ object 节 that takes the 了, that implies that is the main verb. Assuming we still want a narrative sentence, it is still more awkward and would border on the ungrammatical: because subject 我[跟父母] and object 圣诞节 are both of definite reference, 了 causes the clause to become incomplete. Hence it necessitates completion.

But I think the expository-type sentnece is what you want, as you are giving some form of explanation in conversation; specifically you seem to want the 了-expository type, which uses 了 at the end of the sentence as a 'change-of-state'. This is a bit of a vague term as it refers to lots of different (albeit related) situations. In this case, the 了 at the end of the sentence would imply trying to affirm that 'this information that I'm saying is updated, is something new, different to what happened before'.

The thing is, there's not much to necessitate such a need for updated information - there is no 已经 (which lends itself very much to change-of-state, emphasising updated information), nor is it the end of a descriptive sequence that has resulted in a new state... so it becomes a bit of a matter of personal style as to whether to add 了 to this particular sentence. Adding 了 makes it more emphatic and more vivid, but also a bit over the top for some people. Both would count as expository though.

[David Wong]

To me,

上个星期我回到家跟父母过圣诞节 means "Last week I went home to celebrate Christmas with my parents".

上个星期我回家跟父母过圣诞节了 means "I was under some obligation to go home and celebrate Christmas with my parents and that's what I did last week already so stop pestering me!"

HAHA.

[陳德聰]

呵呵 I guess it shows how we all feel about our parents hm?

I really like Michaelyus' explanation... but it kind of shows how hard it is to pin down the function of each particular word in every sentence. I don't know, do people study English to this kind of degree without it being their specialization? 'Cause I certainly never remember examining things with this much rigor until I started taking syntax and semantics courses.

I don't think it should discourage people though, among all the answers there is lots of conflict because it really does come down to personal style. But I think that people (who speak languages with tense) learning Chinese tend to focus a bit too much on their notions of tense and add 了 when it isn't necessarily called for.

As David Wong says, 回到 with no 了 neutrally explains the situation and gives a definite time reference so it's really fine to just not have a 了 in the sentence at all. As for the one ending with 了, it is particular to the way people talk and context, and the nuance (I feel) is so slight that I wouldn't really be too worried about it?

[YuehanHao]

Although knowing little, I was fascinated by the discussion and wanted to add the agreement of my wife with what yialanliu wrote. She does not often help me, but I have heard similar advice from her many times. I will undoubtedly never reach the expert level of being able to see simplicity through all the superficial complexity and exceptions, yet that idea has always appealed to me: 1- and 3-character Chinese words or phrases, like atoms needing just one more electron to complete an unfilled shell, pulling a free 子 or 了 out of the ether to attain greater stability...

[creamyhorror]

I think we can gain a bit of clarity if we look at the stripped-down sentence:

(1) 上个星期我做某某事了

To my ear, this says, "Last week I [already] did <whatever>[, like I needed to]." 了 seems to imply 已经 to me.

If 跟父母过圣诞节 is used as the verb, this becomes "Last week I already spent Christmas with my parents[, so stop pestering me]." (in David Wong's words).

I guess that's why it sounds a bit weird to me with the 了. I think this may come down to regional differences, but I'll be happy if other native speakers can confirm whether the 了 version sounds more natural.

[陳德聰]

We've had native speakers confirm that the 了 version sounds one of either [natural] or what I'm gonna call [cheeky/emphatic].

Without the 了 I think just about everyone would agree that it sounds empty, but personally 回到家 is not something I'd use.

It potentially sounds weird with the 了 at the end because of the implications for different people based on their exposure to different implicational uses of it, but to me and my friends it does not sound weird at all and is actually intuitionally obligatory.