Question about 了.

[陳德聰]

Tiana I got the same feeling as #16, but I think it's because people failed to realize that skylee asks questions like that when she disagrees with what the person said instead of saying so (even though she's a native speaker)... I was under the impression that there were a lot of different types of "了".

This thread.

This thread.

This thread.

[Altair]

我去了看她

Does this phrase mean something like 我去了以后就看他? I tried googling it and got only a few relevant hits in the first five pages and could not quite understand them. What kind of situation could you use it in?

[renzhe]

This thread took an unnecessarily ugly turn

I agree with the explanation from the Grammar Wiki about Verb-了 (completion of an action) and Sentence-了 (change of state). I found it useful to be aware of the distinction, as 了 has many different uses and they are often confusing.

I also agree with skylee that in the two short sentences given, the difference in meaning is well, not obvious. I personally struggle to translate them as two different sentences. There is action completion, and there is a change of state in both of them, because in this particular sentence one implies the other. I'd say it's simply about which aspect you wish to stress, and that context is necessary for an accurate translation.

[davoosh]

Theoretically, as stand alone sentences they could represent more or less the same meaning.

However, sentences usually (or always) occur in a certain context, so if we take:

1.我去看了她:　we would expect another sentence following as this type of 了 is often used to describe a series of events (After I saw her I did this and this and this) - Alyssum's example sentence shows this well.

2. 我去看她了: this could be 'I went to see her' however the 了 here doesn't necessarily indicate past tense, as it could equally be translated as 'I'm going to see her' (now that the situation has changed)

3. 我去了看: This is not necessarily wrong, but again it depends on context. Basically, my understanding would be that it's a variant of the 1st sentence, but meaning "After I went, I saw...", baidu gives an example of 我去了看醫生，醫生說.... (I went, and saw the doctor, and the doctor said....) 我去了看看人怎 麼樣 (I went, and had a look how the people were), 我們去了看看再說 (After we've been, lets see and decide).

[魑魅魍魉Lol]

I think 我去了看她 is a wrong sentence,and idk what is it supposed to mean

I dont think u can put another verb after 了

Let's make up some context here:

Person A:你去干嘛？

Person B: 我去看她（了）。（i am going to see her）

Person A:你去干嘛了？

Person B:我去看了她=我去看她了=我看她去了。 （i went to see her）

Person A:你去看她吗？

Person B：不，我（去）看过她了。（No,I have gone to see here)