Use of "得" in 她疼得坐在了地上

[Waitan]

Hello,

 

I came across the following sentence in one of the Chinese Breeze books: 她疼得坐在了地上

 

I know it means something like "She sat on the ground in pain", but I don't understand the use of "得" here.  It doesn't fit the typical Verb + 得 structure.  In fact, I would think using "地" makes more sense since 疼地坐 follows the Adj + 地 + Verb structure.  But I am just a novice.

 

Can someone help me improve?

 

Thanks.

 

[lips]

"She was so painful that she sat on the ground"

 

adjective + 得 ...

 

means

 

so + adjective + that ...

[stapler]

As above, a closer meaning is "her pain was so strong that she had to sit down". The 疼 here is acting like a verb. I can't explain the precise grammar, but unlike English, there is a lot of ambiguity in Chinese in the sense that there are not many words that are clearly adjectives and that are clearly verbs. 疼 is one of these many, many words. That is, 疼  can mean both "painful" and "painfuling" or rather "hurting". It's not quite a full on verb like 走, and it's not a full adjective like 慢.

 

As for the 得 itself, anything that comes after it describes the verb. So you can say 疼得重 (it's hurting heavily) but you could also stick a full phrase after the 得 to describe the hurting: 疼得让我去跑到湖自杀 (it's hurting (so much) that it's making me want to go run to the lake and kill myself)

 

And you can do this for 地 as well - sticking in huge phrases to describe the way you're 走ing: 他歪歪倒倒，几乎摔倒地走 (he is walking so unsteadily, almost as if he about to fall over)

[lips]

疼得坐在地上 and 疼地坐在地上 have different meanings.  The former is as stated above.  Whereas as stapler said, what comes after 得 describes what comes before, what comes before 地 describes what comes after.  So 疼地坐在地上 is more like "painfully sit on the ground".

 

BTW it sounds unnatural to use a single character before 地, when used this way.  Usually more than a character is used, like 疼痛地, or doubling up, like 靜靜地.

 

Edit:  But don't use 痛痛地 for painfully, it has a different meaning.

[lips]

她疼得坐在了地上

 

should be 她疼得坐了在地上.

[Waitan]

The placement of the "了" seemed odd to me as well. Maybe it is a typo in the book, but it definitely is written as 她疼得坐在了地上.

Thank you for explaining my original question.

[陳德聰]

I disagree with #5, and the simplified suggestion that what comes after 得 just describes what comes before it. That would be true in adverbial constructions like "he ran fast", but his is something different.

得 here signals a result whether the word preceding is a verb or an adjective, like stapler said, as long as the adjective can act like a verb. In this case it is not just a description of the verb.

Example:

你怎么又吃得衣服上都是饭啦？

How've you gone and (eaten in such a way that you've) gotten food all over your shirt again!?

[lips]

I disagree with #5

Did you mean 她疼得坐在了地上 was correct?

 

I think stapler meant when he said "As for the 得 itself, anything that comes after it describes the verb" was that what comes after says something about the verb.  The emphasis is on 疼, or how painful.  Yes, 坐在地上 is the result of the pain, but writing the sentence this way is to emphasize that it is very painful.  The meaning, or intent, is very different from 她觉得疼，所以坐了在地上。

[Frederik451]

 

should be 她疼得坐了在地上.

 

You are wrong here. I've come across the     ( verb+在了＋place)   construction many times. Latest when my Chinese teacher wrote "我们因为同样的原因，相聚在了这里" on the board...  I initially thought it sounded weird but when i asked her about it she said this was the more accurate way of saying it

[Guest realmayo]

I'm not sure about #7's:

 

得 here signals a result

 

Is this the 'main' signal? Or is the main point to describe the extent of the 疼? What is the emphasis? In fact, is there any way to test what the emphasis is?

 

If the emphasis in 你怎么又吃得衣服上都是饭啦 is on the result, perhaps because 吃 is an active verb, 疼 is a stative verb; therefore one describes an action (and actions have results) while the other describes, well, a state.

 

Can we think of an example like 你怎么又吃得衣服上都是饭啦 but which uses a stative verb?

[roddy]

在了 has come up before. Nothing wrong with it, but it does look odd at first. 

[lips]

You're right.  Thanks.  My bad.  Thanks to 陳德聰 and Frederik451 also.

[陳德聰]

I think realmayo and lips are blurring some concepts here. Whether the complement is a result or not does not bear on what the emphasis of the sentence is. In any case it seems like to some people emphasis means meaning and signal means emphasis? Any mention of a "main" signal as if there is a "secondary" signal seems muddled. Perhaps my word choice was not apt then.

Here let me try again with more specificity:

The 得 introduces a state that arises from the verb/adjective here. I do not think this is a particularly controversial sentence, and I don't think it rules out what is being said about the extent of the pain, but the information about extent of the pain is implicature rather than grammar.

English explanation of "State complement": http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/State_complement

Chinese explanation of the difference between 状态补语 and 程度补语: http://wenku.baidu.com/link?url=6syxM_kC6DuDp1IdNfYF_Ylg4pglI_8ou8n1H5JOnZaKMdE4FovRihKLO_JGQTtKi_M-9qCKsqcftKJSkpvLyEBmYPoqgZkDdkS7uU1o8cm

Another example:

这人丑得没人要他

Yes it means that this person is so ugly that nobody wants him. But this arises from his being ugly. It is implied that he is quite ugly, but the facts of the sentence are that he is ugly and nobody wants him because of it. The grammar doesn't encode that, the situation does.

[Guest realmayo]

I see your point, it just felt like you were downplaying the fact that the result modifies the cause.

 

(Surely the grammar of V+得+result 'works' because of how, with 得, what comes after modifies what comes before. If not, it's a mighty strange coincidence.)

 

I think usage is important when considering grammar. What's important in 这人丑得没人要他? Is it that no one wants this chap? Or is it that he's really ugly?

 

I think it's that he's really ugly. The result is used to highlight his ugliness, rather than his ugliness used to explain why he's unwanted. But that's what I was asking about with regards to emphasis.

[陳德聰]

Yes, you're right that the "point" of the sentence is that he's ugly, but the OP asked how 得 works in this type of construction. You can't put just anything after it and say it describes the verb/adjective, it has to be one of the complements that 得 introduces or it won't work.

You can't say something like 他疼得全身, though you could claim that 全身 describes the pain, the thing that goes after 得 in this construction has to be a resulting state. The other option would be 极了，很 etc which are complements of degree, not state.

[Messidor]

@Waitan

得 is a mark of complement.

她疼得坐在了地上 means she is so painful that she sat on the ground [#2 lips]

她疼地坐在了地上 doesn't make sense to me ( I'm a native speaker...)

another example, 这水臭得让人作呕 ---- the water's so smelly that I almost throw up

 

@lips @Fredrik451

    了 can be taken as a mark of "perfect aspect", thus the sentence, according to the usual usage of 了, can be written as 她疼得坐在地上了; but in spoken Chinese (and in literature) a 了 attached to the verb or the preposition is more common. In some cases 了 must be attached to the verb instead of to the whole sentence.

    The sentence a)她疼得坐了在地上 can be appropriate if there's proper context. The difference between a) and b)她疼得坐在了地上 can be that the focus of a) is the motion while that of b) is the result (/state). It seems that a) is just a part of a complex sentence and there should be another sentence next to it (otherwise a simple sentence like a) is prosodically weird).

    As with 我们因为同样的原因，相聚在了这里, I guess it's more about prosody here rather than about grammar. 我们因为同样的原因，相聚在这里 is syntactically right (while 我们因为同样的原因，相聚在这里了 is slightly odd)