Grammar term for these verbs?

[argrr101]

大家好，

 

Is there a special term I can use to describe verbs such as 想，喜欢，打算，可以，etc, which can take on another verb behind them? Would it be appropriate to use the term Auxillary Verbs or Stative Verbs?

 

I have explained to students the basic S + V + O sentence structure in Chinese but now we are getting to some more complicated sentences with two verbs (我喜欢吃饭) and other components and I think being able to say that certain verbs are special (with a name) would help them grasp the concept.

 

谢谢！

[陳德聰]

Aren't these a type of auxiliary verb? I think they are referred to in English by auxiliary, modal, stative... The list probably goes on. You can likely just give them a name and call them "helper" verbs, or you could call them 助动词，情态动词，能愿动词...

[Altair]

All the terms suggested have problems, since they are associated with linguistic baggage that may or not apply to Chinese and may or may not really apply to the verbs you have listed.

 

The term "auxiliary verbs" (also "helping/helper verbs") means verb that add grammatical or functional meaning to another verb, but that provide little semantic content themselves.  English has a lot of these (e.g., when "will" or "have" or "is" are used to form the future, perfect, or present progressive), but it is hard to say that this is how Chinese functions.

 

The term "modal verbs" applies only to verbs that change a bland description of reality into one about possibility, necessity, desire, etc.  This is an important distinction for some languages and in some linguistic theories, but I don't think it is very important for Chinese.

 

I would especially not use the term "stative verb," since most Chinese learning materials reserve that term for the Chinese equivalent of English adjectives.  ("Adjectives" in English are noun-like; whereas "adjectives' in Chinese are strongly verb-like.  Using a term like "stative verbs" to describe Chinese "adjectives" helps to keep learners focused on this difference in behavior, since it implies you use full verbs to describe states in Chinese.)

 

I think it would be best to call them "verbs that can or must take a verb or a verb phrase as its object."  If you need a shorter reference, I think "auxiliary verbs" is the least objectionable, since you could interpret it as a verb used in association with another verb.

[argrr101]

Okay that's what my research online sounded like， I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Gharial]

Li & Thompson's grammar for one (in chapter 5) states that the only properties shared by Chinese modals/auxiliaries (those terms appear to be synonymous to them, see their index, and the listing in the 3rd paragraph below) and main verbs are 1) that they can occur as the A element in A-not-A questions, and 2) that they can be negated. In all other aspects they differ, and are more limited than main verbs: auxiliaries can't stand by themselves and need at least an "understood" main verb; they don't take aspect markers; they can't be intensified e.g. by hen; they can't be nominalized; they can't occur before the subject; and they can't take direct objects.

 

The reason I mention L&T is that it's helped me appreciate the part-of-speech labels given in the ABC ECCE Dictionary: that xiang and xihuan are given as just verbs, and that keyi is given as either an auxiliary or stative verb (depending on context), while dasuan is V/N (i.e. again depends on context, and with its verb use presumably the somewhat more frequent in that it's given first). I recommend that you get yourself such a resource, as it also has a 5-page guide to the parts of speech and other grammar labels that can serve as a mini Chinese grammar reference or refresher. A dictionary won't in itself help you understand the thinking behind the grammar though (i.e. the 'distributional properties' a particular category of forms possesses, which distinguish it [and them!] from [members of] other categories, "e.g." Chinese auxiliaries versus other verbs, as we saw above), which is where stuff like L&T obviously comes in.

 

For what it's worth, L&T list the following as actual auxiliaries in Mandarin: bidei, bixu, biyao, dei, gai, gan, hui, ken, keyi, neng, nenggou, yingdang, yinggai. And some of the candidates that have been proposed as, but that they argue against being considered as auxiliaries, include: biaoshi, jixu, keneng, qingyuan, xiang, xiwang, xuyao, yao.

 

More generally, there is the term 'serial verb constructions', and L&T again (in chapter 21) seem to do a reasonably clear job of going through the various types. Note also that English besides its primary (be, have, do) and modal auxiliaries also has series or chains of lexical verbs called catenatives (that is, in which the first, lexical verb is the catenative one), various types or analyses of transitives, and notions such as phase (i.e. 'verbs in phase').

 

Tl:dr version is that both languages seem to at least have modal or modal-like auxiliaries, and chains of lexical verbs.

[陳德聰]

Agree with #3, Altair is my hero.

[Messidor]

If what you want to emphasize is that they "can take on another verb behind them", there're terms indeed ... but I know only the Chinese terms ---- 谓宾动词 & 兼宾动词*, the former refers to the verbs that take only another verb (VP) as object and the latter refers to the verbs that can take either verb (VP) or noun (NP) as object. 想 & 喜欢 belong to 兼宾；打算 & 可以 belong to 谓宾.

but I guess these terms may be too technical ...  and I agree that it's sometimes improper to apply English grammar terms to Chinese

 

 

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* literally they mean predicate-(as-)object-verb & either-(as-)object-verb respectively

[argrr101]

Thanks for that, I didn't realize there were Chinese terms for these out there.