Chinese word order

[chinesemadrush]

Hi everyone,

 

I was reading this article by Allsetlearning on word order (link) and it mentioned that sentences should follow a certain pattern like this:

 

Can someone explain to me how this sentence fits the word order above? 我申购那家新公司的股票一千股。

Subject = 我

Verb = 申购

Target = 那家新公司的股票

???? = 一千股

 

1) I am not sure what category 一千股 falls in.

2) Also, it seems like in my sentence, the verb comes before the target. Unlike the word order diagram above which states that verb should come after the target.

 

Thank you.

[陳德聰]

What you have labelled as the target is the object as part of the verb phrase. Where they have "time phrase", there are many things that could go there, mostly quantities.

[johnk]

Hi,

Lets start with a disclaimer, it is about 40 years since I studied grammar and even then it wasn't Chinese grammar.

 

In this case the simple sentence is:

 

我申购一千股。

 

'I buy a thousand shares.' In fact the simple sentence could be 'I buy Shares', 'a thousand' is a qualifier for the object of the sentence 'shares'.

 

The phrase 那家新公司的股票 also qualifies the shares that I buy. ie. I didn't just buy any old shares, I buy shares in that new company. In my ancient grammatical mind '那家新公司的股票' is an adjectival phrase which qualifies the object of the sentence '一千股'.

 

The table from the web site which you posted, deals with what they call 'target'

 

Target is about who or what the verb is aimed at. This includes doing things for or on behalf of someone, or towards people or objects.

 

 

What the site calls a 'target', I would call an indirect object. To take an example from that same page:-

 

'I sometimes tell lies to my parents.

 

'I' is the subject

'sometimes' is an adverb

'tell' is the verb

'lies' is the object

'to my parents' is a indirect object (target).

 

The table you quote doesn't apply to the sentence '我申购那家新公司的股票一千股' - it doesn't have an indirect object or target.

 

 

As I said, it is 40 years since I did grammar, so I may be wrong.

[Guest123]

 

 

 I am not sure what category 一千股 falls in.

It's a quantitative complement. In fact, duration complement is a category of quantitative complements. It can be quantity, duration, number of things or times.

Ex,:

苹果多少钱一斤？

小树高了半尺。

他比我大一岁。

这部电影我看了三遍。

 

By the way, it's often a topic-comment structure, and not subject-predicate.

[chinesemadrush]

Thanks alot everyone. Explanation from @JohnK makes the most sense. The sentence structure doesn't seem to fit