Use of 是 after another verb?

[wickedllama]

Hello,

This is my first post here - I've been self-studying for ... not a very long time, so bear with me if the answer to this question is really obvious. I decided to come here because searching the internet for answers didn't help me be less confused about this sentence:

 

我 不 清楚 是 我们 先 走 还是 等 他们 一起 走。

The translation that the website gives is this:

 "I'm not sure if we should leave first, or wait for them and leave together." 

It makes sense to me apart from the 是 after 'I'm not sure' - is it there because you need it to introduce the thing you're not sure about, or is it something to do with translating 'should'? (I haven't really looked at using 'should' yet so I don't know).

 

I hope this posts and also apologies for being a bit new to the language.

 

Thank you!  

 

[Angelina]

These are called clefts. 

 

The most commonly used, and discussed in literature, cleft is the shì...de cleft.

 

 

The one in 我不清楚是我们先走还是等他们一起走  is called the Bare shì Focus Construction.

 

The difference between the two is that the shì...de cleft is exhaustive, there are no alternatives, no 还是 ；while the Bare shì Focus Construction shows non-exhaustiveness. 

[lips]

19 hours ago, wickedllama said:

is it there because you need it to introduce the thing you're not sure about, or is it something to do with translating 'should'?

So this is a Chinese sentence translated from English?

[Angelina]

2 hours ago, lips said:

So this is a Chinese sentence translated from English?

 

No, she/he is trying to understand what is this strange new thing. 

 

 

 

1. Try to think in Chinese.

2. The longer you keep mentally translating your thoughts from one language into a second one, the longer it will take you to be fluent in the second language.

3. 是 is there because this is how Chinese people organize their thoughts. It is used frequently. 

4. For now, it is enough for you to understand the difference between 是 and 是...的, if you see anything such as the 还是 above or 但是 or 也, you should not use a 的, use only a 是. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wickedllama]

Thanks! This really helped me think about it properly, and I didn't know about those details you gave in your fourth point. 

 

I admit I'm still kind of used to looking for structures that organise things in the same way French or English grammar structures do, because those are the ones that feel more natural to me... but different languages are partially the result of different ways of thinking about things so I guess I need to keep that in mind too.

[Zbigniew]

On 14/08/2017 at 8:15 PM, wickedllama said:

It makes sense to me apart from the 是 after 'I'm not sure' - is it there because you need it to introduce the thing you're not sure about, or is it something to do with translating 'should'? (I haven't really looked at using 'should' yet so I don't know).

 

Just in case the other replies have not clarified things for you, a layman's explanation would be that the 是 here signals the first of two alternatives in a question, i.e. 我们先走, whilst 还是 signals the second, i.e. 等他们一起 走. Another example, taken from the Oxford Chinese Dictionary (under the entry for 是, section B5), is 你是喝咖啡还是喝茶？"Would you like (to drink) coffee or tea?"

 

ETA: your second post above has only just become viewable, several hours after I responded in this post.

[lips]

I asked if the sentence was translated from English because the OP posted this

On 8/15/2017 at 3:15 AM, wickedllama said:

out, or is it something to do with translating 'should'?

If the sentence was originally from Chinese and the OP was trying to learn its meaning then the approach was wrong.  He/She seemed to be trying to translate back to Chinese from the English translation, and word-for-word as well (at least for the word "should").  In a translation often the meaning is rewritten in the target language, in this case English.  Meaning implied in the source sentence may be written out explicitly in the translation, as in this case.  So translating back word-for-word does not work.

 

In this case there's no Chinese equivalent of the word "should" or "would" in the original sentence.  It's just implied.