General Sentence Structure

[js6426]

In class the other day our teacher was talking about 在 being used as either a 副词 or 介词.  The examples he used were 我在教室 and 我在上课.  He then gave us a bit of simple sentence structure to determine whether 在 is functioning as a 副词或者介词.  After this he said it's really important for us to learn the names of the various parts of speech, because if we do that then we can get used to the general sentence structures that appear in Chinese, and when we discover new words, we can check what type of word it is, and generally know how to use it in a sentence.  For some reason I had never even thought of this before, but it sounds like it can make life a whole lot easier!  The only problem is, we haven't done much more than the simplest of sentence structures, and we will cover more as time goes on.  So I am starting this thread to ask if anyone knows of an existing thread/website where there is a good comprehensive overview of some general sentence structures, covering the major parts of speech.  If not, would anyone care to add any？ I had a look on the grammar wiki but couldn't find anything relating to general sentence structure.  Perhaps this is simply too general and changing to make a list, if so then no problem, I just thought I would ask in case!

[edelweis]

The MOOC "intermediate chinese grammar" comes to mind.

I think the first video has an example of a full sentence with all kinds of complements.

What may be lacking is words articulating clauses to build even more complex sentences (or maybe they are in there somewhere, I'm not sure I watched it entirely).

Anyway, a decent grammar book should explain sentence structure.

 

There's also the book "330 Chinese patterns", it explains the use of a bunch of structures such as 之所以...是因为 and many others (well, 330 of them). One issue with this book is that the example sentences often have advanced vocabulary and chengyus, so it's not so easy to study systematically. But it can serve as a reference book by looking at the TOC when you encounter a sentence structure in the wild. Th interesting thing about this book is that it shows how some common words can be used in slightly different manners (contrast the above with 因为...所以) and combined with other common words to build sentence structures.

[js6426]

Excellent, I will give those a look.  Thanks Edelweis!

[somethingfunny]

I'd try and find someone that you know is knowledgeable about grammar and skilled at explaining things and have them run through all the parts of a sentence.  This will start with 主语 - 谓语 - 宾语 and then start adding in all the other bits like 状语 and 补语.  I've forgotten the precise meanings of most of these things now, but I remember that although learning them was very hard, it really did wonders for my language learning (learning should be done entirely done in Chinese).

 

While I agree with your teacher, I'd say the real value in this is that it will allow you to talk (in Chinese) on a much deeper level about what you are learning.  Obviously, having a teacher who only speaks in Chinese is great, but if they're using very simple language all the time then your level doesn't really benefit from this.  Telling you that "I like football" is a valid English sentence isn't that advanced.  However, telling you that "I" is the subject and "football" is the object and "like" is the verb, and having you understand is much better.

 

I know this comes up in textbooks, but I had a teacher go through it from notes they'd made themselves.  I've got it written down somewhere... if I can find it.

[js6426]

Thanks man, I will ask my teacher for help with this! And if you do happen to find your notes, a photo would be amazing!