了 with tight v.o. compounds

[freefall]

According to Chinese Grammar without Tears：

我喝了酒了 means I drank beer, and

我喝酒了 means I'm drinking beer now (new situation emerges, no aspectual 了 after 喝 to indication that it's completed).

So according to this logic, 吃饭了 would mean something along the lines of "We're eating dinner now" or "Let's eat!". And it does. But yet there in another meaning that I hear all the time--吃饭了吗？ Have you eaten yet? In this usage the verb 吃 is definitely completed although not marked with the aspectual 了。

So, according to the logic from the grammar book, 吃饭了吗 would have to actually be 吃了饭了吗？ But no one says it this way. So does that mean there is a collocation difference between 吃饭 and 喝酒? I have noticed that there seem to be other very "tight" verb-object compounds that don't often have the aspectual 了 at the end of the verb. For example, when people want to say "he returned home yesterday" they say:

他昨天回家了 rather than 他昨天回了家了 (the latter seems too wordy or something).

Can anyone confirm my logic or give more details?

Besides the established 2-character v-o compound, there's also the 3-character v-o compound? What about these? For example, 看电影。 Would you say:

他昨天晚上看电影了 ？ okay?

or 他昨天晚上看了电影了。

[freefall]

Just thinking about this a bit more and wondering...

maybe the verbs in these 2 and 3 character compounds simply don't need an aspectual 了 to indicate their completion. This might be a particular feature of these compounds.

Other verbs that don't need 了 to show completion are verbs with complements like 听见，etc....

totally hypothesizing here

edit:

yeah... that seems to be it and it seems kind of obvious now! or am I just crazy? So we just have to learn that compounds like 喝酒 might require an additional le whereas 吃饭 doesn't

[trien27]

From your posting:

我喝了酒了 means I drank beer, and

我喝酒了

My take:

我喝了酒了 is meaningless [cast out one 了]

我喝了酒 means I drank beer

我 = I, or me

喝了 = drank

酒 = liquor

了 is used here as a past tense particle for the verb it describes

我喝酒 (qu*)了 = I will (go) get [some] liquor (beer, wine, etc...)

*qu = to go

[trien27]

他昨天晚上看电影了 ？ okay?

or 他昨天晚上看了电影了。

Neither makes sense.

It must either be:

他昨天晚上qu*看了电影

or

昨天晚上他看电影qu*了

*qu = to go

I don't have Chinese software, so I have to type in Pinyin