New Chinese Grammar: Yufa!

[Altair]

(I am not sure exactly where to post this, so please move this post if this location is inappropriate.)

I recently bought and have been working through a new Chinese grammar book called Yufa!, A Practical Guide to Mandarin Chinese Grammar by Wen-Hua Teng. This has now become my favorite reference grammar book, and I highly recommend it even perhaps above or in addition to Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar (Comprehensive Grammars) by Yip Po-Ching and Don Rimmington. If you follow my first link to amazon, you can click on Search inside this book to read a substantial number of passages.

Although the book is not perfect, it has a number of excellent features, at least for someone with an intermediate level of Chinese. It is reasonably comprehensive. The explanations are short, but clear, and are almost always accompanied by example sentences written in characters and pinyin and followed by an English translation. Each chapter ends with a page or so of exercises so that you can test your understanding. The answers are given at the end of the book.

For me, the best part of the book has been the fact that it deals with a bunch of thorny issues I have not seen treated adequately (or sometimes at all) elsewhere. This includes a number of grammatical topics I have seen discussed here recently: e.g., uses of 到. Let me quote a few passages.

...eleven types of question can be formed in Chinese

When 很多/不少 appears before a noun or noun phrase, 的 is not used even though each is disyllabic.

***

In casual speech, however, 的 is acceptable after 很多/不少.

Given the various functions of 的, it is not unusual to find several 的 in one sentence. In this case, one can omit some of them to make the speech flow more smoothly.

Some general rules for this type of omission are (i) 的 in a relative clause should not be omitted, (ii) 的 after a disyllabic adjective should not be omitted, (iii) 的 indicating possession can be omitted if necessary, and (iv) when more than one 的 is used to connect a series of nouns, the one that is closest to the beginning of the sentence is generally omitted first.

Frequently 吗 is used (instead of an affirmative-negative question) ... when the person asking the question expects the answer to be 'yes'.

(Situation: Seeing a friend getting out of a new car, you ask him if he has just bought a new car.)

你买新车了吗？　(An affirmative-negative question (你买　新车了没有？） would not be proper in this context since there is a strong indication that he did.

When to use 了 with 没有/吗

没有 can be used at the end of a question with or without 了 if the verb has an object or is a disyllabic word. When 吗 is used, 了 must always be used.

The negative form of 能/能够/可以 is 不能, not 不可以. 不可以 means "mustn't; to be forbidden".

Expressions such as 看见, 听见, 遇见 and 碰见 can be 看到, 听到, 遇到　and 碰到 respectively. However, when 到　specifically indicates "availability/presence", 看到, 听到, 遇到　and 碰到 must be used.

The aspect particle 过/了 (guo/le) follows the complement of result, not the verb. Also, 了 can be optional when the object follows the complement.

***

那三个小偷，　警察只抓住（了）两个，　还有一个跑走了。

[Friday]

Can this book be purchased in China?

[imron]

Amazon ships to China.

[Friday]

I mean, is this locally printed and locally available in China? Books printed in the US are usually 6 to 7 times the price of the same books printed in China, and shipping adds another $20 and a long wait.

[roddy]

No, it's not.

Thanks for the write-up, Altair! Friday appeared to forget to thank you