Sane (=not tortured by Indo-European notions) grammar of Chinese?

[werewitt]

Does anyone know if something like this exists? I asked a few professional Chinese teachers and they said the Chinese didn't bother with general principles in the past, memorising patterns instead. My understanding is that only modern grammars of Chinese exist and they are pretty much based on the Indo-European principles (which can eventually be traced to the Romans' study of Ancient Greek).

 

The reason I'm asking is that I've been dabbling into said "grammars" a bit (just a little bit!) and do am suspecting they are nonsensical exactly because they are trying to explain a Sino-Tibetan language in Indo-European terms. E.g.:

Quote

"地 must be used after the adverbial modifier composed of an adjective which is converted from a verb" (A practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners, rev.ed., p.53)

That is one word functioning in THREE grammatical categories!!!

 

So the question is - do you know of any grammar that doesn't try to fit Chinese into a procrustean bed of, essentially, Ancient Greek? I'm totally ok if it categorises words in "blue" "round" and "sharp" instead of "adverb" etc, if it doesn't end up magically juggling these categories. I'm particularly annoyed by this switcheroo because in my native language (Russian) words normally stay in their parts of speech (or so I think  ). I understand it's a little less pain for native English speakers because parts of speech are not very rigid in English either.

 

Or does such a Chinese grammar not really exist and it's all about patterns?  

 

EDIT: It appears my enterprise is a futile one.

Quote

Chinese didn’t develop grammar until China’s contact with Western grammar books in the 19th Century. The first indigenous grammar was published in 1889. It included some traditional notions, but mainly imitated European grammar. It was followed by a number of other similar works. To move away from this imitation, a group of grammarians started to look into the Chinese tradition of commenting on classics. This led to a variety of alternative grammars. After the war, Western linguistics started to gain influence in China. With the establishment of the PRC in 1949, efforts began to have a standard grammar adopted nationwide. 

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662465035 

 

Patterns, patterns and more patterns and screw "grammar"!

[Shelley]

I agree, this is one area of learning Chinese that I feel could be done through patterns and learning "that's just how it is"

 

The problem I find is that having learnt my mother tongue without any textbooks, grammars etc and not taking any in depth classes about it at school, I can't name the parts of speech in English never mind doing it in Chinese. I know the basic ones verb, adverb, adjective and a couple of others, but a book that describes the language you are learning in words you don't use is not much help.

 

I have been resistant to learning English grammar as it feels like a side track to learning Chinese. and as you say squeezing Chinese into English grammar is confusing.

So I continue with my strategy of learning patterns and trying to manipulate these patterns to say what I want.

 

HelloChinese has a sentence building part that gives some words either in characters or pinyin and you have arrange them in the correct order, it tells you if you get it right and shows you when you get it wrong but doesn't explain why (unless you go into the grammar section) but I find this helpful because I just get know this is right, this is wrong without having to necessarily know why. The why is supplied if you want find out, but I rarely do. After several variations of a pattern I often have a light bulb moment and realise aha this goes with this but not this and only if this and so on.

 

I think this is a more effective way of learning for me. So yes patterns patterns and more.

 

[werewitt]

My question was a rather general one - whether such a grammar exists. I feel it would help me organise Chinese stuff in my head, which is currently suffering from a post-elementary explosion.

 

Not really looking for an advice how to study Chinese, other than how to get over this feeling of getting a bit lost in a vast unsystematic (?) mass of the language. 

[Shelley]

Sorry, I was just agreeing with you and putting forward the idea to dispense with grammar books, You can ignore my post, I felt sharing might encourage you to carry on as you put it with-

3 hours ago, werewitt said:

Patterns, patterns and more patterns and screw "grammar"!

 

[realmayo]

4 hours ago, werewitt said:

I feel it would help me organise Chinese stuff in my head

 

7 hours ago, werewitt said:

am suspecting they are nonsensical exactly because they are trying to explain a Sino-Tibetan language in Indo-European terms

 

I can't help wondering whether, following your logic, any such hypothetical grammar written about a Sino-Tibetan language on its own terms would actually be incomprehensible to someone who is not already fluent in a Sino-Tibetan language.

[LiMo]

@realmayo

Haha, that might well be the case, thus flipping the script on those of us whose languages so often take centre stage. 

[陳德聰]

Mm... I think you're struggling with a different issue than you may think you are.

 

The quote you posted about 地 seems perfectly reasonable to me because "adverb", "adjective" and "verb" are just English names for things based on what they do in the sentence. Western "grammar" often tries to impose itself onto languages without noticing where there are problems, but if you find a descriptive one, I don't see how that has anything to do with Ancient Greek.

 

The struggle here seems to be your personal attachment to what you thought were concrete word classes, but as you've noticed, very few languages do not exhibit some level of fluidity between different classes.

 

Also picking up on where you say "unsystematic (?)": this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works. It is systematic, you just haven't learned the system yet.

[querido]

I need to condense this post in the extreme, sorry.

 

A very old position was that "Chinese has no grammar".

A newer and maybe more helpful restatement of that was, "It is often said that all Chinese grammar is syntax, all Chinese syntax is word order, and therefore all Chinese grammar is word order." (Chao 1968, often quoted)

Examining that "Chinese syntax", Yong Ho, in Aspects of Discourse Structure in Mandarin Chinese (his doctoral thesis, 1993), argued (and with no qualifications to do so I will try to paraphrase):  

 

It is possible to invent a rule unnecessarily (and in his view this has been done too much, quoting S. Kuno 1976).

In Mandarin Chinese especially, it is possible to avoid doing that by looking at larger structures, discourse structures.

He says: "This study of discourse structure in Chinese is such an attempt to explore non-syntactic factors that control or rather motivate syntactic processes by using a functional approach with a view to finding pragmatic and semantic explanations".

 

To me, that quote is another way of saying, is supportive of, what Shelley said, that "this is one area of learning Chinese that I feel could be done through patterns and learning "that's just how it is". Now I'm just adding that the explantion for "how it is" is often found in structures larger than sentences. [And incidentally, that's an extension of critical things I said about single word flashcards, in posts addressed to werewitt, I think, some weeks ago.]

 

A very thin and precious intro to Yong Ho's approach (relevant to this thread) can be read here, from the second paragraph of page iv through page vi (page v is where he quotes Chao):

https://books.google.com/books?id=-TzRxr23ROEC&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=yong+ho+Although+Chinese+shares+these+characteristics+with+other&source=bl&ots=cJVYKjWW5B&sig=hq5KFEvB3J_KS3DmukuNd6Rbvp0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji1KKUmv_TAhVM5iYKHbD6AP4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=yong ho Although Chinese shares these characteristics with other&f=false

 

[werewitt]

11 hours ago, Shelley said:

Sorry, I was just agreeing with you and putting forward the idea to dispense with grammar books,

Sorry, but after reading your own admission that you've been "studying" over 10 years and barely are at intermediate level I started taking your advice, at best, as an advice on how not to study.

 

4 hours ago, querido said:

I need to condense this post in the extreme, sorry.

Not sure whose point, you seem to agree with mine re patterns  

[querido]

If you're going to be mean to Shelley, don't talk to me.

[werewitt]

11 hours ago, realmayo said:

I can't help wondering whether, following your logic, any such hypothetical grammar written about a Sino-Tibetan language on its own terms would actually be incomprehensible to someone who is not already fluent in a Sino-Tibetan language.

I have mild Whorfian tendencies myself, although only mild ones, thus I wouldn't go that far

[werewitt]

5 hours ago, querido said:

If you're going to be mean to Shelley, don't talk to me.

Oh well, Whorf in action. Me and my blunt Russian vs English with its political correctness plus whatever it is in Chinese.

 

PS. I didn't realise this forum is predominantly a social club: providing encouragement for newbies, sense of superiority for natives and advanced learners, coupled with regrets about "what I could do differently" by all. It cannot provide (and there are none to provide, to begin with) any useful advice on study methods specific to Chinese, beyond 好好学习天天向上, occasionally a recommendation of an obscure book, and basics for newbs. Maybe a bit of reddit-type QA. My mistake

[Ruky]

Stop being an As@hole  and use the search function.  Many useful study ideas have been posted. 

[werewitt]

24 minutes ago, Ruky said:

Many useful study ideas have been posted. 

 

All of them boil down to personal tricks on memorisation and (simulated maybe) immersion.

 

In other news, I found a potentially palatable grammar (despite it being in Wade-Giles), given an obscure hint above.

[Ruky]

I think Imron has posted some good tips.  I think at the end of the day you have to do activities that you enjoy and match where you are.  People can say to go through this resource and maybe it works for you or it doesn't.  For example,  a lot of people recommend shadowing and recording yourself to improve pronounciation.  I'm sure it's helpful but I find it boring, I don't like hearing myself, so I don't bother to do that.  

 

 Have you looked at "A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners"? I don't know if it's palatable, but it is a parallel Chinese/English text so you can atleast work on your reading.  

[stapler]

About 地 I don't see what the problem is using phrases like like adverb, adjective, verb, etc. They describe the function of 地 quite well.

 

Adding a 地 after an adjective turns it into an adverb that describes the following verb.

 

Perhaps where you are getting confused is with the final part of the description in the book. Yes, almost all Chinese adjectives are actually verbs. But they are a particular kind of verb called a stative verb. That is, the sense of "to be" is built into it. The 地 particle transforms these stative verbs into adverbs. 

[werewitt]

35 minutes ago, Ruky said:

Have you looked at "A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners"?

Guess what, this is exactly the book I quoted in the post!

[陳德聰]

It just sounds like you're too edgy for your own good, to be honest. Despite how useless the forum is to you, you found Chao's grammar, congratulations.

 

I guess I'm glad learning Chinese is a humbling experience.

[imron]

3 hours ago, Ruky said:

I'm sure it's helpful but I find it boring, I don't like hearing myself, so I don't bother to do that.  

It is boring and it's a bother, but it's really one of the best ways to improve your speaking.  It's painful to hear yourself speaking and making mistakes, but if you don't do it you'll never notice all the little mistakes you're making.  The trick is to keep doing it until you *do* like hearing yourself speaking.

 

3 hours ago, Ruky said:

I think Imron has posted some good tips.

Trust me on this, it works.

[Lumbering Ox]

43 minutes ago, imron said:

The trick is to keep doing it until you *do* like hearing yourself speaking.

 

I have been speaking English for almost 50 years and I absolutely hate to hear myself speak. Oh course that has nothing to do with grammar or pronunciation.

I know I should take advantage of recording myself but <shudder> it's about as painful as having pictures taken.