在

[vengaya]

Hi,

this is my first post here, so first of all, congratulations for this site.

I'm afraid my Chinese's not too advanced so forgive me if my questions are not too impressive...

Here we go:

(1) 他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈住在一起

(2) 他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈一起住

From my understanding, those sentences are equivalent, so I'm having trouble to understand what's that 在 doing there. Especially since:

(3). 他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈一起住在

seem's to be incorrect. So...

What's that 在 in (1)_?? .... I mean, this doesn't look like the 在 indicating continuation of an action. (他跟爸妈在一起住 seems to have a different meaning)

Why should we not put 在 in (3)?

Thanks!

[xiaocai]

"在" is a preposition here and it can be ignored in both sentences in this example so you can also say:

他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈住一起, or

他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈在一起住

In Chinese the preposition usually is with adverbial modifier or the complement but not the verb.

However, there are always exemptions.

[Lu]

Xiaocai, your sentences don't sound very right to me. The first one would be acceptable in spoken Chinese I guess, but the second one doesn't feel right.

[笨笨德]

在一起 has the implication that something is together, in positional or time sense.

whereas 一起 just means they are together in a more abstract sense.

think of it in english... "Are they together?" we can mean they are in the same place, or we can mean they have a relationship. It's a little similar to this.

(3) is incorrect because the prepostition 在 here follows a verb (住) so a time word or location word should follow to act as the object.

加油

[xiaocai]

Lu, I'm not very sure my example is alright as well. I just speak in that way as it seems that the sentence is "grammatically" ok to me according to my understanding of mandarin.

So could someone else give their comments on this? Thank you in advance.

[binbintriangel]

in chinese, "住在" need a word represent somewhere to follow, or a complement which decribe or emphsis "live" state to follow.

"住在家里"，"住在上海", "住在一起"。。。etc. It is like "live in" in english

only "住" is just a verb describe an action.

you can just think "住" as "live" in both terms of Vi and Vt in enlgish

(3) is incorrect because it is not finished, you can say (3). 他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈一起住在家里/上海/北京。

but setence 2 is much more better for our habit.

[vengaya]

Thanks!

I think now I'm quite clear about why

(3) 他的哥哥已经结婚了，没有跟爸妈一起住在

is not correct.

Nevertheless I am still not so clear about the 在 in 住在一起.

I mean, the usage of 在 in 住在家里 as a preposition seems quite logical, since indeed 家 is a place where you can be in. But, 住在一起? Perhaps my mistake is trying to translate this literally: "Live in together"... that does not make so much sense, does it?