Knowra Chinese grammar Chinese grammar Chinese grammar is the system governing how words are formed and combined, and how grammatical meanings are expressed, across Chinese languages. It includes patterns such as word order, aspect marking, and the use of particles.
Chinese word order : The ordering of subjects, verbs, objects, modifiers, and other constituents in Chinese sentences. Subject–verb–object order is a basic pattern, while placement of modifiers and adverbials adds important structure.
Chinese word segmentation : The analysis of continuous Chinese writing into units treated as words. Chinese writing does not mark spaces between words, so grammatical analysis depends on identifying word boundaries.
Grammatical inflection : A change in a word's form that marks grammatical information such as tense, number, or case. Chinese generally relies less on changes to word forms than languages with rich inflection.
Mandarin Chinese : The largest Chinese language group, including the standard variety used in mainland China and Taiwan. Mandarin supplies many familiar examples of Chinese grammatical patterns, but does not represent every Chinese language.
Chinese particles : Short Chinese words that express grammatical or discourse functions, often without changing form. Particles mark functions such as aspect, sentence type, and discourse status that inflection marks in some languages.
Chinese morphology : The study of how words are formed from meaningful units in Chinese. Word formation is one part of the grammatical system, including compounding and affixation.
English grammar : The system of word formation and sentence structure in the English language. Comparing English and Chinese highlights differences in articles, inflection, classifiers, and word order.
Cantonese grammar : The grammatical system of Cantonese, a Yue Chinese language spoken in southern China and elsewhere. Cantonese shares broad grammatical features with Mandarin while differing in constructions and particle use.
Chinese aspect : The grammatical marking of how an event unfolds, such as whether it is completed or ongoing. Chinese commonly marks event aspect with particles rather than tense inflections on verbs.
Chinese compound words : Words formed by combining two or more meaningful elements in Chinese. Compounding is a major way Chinese builds vocabulary without extensive inflection.
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