Sebastián Revilla - Linguistics (Palacio) – 2013

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WORD ORDER IN CHINESE LANGUAGE

Compared to languages like English, Chinese has little inflectional morphology. While

plurality is marked in English by means of the addition of the –s ending to the noun (book, books),

in a similar way that the verb form varies depending on the person and number of the subject-NP (I

eat an apple, He eats an apple), in Chinese there is no morphological agreement between parts of

speech. As a result, there is no such a thing as the past ending morpheme -ed as it occurs in English.

What is more, the very notion of word in Chinese is far from being clear. On the one hand, since

there are no morphological markers, there is no morphological distinction for the different parts of

speech. On the other hand, Chinese writing system requires no space between characters, a

phenomenon that may result problematic for speakers of languages likes English or Spanish.

Probably because of the lack of a rich morphological system, in Chinese language word

order is particularly important in defining different types of words and grammatical functions. To a

certain extent, English has the same difficulties, if we compare it with languages like Latin, in

which morphology allows the speakers to identify the role of participants in an utterance. Cases that

might result misleading in English are represented by utterances such as John likes Mary vs. Mary

likes John, in which the only way to clarify the roles of the participants is precisely word order.

However, in most cases it is not necessary the reference to the order, since pronouns avoid

confusions: John likes her vs. Mary likes him. In these cases, changing the word order would not

result in a change in meaning. In spite of the fact that a sentence like *Her John likes is

ungrammatical (although in some contexts a similar rendering could result acceptable for the sake

of emphasis), it is clear that it is John who likes Mary and not the other way around. However, in

Chinese language word order is fixed and it is determinant with regard to the identification of parts

of speech and to the interpretation of the meaning of an utterance.

(1)(a) 我喜欢他 (2)(a) I like him

wǒ xǐhuan tā 1ST like 3RD
1ST like 3RD
‘I like him/her’
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(b) 他喜欢我 (b) He likes me

tā xǐhuan wǒ 3RD likePERS 1ST
3RD like 1ST
‘He/she likes me’

In (1) it becomes clear that even with the use of pronouns the meaning of an utterance fully

depends on the position it occupies in the structure. Note that not only the accusative case is

unmarked in (1a) tā and (1b) wǒ. The verb xǐhuan remains in the infinitive form for both the first

person wǒ and the third person tā, because of the lack of agreement between the subject and the

verb.

A further example of the importance of word order in Chinese can be seen in (3):

(3)(a) 人来 了 (b) 来人了

rén lái le lái rénle
people/person comePART comePART people/person
‘The people/person came’ ‘People/[a] person came’

The difference between (3a) and (3b) is the difference expressed by the English counterparts The

people (who were being expected) came and (Some) people came. Chinese has no definite article, so

one way to show definiteness and indefiniteness is by changing the order of the words.

Additionally, in ordinary speech, linear word order is the only mechanism that allows the

identification of parts of speech or lexical categories. The main reason for this is, again, the lack of

a richer morphological system. Chinese, like English, is a SVO language. Thus, according to the

syntactic properties of nouns, it follows that they can occur before or after a verb.

(4)(a) 白马踢黑马 (b) 白马踢了黑马

bái mǎ tī hēi mǎ bái mǎ tī le hēi mǎ
white horse kick black horse white horse kick PF black horse
‘The white horse kicks the black horse’ ‘The white horse kicked the black
horse’

Since the particle le 了, when used as a suffix, can only occur after a verb —and therefore it cannot

occur after a noun—, it follows that tī 踢 is the verb, which serves as a two-place predicate. Its

arguments are bái mǎ 白马 and hēi mǎ 黑马. Since adjectives regularly occur in front of a noun, it
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follows that both bái and hēi are adjectives modifying their respective nouns. While in languages

like English the verb can normally be identified by means of its morphology (in the string The white

horse kicks the black horse the verb shows morphological agreement with the subject the white

horse), in Chinese such a thing is not possible (as it can be seen in the corresponding string bái mǎ

tī le hēi mǎ, where the verbs remains the same).

There are two other interesting phenomena related to the position of verbs, nouns and

adjectives. Firstly, some constructions might be misleading, partly because of the lack of

morphological case marking and partly because of the lack agreement between the subject and the

verb. Consider the following examples:

(5)(a) 我妈妈工作 (b) 我(的)妈妈工作

wǒ māmā gōngzuò wǒ(de) māmā gōngzuò
1ST mom work 1ST POSS mom work
‘My mom works’ ‘My mom’s work’

The usual manner to express ‘possession’ in Chinese is by adding the particle de 的 after the word

expressing the ‘possessor’. So in the case of the string wǒ(de) māmā gōngzuò, it becomes clear that

gōngzuò is a noun and that the meaning of the string is something like ‘My mother’s work’.

However, adding the particle de 的 is not always compulsory and, as a matter of fact, it is left out in

ordinary speech when the modified word refers to something animated. In this context, the string

wǒ māmā gōngzuò 我妈妈工作 could be equivalent both to ‘My mother’s work’ and to ‘My mother

works’, and even to ‘My mother is working’, since the progressive particle zài 在 is used only in

certain contexts.

Additionally, due to the rigid nature, Chinese does not allow the flexibility of structures like

that of English expressed in the example below:

(6)(a) My white book (b) The white book I bought at the bookstore
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In English, modifiers usually occur before the noun they affect, but when the modifier is too long, it

can be placed after the noun. However, that does not seem to occur in Chinese, as it can be seen in

the examples below:

(7)(a) 我的白书 (b) 我在书店买的白书

wǒ de bái shu wǒ zài shūdiàn mǎi de bái shū
1ST POSS book 1ST at bookstore buy POSS book
‘My white book’ ‘The book I bought at the bookstore’

Thus, in Chinese, the modifier always precedes the modified word —in this case the noun shū 书

(‘book’)—, no matter what kind of modifier it is and how long it is.

Finally, it seems that the fixed word order applies not only in sentences that are declarative

in FORCE but also in those that are interrogative. Thus, unlike English —where DO-support and

WH-movement are ordinarily necessary to form questions—, Chinese does not require, at least

suerficially, any modification apart from the addition of interrogative particles in the place that is

normally occupied for the constituent that is being questioned about:

(8)(a) 你说什么? (9)(a) You said what

nǐ shuō shénme? What did you say?
2ND say what
(b) 你说谁? (b) You said who
nǐ shuō shuí? Who did you say?
2ND say who
(c) (c) You have how much money
你们有多少钱?
How much money do you have?
nǐmen yǒu duōshǎo qián?
2ND NUMB have how much money

In the case of YES/NO questions, the most common way to form questions is by adding the

interrogative particle ma 吗 at the end of the sentence in its declarative form:

(10)(a) 你喜欢酒吗？ (11)(a) You like wine

nǐ xǐhuan jiǔ ma? Do you like wine?
2ND like wine QST