The Billy Ocean Question

Talking to myself, I found something very interesting in baidu . Location with respect to the modified word seems to be key.

"副词通常用在动词、形容词前面。

如"就来、马上走、十分好、重新开始"，只有"很""极"可以用在动词、形容词后面做补语，如"高兴得很、喜欢极了"

So adverbs generally (通常) precede an adjective. Only "很" and "极" can follow the verb or the adjective they modify.

This confirms the above regarding the central role of 很. What we consider to be adverbs in English (or French etc.) become adjectives through the agency of 很. Put it another way: the reason 很 must be used in Chinese before an adjective following a verb is to prevent it from being an adverb in post-verb location. Only 很" and "极" have that privilege.

Yes, I think translating dictionaries tend to assign the grammatical category of the target language, not that of the starting language. In a case like this only Chinese-only sources are reliable:

"形容词和副词在语法功能上有相同之处,都可以做状语,不同的是副词只能做状语,形容词除了可以做状语以外,还可以做其他成分.像"忽然"是副词,只能做状语,如"天忽然刮起了大风";"突然"也能做状语,如"天突然刮起了大风",但"突然"还可以做定语:突然的事故,还可以做谓语并可以受程度副词修饰:事情很突然,所以,"突然"是形容词. "

Here it seems 突然 is regarded as an adjective because it is itself modified by the adverb 很. Same logic as in English. From the above however, "adverb" seems to be the more restrictive category, it only works as 状语. Thus any modifier that assumes more more than a 状语 function is considered a 形容词. The original rule of thumb that 很 always introduces a adjective holds. There remains to see however what one would consider "很突然" to be.

Could "很突然" (as opposed to 突然) still be an adverbial? That would make everyone - including me - happy.

I use Yellowbridge frequently, and as much I'd like your example to be correct, I'd have to say that Yellowbridge is not known for their accuracy. I have mailed in lots of corrections to them, and there are many other errors I just couldn't be bothered reporting. It seems they have copied most of their definitions directly from MDBG, and then filled in the gaps with what they believe to be the truth without checking with any authoritative dictionary.

Have a look at the 突然 entry in the yellowbridge Chinese dictionary. Part of speech = adverb.

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&characterMode=t&dialect=M&word=19669

The 的-point you make is not only a good one, it is an essential one. And of course the dog's breakfast Chinese people nowadays (and students like myself by the same token) make of 的/得/地 doesn't help.

One suggestion to CP would be that these tricky grammar points be broached from time to time in advanced-level podcasts. Having to absorb some mandarin grammar terminology is something advanced-level students should be able to live with. I can.

I don't think one can look at it as "突然" modifying "他". It's definitely his coming that is sudden, not he himself.

We can see it as the "得" transforming the action into a noun, but I don't think that holds up to scrutiny, because we already have "的" for that. "他说的对" gets more hits than "他说得对", though both are extremely commonly used. I want to make the distinction here that the former means "what he said was correct" and the latter "he said it correctly", but I don't think the practical usage agrees with me here; they seem to be used interchangeably. Interestingly, "说的好" is vastly more common than "说得好". There's another opportunity for nerdy grammar analysis.

I think that if it really is an adjective, then it must be modifying an unstated "way". And Go_manly has pointed at a good reason for treating it this way. There seems to be a clear difference between words that can be used with "地" and words that can be used with "得". "漂亮地" is uncommon enough to be considered "incorrect", whereas "得很漂亮" is extremely common. "忽然地" is very common, but "得很忽然" very uncommon. This seems like an important distinction in Mandarin grammar and the theory should reflect this.

Good discussion!

I've been thinking alon the same lines. What is the role played by 得 in mandarin? 来 is a verb, but maybe 来得 isn't any more. Maybe we can assume that 得 transforms the verb into a nominal group. This nominal group is what the disputed adjective modifies. In the following examples the verb "to be", though omitted in mandarin, is added for clarity.

他来得很突然

[他来得] was [很突然]

[His arrival] was [sudden]

他说得对

[他说得] was [对]

[What he said] was [correct]

Things are made difficult in mandarin by the dropping of "to be".

Note that deriving the verb in this way from the noun is also possible in English if you write:

His *arriving* was sudden

His *saying* was correct

The -ing form could be regarde as equivalent to the -得 form in mandarin.

After a little more thinking, perhaps I am convinced. Perhaps 他来得 is what is being modified by the adjective. 'His method of coming' = 'very sudden'.

What is bringing me around is the sentence 他今天穿得很漂亮。漂亮 is definitely an adjective - I don't think it can be used with 地 to form an adverb - correct me if I'm wrong there. Would I be correct in saying that all words which are classified as adjectives only can be used in this construction, but not with 地 ?

I actually would prefer to believe the grammar experts. But if I am to take on board what to me seems less logical, I have to see a good reason for doing so. If I were to continue seeing 突然 and other words in this position as adverbs, am I going to run into difficulties which can only be solved by instead considering them to be adjectives?

Having said that, your explanation makes a lot more sense than anything else so far.

Simon I'm sure you're much more proficient than I am in Mandarin. So if you refuse to see that 突然 as an Adjective and that's working fine for you, I feel no need to convince you otherwise, especially as I don't believe in proof(!). You see, I have no problem at all with it as an Adjective. That makes sense to me. I don't require proof.

So everything you do accept about Mandarin grammar has proof? What kind?

My problem is basically this: where's the evidence? I don't believe in things because people tell me so (even if it's Jiaojie); I need proof. When someone says that the 突然 in 他来得很突然 is an adjective, I want a "because" tacked on there. What makes you (or anyone) say it's an adjective? How did you come to that conclusion? How do you know there's an unstated noun in there? It's like the separable verbs thing all over again: John said there are advantages to looking at them as single words, but then I never throughout the discussion saw anyone mention any of those advantages.

It's quite obvious to me that the most straightforward way of looking at it is as an adverb. There's no immediately visible verb that it can be modifying, so it seems logical to conclude it modifies the verb. This might not be correct, but it seems funny to say it's an adjective modifying an unstated noun just because. What's the reasoning behind the claim?

Hmm I wouldn't conclude that Mandarin linguistics is broken, but as Simon has already said above, it's not--and I'm not being sarcastic--of paramount importance to understand this point, especially if you're attempting to understand it in terms of the rules and conventions of English. I do think you have no choice but to accept that that particular 突然 is an Adjective, if only because Jiaojie tells us so. Mandarin is not a Chinese-language version of English and we can't force it to work that way.

My wording above was misleading I guess, but I didn't mean to say that there actually is the omitted noun always there. The way of looking at V+得~ complements Changye talked about I think is being interpretive enough to allow ourselves to let that 突然 register as an Adjective. Maybe to some people that requires a little suspension of faith. It's abstract, but pretty simple I think.

Again though, I'd say it's best to step away from the "Adj = 形容词 and Adv = 副词" thinking, which is counter-helpful.

If you find the 突然 in 他来得很突然 as Adj difficult to understand, it's perhaps one of those things you just have to memorize. Maybe to you it's an idiosyncrasy, one of several "weird" points about Mandarin that you note and remember. To me, it's easy because I'm simple-minded and find it very easy to accept something Jiaojie tells me about Chinese grammar.

日日日。。丰斯的幸福的日子

Also notice that the "de" in "他来的方法很突然" and "他来得很突然" is different. This is not what you'd expect if there was a question of an omitted "方法" or some other noun. From where I'm standing, it looks like "的" is followed by an adjective and "得" by an adverb. The alternative explanation is that "的" changes into "得" to mark an omitted noun, which seems unnecessarily complex to me.

However, there's a possible advantage to the "invisible noun" explanation, which is that it might make more sense when talking about complements. That is, I can see how it can be used to explain that "洗得干净" is a shortening of "洗的结果干净". Any thoughts on that?

Yes, I'm wr..wr..wr.. misguided about 'very'. It modifies the verb, not the adverb/adjective.

But I still don't understand the main part of the issue. Yes, we do omit words regularly, but aren't these words always clear from the context?

I still don't understand the nature of the missing noun in these sentences. If this noun is always missing, how do grammar experts determine that one is being referred to? Its like the antireligious slogan: "The invisible and the non-existent look exactly the same".

I assume there must be a good reason why people would talk about modifying a non-existent noun instead of a clearly visible verb. For the life of me, I can't see the reason.

Hi Bob, Changye's explanation that Simon refers to not only makes logical sense, there is nothing mystical about it. Why the reference to "invisible" nouns? We have "omitted" or "unmentioned" words in sentences and structures all the time. We don't think of those as "invisible" or "mystical" do we?

-得很突然 only gets rendered in an English translation as "suddenly" because it's the translator's job to write good English. That doesn't make 突然 "suddenly" or an adverb. And anyway it's good to be reminded, as JohnB points out, not to think that Adj = 形容词 and Adv = 副词. Chinese will only remain confusing if we try to think that way.

In the English grammar I learned, "very" is never an Adjective. I learned that Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives. "Very" never modifies nouns.

My feeling is that all three are similar to 忽然, though 猛然 also seems to carry with it a sense of sudden movement (hence the 猛). 骤然 and 猝然 are both more or less the same as 忽然, but aren't commonly used and carry with them something of a literary feeling.

also there is 竟然 which has that unexpected element but not necessarily a sudden element

Sorry mate. I can't really help. I know what you mean by your subjective/objective theory above, but having looked at other examples I don't think it really holds up [ though you may be onto something]. For example from the glossary I linked to:

他忽然感到左腿钻心般地痛。

...I think this would have an element of unexpectedness.

I guess I'm personally more inclined to just go with using 突然 based on having heard it more commonly, and based on the above explanation that it's more versatile grammatically and thus it seems safer to use. It's good to know 忽然 so as to comprehend it when encountered. I think it would be ok to use as an adverb though I guess. Apart from the above grammatical explanation I don't know how beneficial it will be to try and elucidate any other subtle differences [if there are any] for me at this level. I guess many words are just going to be synonyms without major differences. But if there is some significant difference someone can explain then I too would be very interested to know. Thinking about English I guess virtually all synonyms to me do convey subtly different shades of meaning and so I guess it is going to be similar in Chinese. I just feel I'm a very long way off being able to have that level of appreciation. But hopefully the vibe will come with long term exposure. Good on you though mate for getting into it now and striving for every nuance. Now you've raised it I will be very happy if the mystery is solved.

I had a look, but I'm struggling to take something from them. Can you see the difference?

I'm not sure if these examples may help:

http://chinesepod.com/tools/glossary/entry/%E7%AA%81%E7%84%B6

http://chinesepod.com/tools/glossary/entry/%E5%BF%BD%E7%84%B6

Hehe, exactly. I learned almost everything I know about English grammar in the course of learning Chinese, and I've more or less ignored anything that didn't fit. I'm not a prescriptivist, so for me grammar is just a rough outline of how the language goes together, rather than something that needs to be studied and understood.

The V+得 was explained to me way back when with this really unrolled format: "He verbed. How did he verb? He verbed like the compliment." I've found very very few V+得 sentences that couldn't be unrolled into something relatively coherent using that pattern (maybe none, I haven't really kept track). It's one of those things where I think wrestling with the grammar (especially in English) ends up taking time away from actually learning to use the construction.

As someone who really never understood English grammar I feel that I have a comparative advantage with Chinese. Only in this respect you understand. :)

I have also learnt that when a Chinese person says 'I really like grammar' this is not going to help me much at all, unless they explain the point in Chinese.

Right, 他来得很突然 == "The way he came was hurried." Crappy in terms of translation quality, but it gets to the heart of the meaning.

There's a real danger in trying to understand a language via its translation into another, especially two as different as English and Chinese. You have to remember, 突然 is *not* and adjective, it's a 形容词, and 忽然 is *not* an adverb, it's a 副词. Adjective/adverb and 形容词/副词 line up pretty well, but not perfectly, so you're going to have 形容词 doing things that adjectives don't, etc.

Though the entry barrier is relatively high, approaching Chinese in Chinese makes everything a lot easier to manage.

Changye enlightened me on this topic a few weeks ago. Apparently it's an adjective, modifying an unstated "way". Like "The way he comes is very sudden". It's completely ridiculous, since the "way" is never stated, meaning we've got an adjective modifying something that only exists in theory.

Together with the whole "separable verbs" thing (not to speak of "stative verbs"), the only logical conclusion to draw is that Mandarin linguistics is broken. Don't try to understand it. It's an attempt to apply Western linguistic terms to a language that doesn't remotely work in the same way and the result is logical acrobatics like this.

很+adjective， 他来得很突然， here 突然 is an adjective, 很 is an adverb.

Adverb+Verb, 他突然就来了，here 突然 is an adverb. You can aslo say: 他忽然就来了。

OK, but in your example 他来得很突然 surely 突然 is an adverb, not an adjective. It is modifying the verb 来, and is not modifying a noun. Furthermore, shouldn't any word that is translated ****-ly be an adverb?

Ooops, Jiaojie beat me to the punch :)

Hey go_manly, sorry, we have to sleep, too. :) You posted at somewhere around 8pm in the evening on Thursday for us, and we're just getting into work on Friday morning.

Anyway, perhaps this will clear things up for you: http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/28164841

Executive summary: 突然 is an adjective, and can be used in a variety of grammatical roles. 忽然 is an adverb, and can only function as an adverb.

突然 is an adjective and 忽然 is an adverb, you can say: 他来得很突然, but not 他来得很忽然。

Both of 突然and 忽然 can mean "suddenly". But 突然 is more widely used. And it has more uses than忽然.

1.As Predicate.

We can say 这个事情很突然,but cannot say这个事情很忽然。

2.As Complement

We can say 他问得太突然了。But cannot say他问得太忽然了。

我曾经认为爱情是徒然的

。。【亚达亚达】。。

。。突然你在爱情

呵呵，不好意思，然而当然这就是我自然，然则虽然我知道我应该抵制突然我无法

According to one of my synonym dictionaries, “突然” is more "sudden" than “忽然”.

I bow before the master punsmith. Truly a pun for the ages.

RE: topic, 突然 is a bit more commonly used in conversations. 忽然 feels a bit more bookish to me. If they were English, 突然 would probably have a Germanic root and 忽然 a Latin one.