Intermediate - Sentence Grammar

Right-Wingnut

John: Hey Intermediate learners, this is ChinesePod, I'm John.

Dilu: 大家好，我是Dilu。

John: And we have a fun lesson today chock full of grammar.

Dilu: ［啊哟hou天哪］

John: So let me warn you, if you're not into grammar, run now and just turn off this podcast.

Dilu: 对。如果你不是很care grammar的话，这一课呢will kill you。

John: We're going to talk about parts of speech, we're going to talk about sentence elements. Its all coming up in this dialog.

Dilu: 好。我们先来听一下对话。

Right-Wingnut

Dialog

Right-Wingnut

Dialog

Right-Wingnut

John: Right off the bat, its a student's question for a teacher about what word?

Dilu: 管理。管理。

John: So if we translate that into English, it could be 'manage', a verb, and it could be 'management' which is a noun.

Dilu: 那在中文里面也是一样的。管理可以做动词，也可以做名词。

John: So it can be a verb. So when you say a word can be a verb, we use ...

Dilu: 做。做动词。做名词。

John: You know 做 can mean 'to make', 'to do', it can also sometimes mean 'to be'.

Right-Wingnut

2:02

Dilu: 是的。

John: One quick question that we didn't hit. 管理 - what are the tones?

Dilu: 两个第三声。但是会有一个tone change。变成第二声和第三声。

John: 管理.

Dilu: 对。那怎么区别呢。

John: 区别, 1st tone, 2nd tone - that's a verb which means 'to distinguish', 'to tell the difference'.

Dilu: 没错。区别，第一声和第二声。但是这个字呢也可以做名词。

John: So the word 区别 can be a verb or a noun. So if you wanted to ask 'what's the difference', that's a very useful to ask your teacher, you can say ...

Right-Wingnut

2:37

Dilu: 那有什么区别？有什么区别？

John: And how do you tell the difference?

Dilu: 怎么区别？怎么区别？

John: Both useful questions. So 怎么区别呢？

Dilu: 要看它做什么句子成分。做什么句子成分。

John: In the beginning we had 要看 - 'you have to look at'.

Right-Wingnut

Dilu: You need to look at.

John: We could also translate that as 'it depends on'.

Dilu: 对。

John: Right?

Dilu: 要看它做什么句子成分。

John: So it depends on what sentence element it is.

Dilu: 句子成分。句子成分。

John: So the word for sentence is ...

Dilu: 句子。句子。第四声和轻声。

John: 4th tone and neutral. And 'element' or 'component part'?

Dilu: 成分。成分。

John: 2nd tone and 4th tone.

Dilu: 是的。

Right-Wingnut

John: We're about to get into the sentence elements a little bit, but let me just say real quickly that these are separate from parts of speech. Its a parallel classification. It has its own usage. In the next sentence we hear three of the big ones. What are they?

Dilu: 谓语，主语和宾语。

John: 谓语 - that's 4th tone, 3rd tone - and that is 'predicate'.

Dilu: 第二个是主语。

John: 主语 is 3rd-3rd, and that means subject.

Right-Wingnut

Dilu: 对。那最后一个是：宾语。宾语。

John: 1st tone and 3rd tone, and that is object.

Dilu: 对。三个很重要的句子成分。谓语，主语，宾语。

John: We're not going to go into too much about what these are. You can look them up in the dictionary, but they're useful to know if you really want to talk about grammar.

Dilu: 是的。

John: Now one other thing to mention here - we have this word 或者.

Dilu: 或者。第四声和第三声。

John: That means 'or', frequently used in statements, not when you're asking 'do you want this or this', but when you're telling 'it can be this or this'.

Right-Wingnut

4:34

Dilu: 对。做主语或者宾语的时候，这个词是名词。

John: So when the word 管理 is either the subject or the object, its a noun. Then the student asks for an example.

Dilu: 可以举个例子吗？可以举个例子吗？

John: The word 举, ju, is 3rd tone.

Dilu: 对。第三声。

John: And it literally means 'to raise', right?