Noun Phrases in Chinese and English

Sources:Chan, Alice Y.W. (2004). Noun Phrases in Chinese and English: A Study of English Structural Problems Encountered by Chinese ESL Students in Hong Kong. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 17(1), 33-47Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese - A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Swan, Michael (2005). Practical English Usage, Third Edition. Oxford University PressHung T.N. (2005). Understanding English Grammar – A Course Book for Chinese Learners of English. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

1. Personal, Possessive, Plural Pronouns

Personal For 3rd person, spoken Chinese does not distinguish

ta, but written Chinese does. English has different forms (He, she, it etc.)

Possessive Chinese adds de (ta de) English has different forms (my, mine, his, hers, its)

Plural Chinese adds men English has different forms (we, us, you, they,

them)

Plural possessiveChinese adds both men and deEnglish again has forms (theirs, ours, yours)

Chinese pronouns are used more sparingly than their English counterparts – they are normally omitted if their referents are contextually clear.

When two consecutive clauses have the same subject, the pronoun in either the second clause or the first clause is often omitted.Xiao Ming yi hui jia, jiu hui shui jiao.

The explicit presence of a pronoun, especially the third person pronoun, in the second clause, may invite the interpretation that more than one participant is involved.

Xiao Ming yi hui jia, ta jiu hui shui jiao.After Xiao Ming got home, he (Xiao Ming or

someone else) went to sleep.

The English equivalent of such a sentence, however, requires an explicit pronoun to be the subject of the respective clause if the clause is finite.

After Xiao Ming got home, he went to sleep.

When used as an object, the Chinese third person singular or plural pronoun is used even more rarely. It is only normally used when a person is referred to. However, when an animal is referred to, it may be included or omitted; when the reference is inanimate, it is often omitted. Zhe ben shu hen nan dong, dan shi wo hen xi huan. Zhe zhi gou hen tiao pi, dan shi wo hen ai (ta).

The English requires the pronoun. This book is difficult to read, but I like it just the

same. - or - This book is difficult to read it, but I still like it. This dog is quite disobedient, but I like him just the

same.

2. Number

Both English and Chinese nouns are divided into countable (count) and uncountable (mass) nouns. English countable nouns are made plural by adding

a pluralizer. English uncountable nouns do not change when

they become plural unless they refer to different kinds, or to units that are obvious in the situation, e.g. cheese, cheeses,

Just as with pronouns, Chinese adds men, however not in all cases. It is only suffixed to pronouns and nouns denoting human beings to give definite reference, e.g. wo women.

With common plural nouns, especially when plurality is indicated by the presence of other plural indicators such as zhe xie (these), suo you (all), or quan bu (whole class), the plural marker is often optional. qing gao su quan bu tong xue (men) ming

tian bu yong shang ke. When number is clearly indicated by the

presence of numerals, the marker is not used at all. you san wei tong xue zai ke shi li chang ge.

Non-human nouns, be they animate or inanimate, do not take men to mark plurality. *kuai ba dian nao men na zou.

3. Case

English nouns have a common case and a genitive case.

English pronouns, on the other hand, are distinguished by the subjective case (e.g. I, we, he) and the objective case (e.g. me, us, him).

Chinese has both the common and genitive case but does not contain subjective or objective case.

In many languages, including English and Chinese, there exists an intimate relationship between the case of pronouns and word order, in such a way that the case relationship ‘subject of’ is usually signalled by preverbal position, while the relationship ‘direct object of’ tends to follow the verb.

Thus, the following pairs of sentences with the same constituents but different word orders (hence different cases for the pronouns) are different in meaning. ta men yao na xie gou. They bite those dogs na xie gou yao ta men. Those dogs bite them.

4. Noun Phrases (NP)

The only obligatory element of a noun phrase is the head noun

English: (determiner) (pre-modifier) head (post-modifier)

Chinese: (determiner=numeral) (associative phrase) (classifier) (pre-modifier) head

4.1 Determiners• English

– Articles: a, an, the

– Demonstratives: this, that, these, those

– Countable nouns must have a determiner: a book, the car

• Chinese: no articles equivalent to English– Yi may be used as an indefinite article to refer to an indefinite

person or thing• Yi ge ren

– But it is often optional• You (yi) ge ren zai men wai deng ni

– The most commonly used determiners in Chinese are the demonstratives zhei and nei which are used as deictic functions pointing or referring back to noun phrases mentioned in the the same context.

• Ta zhu zai zheige fangzi.

deictic

• Linguistics. Of or relating to a word, the determination of whose referent is dependent on the context in which it is said or written. In the sentence I want him to come here now, the words I, here, him, and now are deictic because the determination of their referents depends on who says that sentence, and where, when, and of whom it is said.

• Deictic. (n.d.) In Thefreedictionary.com. Retreived 2 March 2009, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com

4.2.1 Chinese associative phrases

• NP may be introduced by associative phrases formed by adding de to a nouns phrase

• This indicates that the NP before the de is associated or connected with the Head noun

– Wo de yi fu

4.2.2 English possessive determiners (PD)

• Possessive determiners: my, your, his hers, ours, theirs

• English requires the use of a PD in imperatives, but the corresponding Chinese imperatives normally do not have one as long as the referent is contextually clear.

– Remove your coat

– Ba (ni de) da yi tuo xia lai

4.3 Classifiers

• Chinese classifiers (measure words) must occur with a number/quantifier and or demonstrative before the head noun in a NP.

• If you translate directly from English without a classifier, your sentence will be incorrect– *Yi bi– *yi xue sheng

• English countable nouns can be used directly with numbers: student, house car

• E. Uncountable (mass) nouns require a measure word to render them countable. Chinese?– A school of fish. A drop of water. A glass of beer.

4.4.1 English Modifiers• Pre-modifiers

– Pre-modifiers can be adjectives• A big house.

– Classifying nouns• A paper box

• Post modifiers

– Prepositional phrases• The man in the water is...

– Relative clauses (pronouns: who, whose, which)

• The girls who are sitting over there (finite)

• The girls sitting over there (non-finite)

4.4.2 Chinese modifiers • Post modifiers are adjectives just like English

– Yi ge hao hai zi

• Relative Clauses in Chinese are significantly different from their English counterparts because they are pre-modifying rather than post-modifying

– 警方通缉的疑犯– 我送小说的人明天过来– 我问了两个问题的学生现在不在

5. Syntactic functions

• English NP serve as a subject, direct object, indirect object, subject or object compliment or prepositional compliment, and also sometimes as adverbials.

• Chinese NP serve the same functions as their English counterparts. However, they can also serve as topics in the topic comment structure.

– 这些狗 他们的主人已经死了

6. Topic-Comment structure in Chinese

• Called topic prominence by Li (pgs. 15-16) and discussed by Hung (pgs. 83-84).

• It functions as a noun phrase and serves as the topic, not the subject of a Chinese sentence.

• This results in errors like the following:– 张先生我已经见过了– *Mr. Zhang, I've already see (him).– 信写好了– *Letter write already.– 衣服我洗好了– 饭我吃过了– 童年，这是多么美好的时光啊 (

http://ywtd.zhyww.cn/gb/teacher/2002-09/13/content_6496.htm )

7. Relative pronouns• Because relative pronouns do not exists in Chinese,

choosing the correct relative pronouns is very difficult for the Chinese learners because the correct choice depends on its grammatical function in the sentence:

– Tamen dai ta dao cao chang, you yong chi he ge zhong you qu de di fang.

– *They brought her to playground, swimming pool and various places where is interesting.

– They took her to the playground, swimming pool and various other places which were interesting.

• Distinctions between humans and non-humans must be learned:

– Ta shi wo mu qin, (ta) shi wo sheng ming zhong zui zhong yao de ren

– *She is my mother which (who) is the most important person in my life.

8. Resumptive pronouns

• Associated with the use of relative clauses is the unnecessary repetition of a pronoun in a relative structure as in the following:

– Ta shi wo de lao shi, ta qu nian jiao wo yu fa.

– *She is the teacher that she taught me grammar last year.

– She is the teacher who taught me grammar last year.

9. Missing relative pronouns

• Sometimes relative pronouns are omitted from relative clauses (again, because they don't exist in Chinese)

– 你是第一个来香港的人– *You are the first person (who) came to Hong Kong.

– 在我的生命只有一个人来看护 – *There is only one people look after my whole life.

– There is only one peron who looked after me for my whole life.

• While a relative pronoun is required in the above sentences, Chinese learners tend to omit it, resulting in a serial verb construction (Li p. 594).

– Example? Next slide

• The fact that Chinese allows serial verb constructions, coupled with the absence of relative pronouns in a relative structure, may explain why many Chinese students encounter problem in learning English relative structures.

10. Serial verbs constructions• Serial verb constructions are constructions

with two or more verb phrases or clauses juxtaposed without any marker indicating what the relationship is between them. These constructions are common in Chinese but incorrect in English:

– Ta shang lou shui jiao

– *He goes upstairs sleep

– Wo men ying gai xiao xin bu sheng bing

– *We should be careful not get sick.

• The problem of missing relatives can also be linked to the reduced relative clause structure in English

• Students who encounter sentence with reduced relative clauses such as:

– I read your book published in 1999

– I met the parents participating in the interview yesterday

• might be misled into believing that finite verbs such as came and look can be used without a relative pronoun.

– The finite forms of a verb are the forms where the verb shows tense, person or singular/plural. I go, she goes, he went

– Non-finite verb forms have no person, tense or number. The infinitive and present and past participles are the non-finite parts of a verb; to go, going

11. Missing Verbs• The reduced relative clause in English is

probably also involved with the lack of finite verbs in the relative clauses of sentences such as (see also bottom p. 42):

– *I have a large family which including grandmother, grandfather, uncle, my parents and also my younger sister.

– Wo you yi ge da jia ting. (Ta) bao kuo le zu mu, zu fu, shu shu, wo de fu mu he wo de mei mei

– *After enjoying our delicious food which cooked by my mom, we went to school together.

– Xiang yong wan mama zuo de ke kou de shi wu yi hou wo men yi qi qu shang xue.

12. Head-last relative clauses

• Since Chinese relative clauses are noun-last constructions with pre-modifiers and no post-modifiers like English, constructions such as below are very likely the result of L1 interference.

12.1 Head-last clause mistakes

• Wo chuan de qun zi fei chang ke ai

• *I wear the dress is very cute.

• I wear the dress which is very cute.

• Wo fei chang xi huan ta zhu de dong xi

• *I am very like he cook’s things.

• I really like the food (which) he cooks.

• Dao 2047 nian wo men dou hui you hui fei de qi che.

• *In 2047 people will have can fly’s car

• In 2047 people will have cars which can fly.

13. Missing subjects• As stated earlier (slide 4), Chinese pronouns are

used much more sparingly than their English counterparts, especially when the referent is deducible from the context. This leads to Chinese learners writing sentences with subjects missing like the following:

– Wo ren wei wo sheng ming zhong zui zhong yao de ren bu shi yi ge, er shi wo de quan jia.

– *I think my most important person in my life is not one, is my family.

– Wo tai xiao le, suo yi bu neng wan zhe ge.

– *I was too small so cannot play this.

Concluding remarks

• Pedagogical Implications