Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar

Part A Structures

1 Overview of Pronunciation and Pinyin Romanization

2 Syllable, Meaning, and Word

3 The Chinese Writing System: An Overview

4 Phrase order in the Mandarin sentence

5 Nouns

6 Numbers

7 Specifiers and Demonstratives

8 Classifiers

9 Noun Phrases

10 Adjectives and Adjectival Verbs

11 Stative Verbs

12 Modal Verbs

13 Action Verbs

14 Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

15 Adverbs

16 Conjunctions

17 Aspect

18 Resulative verbs

19 Directional verbs

20 ¿ ba sentences: The 'disposal' construction

21 The passive

Part B Situations and Functions

22 Names, Kinship Terms, Titles, and Terms of Address

23 Introductions

24 Greetings and Goodbyes

25 Basic Strategies for Communication

26 Telecommunications and e-communications: Telephones, the internet, and social media

27 Negating Information

28 Asking questions, answering questions, and reporting questions

29 Expressing Identification, Possession, and Existence

30 Describing People, Places, and Things

31 Describing How Actions are Performed

32 Indicating Result, Conclusion, Potential, and Extent

33 Making Comparisons

34 Talking About the Present

35 Talking About Habitual Actions

36 Talking About the Future

37 Indicating Completion and Talking About the Past

38 Talking About Change, New Situations, and Changing Situations

39 Talking About Duration and Frequency

40 Expressing Additional Information

41 Expressing Contrast

42 Expressing Sequence

43 Expressing Simultaneous Situations

44 Expressing Cause and Effect or Reason and Result

45 Expressing Conditions

Claudia Ross, Professor Emeritus of Chinese, College of the Holy Cross.

Jing-Heng Sheng Ma, Professor Emeritus of Chinese, Wellesley College.

Pei-Chia Chen, Senior Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the Chinese program, University of California San Diego.

Baozhang He, Associate Professor Emeritus of Chinese, College of the Holy Cross.

Meng Yeh, Teaching Professor of Chinese, Rice University.