3.4: Stative Verbs

The verb is the heart of the Chinese sentence. Young urban speakers of Chinese may slip material from English or other languages into the noun position in a sentence (Wǒ yǒu lab. ‘I have a lab’), and nouns such as jítā ‘guitar’ with foreign origins have been incorporated in the language as a result of persistent contact with other cultures. But very rarely does foreign language material show up in the verb position.

Some comparisons with English also reveal the centrality of the verb to the Chinese sentence schema. In Chinese, where the context makes the participants clear, verbs do not need to be anchored with pronouns – as they do in English:

Jiǎ (Person A)	Máng ma?	Are [you] busy?
Yǐ (Person B)	Hěn máng.	Yes, [I] am.

In English, ‘am’ is not a possible response to the question ‘are you busy?’. A pronoun is required: ‘I am.’ However, in the English answer, the verb ‘busy’ does not need to be repeated – ‘I am’ rather than ‘I am busy’. Chinese behaves oppositely from English, as our example shows. Pronouns are often not expressed when the context makes the reference clear. On the other hand, verbs tend to be reiterated in the answer, without the need of an equivalent to the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ of English.

Types of verbs

As you encounter words in Chinese, you will find that it is useful to categorize them into groups and subgroups (the traditional parts of speech and their subclasses), such as nouns (with subtypes such as countable and non-countable), verbs (with subtypes such as transitive and non-transitive), pronouns (eg, personal pronouns and demonstratives), and adverbs (eg, manner adverbs and degree adverbs). Such categories capture useful generalizations about how words behave. An adverb, for example, will always appear before a verb (or other adverb).

It is also useful to be able to talk about the components of a sentence: subjects, predicates, adverbials, modifiers, etc. A general schema for the sentence hěn máng would be a null subject, and a predicate consisting of an adverb (hěn) and a verb (máng). It is not necessary to be adept at using the linguistic nomenclature, but it is important to be able to understand the notion of classes of words and positions within sentence structure so that generalizations can be noted.

For Chinese verbs, it will be useful to distinguish a number of classes. In this lesson, we will focus on two. One resembles what are called adjectives in English and many other languages: hǎo ‘be good’, máng ‘be busy’, è ‘be hungry’. As the English glosses show, these words do not require an additional form of the verb ‘to be’ (‘are, am, is, etc.’) when they are used as predicates in Chinese: Lèi ma? ‘Are [you] tired?’ / Hěn lèi. ‘[I] am.’ The difference is shown by translating the Chinese words as ‘be+tired’, ‘be+good’, etc. Because such words convey states rather than actions, they are called ‘stative verbs’, abbreviated as ‘SVs’. Strictly speaking, SVs should always be glossed as ‘be+adjective’ (when they are being used as predicates). But once the notion is familiar, we will often fall back on the more convenient practice of glossing them with English adjectives: máng ‘busy’; shūfu ‘comfortable’.

Another general class of verbs involve actions: chī ‘eat’; xǐzǎo ‘to wash’; zǒu ‘to walk; leave’. These will simply be called action verbs, abbreviated V_act.

Questions and positive responses

You can begin by learning to ask questions with SVs, and to give either positive or negative responses. Assuming that the context makes explicit [subject] pronouns unnecessary, then one way to ask questions that seek confirmation or denial - yes-no questions - is to add the final ‘question particle’ ma to the proposal:

Hǎo ma?	Are [you] well?
Máng ma?	Is [she] busy?
Lèi ma?	Are [you] tired?
È ma?	Is [he] hungry?
Kě ma?	Are [you] thirsty?
Jǐnzhāng ma?	Are [they] nervous?
Shūfu ma?	Are [you] comfortable?
Lěng ma?	Are [you] cold?
Rè ma?	Is [it] hot?
Gāo ma?	Is [she] tall?
Duì ma?	Is [it] correct?

Notes:

máng	[ mahng]
lèi	rhymes with English ‘say’; duì (and wèi), rhyme with ‘way’
è	[uh]; cf. rè [ruh] and hěn [huhn]
jǐnzhāng	[jeen-j!ahng]; shūfu [sh!oofoo] – ! reminds you to raise the tip of your tongue towards the roof of your mouth.

Positive responses repeat the verb, usually with an adverb. The default adverb, where no other is chosen, is hěn, usually glossed as ‘very’, however, in contexts such as these, hěn does little more than support the positive orientation of the sentence, and so is best left untranslated. SVs such as duì ‘correct’, which are ‘all or nothing’, do not occur with degree adverbs, such as hěn.

Máng ma?	Hĕn máng.	Yes, [I] am.
Kĕ ma?	Hĕn kě.	Yes, [I] am. Apply the tone rule!
Gāo ma?	Hĕn gāo.	Yes, [she] is.
Duì ma?	Duì.	Yes, [it] is.

Notice that unlike English, where the typical positive answer indicates affirmation with ‘yes’ before going on to answer the question, Mandarin has only the direct answer.

Negative responses

Negative responses are usually formed with bu ‘not the case’— recall that the tone of bu is conditioned by that of the following syllable.

Máng ma?	Bù máng.	No, [I]’m not.
Kě ma?	Bù kě.	No, [I]’m not.
Gāo ma?	Bù gāo.	No, [she]’s not.
Duì ma?	Bú duì.	No, [it]’s not.

As with positive answers, Chinese has no direct equivalent to ‘no’, but simply offers a negated verb.

A less abrupt negative (but, again, not used with duì) is formed with bú (with tone shift) plus tài ‘too; very’:

Hǎo ma?	Bú tài hǎo.	No, not very.
Máng ma?	Bú tài máng.	No, not too.
Lèi ma?	Bú tài lèi.
È ma?	Bú tài è.

[Negative questions with ma, such as Nǐ bú lèi ma? ‘Aren’t you tired?’, will be dealt with in a later unit. While such questions are easy to form in Chinese, the responses follow patterns unfamiliar to speakers of English.]

V-not-V questions

Another way to form yes-no questions is to present the verb and its negative, as though offering both options. The negative, bu, in these constructions is often toneless in normal speech: hǎo bù hǎo is usually pronounced hǎo bu hǎo, or even hǎo bu hao. While V-ma questions slightly presuppose an answer congruent with the question – ie positive for positive questions, negative for negative questions, V-not-V questions are neutral. At this stage, you can regard the two as essentially equivalent:

Rè ma? Rè bu rè?	Hĕn rè. Hĕn rè.
Lěng ma? Lěng bu lěng?	Bù lěng. Bú tài lěng.

Other examples:

Duì bu duì?	Duì.
Hǎo bu hǎo?	Hěn hǎo. With tone shift!
Máng bu máng?	Bù máng.
Lèi bu lèi?	Hěn lèi.
È bu è?	Bú tài è.
Kě bu kě?	Hěn kě.
Lěng bu lěng?	Hěn lěng.
Rè bu rè?	Bú tài rè.
Jǐn<zhāng> bu jǐnzhāng?	Bù jǐnzhāng.
Shū<fu> bu shūfu?	Bù shūfu.

Note: With two-syllable SVs, the 2nd syllable of the first, positive part of V-not-V questions often gets elided, as indicated by < > in the last two examples.

Three degrees of response

You can respond to the two kinds of yes-no questions positively, neutrally, or negatively; the typical neutral response makes use of the adverb hái (or, before other adverbs, háishi) ‘still; yet’: hái hǎo ‘so so; [I]’m okay (still okay)’.

SUMMARY

SVs: hǎo, máng, lèi, è, kě, lěng, rè, gāo, shūfu, jǐnzhāng, duì
Yes-No Qs		+	0	-
-ma	V-not-V
Lèi ma?	Lèi bu lèi?	Hěn lèi.	Hái hǎo.	Bú lèi. Bú tài lèi.
Jǐnzhāng ma?	Jǐn bu jǐnzhāng?	Hěn jǐnzhāng.	Hái hǎo.	Bù jǐnzhāng. Bú tài jǐnzhāng.