3.6: Pronouns

As many of the examples above show, Chinese often manages to keep track of people (or things) relevant to a situation without the use of pronouns. But pronouns are available where context alone might be insufficient – or where it might otherwise be more appropriate to use one. The set of personal pronouns in Chinese is relatively simple, and regular. They are presented in the following table, with notes following:

singular	collective	singular	plural
wǒ	wǒmen	I, me	we, us
nǐ  , nín	nǐmen	you   , you [polite]	you [all]
tā	tāmen	he, she, [it] him, her	they, them

Notes

a) Tā tends to refer only to people (or to animals being treated as if they were people); in speech, at least, it rarely refers to things, and so rarely corresponds to English ‘it’. On those occasions when tā is used to refer to things, it is more common in object position, so it is more likely to occur in the Chinese equivalent of the sentence ‘put it away’ than in ‘it’s in the drawer’. Chinese sometimes uses a demonstrative (zhè ‘this’ or nà ‘that’) where English has ‘it’, but generally it has no explicit correspondence at all.

b) The form nínmen (‘you+POL-MEN’) is rare, but does sometimes occur in letters, or in formal speech. The -men suffix (not usually toned, though sometimes cited in isolation with a rising tone) is most often found with pronouns, as shown. With nouns designating people, it can also occur as a ‘collective’ eg lǎoshī ‘teacher’, lǎoshīmen ‘teachers’. But even in such cases, -men should not be thought of as a plural marker, for it never co-occurs with numerals: sān ge lǎoshī ‘three teachers’,with no -men possible. In faster speech, wǒmen often becomes wǒm, tāmen, tām, and so on.

c) Mandarin speakers from Beijing and the northeast, also make a distinction (found in many languages) between wǒmen ‘we’ that includes speaker, addressee and others, and zán or zánmen (pronounced ‘zámen’, as if without the first ‘n’) ‘the two of us; we’. The latter includes the speaker and the person spoken to, but excludes others. Eg Zánmen zǒu ba! ‘Let’s leave [us, but not the others]’ – a phrase worth storing away as a prototype example for zánmen.

Names

Where the identification or status of a person requires more than a pronoun, then of course, Chinese has recourse to personal names, or names and titles (cf. §1.9.1). For now, suffice it to say that Chinese students often refer to each other either by personal name (at least two syllables), or by surname (xìng) prefixed by a syllable such as xiǎo ‘young’. Thus, Liú Guózhèng may be addressed by friends as Guózhèng or xiǎo Liú; Lǐ Dān, as Lǐ Dān (full name of two syllables) or xiǎo Lǐ.

The particle ne and the adverb yě

The particle ne, placed after subject nouns, has a number of uses. It may signal a pause for reflection, something particularly useful for learners:

Zuótiān ne, zuótiān hĕn rè.	Yesterday -- yesterday was hot.
Tā ne, tā hĕn jĭnzhāng.	[As for] him, he’s quite anxious.

It may also be used to signal follow-up questions. The response to a follow-up question often contains the adverb yĕ ‘also; too; as well’. Recall that adverbs are placed before verbs (including SVs) or other adverbs (such as bu):

Jiǎ	Yǐ
Jīntiān lèi ma? Wŏ yĕ hĕn lèi.	Hĕn lèi, nĭ ne?
Jīntiān rè bù rè? Zuótiān ne?	Hĕn rè. Zuótiān yĕ hĕn rè.
Nĭ jĭnzhāng ma? Wŏ háishi hĕn jĭnzhāng.	Bù jĭnzhāng le. Nĭ ne? Ng.
Xiǎo Wáng zuótiān bù shūfu. Jīntiān hǎo le.	Jīntiān ne? Ng.

Notes

1. Háishi ‘still’; cf. §1.7.1.

2. Spoken Chinese makes use of variety of ‘interjections’. Ng (with pronunciation ranging from a nasalized ‘uh’ to ‘n’) is one of them. On the falling tone, it indicates agreement, or as in the above example, understanding.

Exercise 1.

Write down, and recite, what you would say under the circumstances; be prepared to shift roles:

1. Ask him if [he] was busy yesterday?

2. Note that [it]’s quite cold today.

3. Remark that [it]’s gotten cold today.

4. Find out if young Li’s nervous.

5. Respond that [she] is [nervous].

6. Say that you are too.

7. Say [you] didn’t feel well yesterday.

8. Say that you’re better now.

9. Tell your friend [you]’re not very hungry.

10. Tell him that you’re okay today, [but] you were quite nervous before.

11. Ask your friend if [she]’s thirsty [or not].

12. Find out if your classmate is comfortable.

13. Say that [you]’re not hungry anymore.

14. Say that he was wrong.