5.2: Adverbs

In the first unit, you were introduced to a number of words that are classed ‘adverbs’: hěn, bù, yě, hái or háishi and yǐjing. It is difficult to characterize the general function of adverbs beyond rather abstract notions like ‘degree’, ‘amount’, or ‘manner’; but they can be defined positionally as words that are placed before, and are semantically linked to, a following verb (or other adverb).

Tài with le

Tài, seen only in negative sentences in the first unit (bú tài lèi), is also common in positive sentences, where it is frequently found with a final le: Tài hǎo le. ‘Great!’; Tài jǐnzhāng le. ‘[I]’m real anxious!’; Tài nán le. ‘[It]’s too difficult!’ Le in this context conveys a sense of excess (cf. English ‘exceedingly’), and as such, can be regarded as a special case of the notion of ‘new situation’. Notice that negative sentences with tài often suggest moderation rather than excess, so do not attract final le in the same way: bú tài hǎo.

Other adverbs

Below are examples of some additional common adverbs: dōu ‘all’, gèng ‘even more’, bĭjiào (pronounced bĭjiăo by some) ‘rather; quite; fairly’, and zǒngshi ‘always’.

dōu ‘all’	Tāmen dōu hěn è.	[They]’re all hungry.
	Dōu duì.	[They]’re all right.
	Dōu méi chī ne.	None [of them] has eaten [yet].
gèng ‘even more’	Xiànzài hĕn lěng, kěshi yǐqián gèng lěng.	[It]’s cold now, but [it] was even colder before.
bĭjiào  ‘quite’	Wŏ jīntiān bĭjiào máng.	I’m fairly busy today.
	Zuótiān bĭjiào rè.	Yesterday was fairly warm.
zǒngshi ‘always’	Xuéshēng zǒngshi hĕn máng hĕn lèi; dànshi lǎoshī gèng máng gèng lèi.	Students are always busy and tired, but teachers are even more so.

Intensifying or backing off

a) Fēicháng ‘very; especially; unusually’

Rather than answering a yes-no question about a state with a neutral positive response (Nǐ lèi ma? / Hěn lèi.), you may want to intensify your answer. Fēicháng, an adverb whose literal meaning is ‘not-often’, is one of a number of options:

Jīntiān fēicháng rè!	[It]’s really hot today!
Fēicháng hǎo!	[It]’s unusually good!

b) ADVs tǐng and mán ~ mǎn as intensifiers

Some mention needs to be made here of two adverbs that are very common in certain phrases in colloquial speech. One is tǐng, whose core meaning is actually ‘straight; erect’, but which, as an ADV, carries the force of English ‘very’ or ‘really’. The other is mán, which has a variant in low tone, mǎn. The variants may reflect confusion between two different roots, one, mán, with a core meaning of ‘fierce’ and an adverbial meaning of ‘entirely; utterly’; and the other mǎn, with a core meaning of ‘full’, extended to ‘very; full’ in the adverbial position. The distinction may have been obscured in part by the fact that the two merge to mán when the low-tone rule applies in common phrases such as mán hǎo. For whatever reason, they seem to be treated as synonymous in colloquial speech by many speakers.

Exclamations with mǎn or tǐng often occur with a final de (written with the same character as possessive de, 的, and sometimes referred to as situational-de):

Tǐng hǎo de.	Perfect; great!
Mán hǎo de.	[That]’s great!

Here are some common collocations, roughly glossed to convey the tone of the Chinese; mán is given in rising tone, but you may find that speakers from Taiwan and parts of southern China tend to say mǎn in contexts where the low tone is permitted.

Tǐng bú cuò de.	Not bad!
Tǐng shūfu.	[It]’s quite comfortable.
Tǐng yǒu yìsi de!	How interesting!

Mán hǎochī de!	[It]’s delicious!
Mán piàoliang.	[She]’s real attractive.
Mán bú cuò de!	[That]’s pretty darn good!
Mán bú zàihu.	[He] doesn’t give a damn. (‘to care; be concerned’)

c) -jíle ‘extremely’

Another option is the intensifying suffix -jíle, which follows SVs directly (and is therefore not an adverb). Jíle is a compound of jí ‘the extreme point’ or ‘axis’(cf. Běijí ‘North Pole’), plus le. It is quite productive and can follow almost any SV to mean ‘extremely SV’.

Hǎo jíle!	Excellent!
Tiānqì rè jíle!	The weather's extremely hot!

d) Yǒu <yì>diǎnr ‘kind of; a bit’

Rather than intensifying your answer, you may want to back off and answer ‘kind of; rather; a bit’. The construction is yǒu <yì> diǎnr + SV ‘(have a-bit SV)’, a phrase that appears in the adverbial slot and can be interpreted as a complex adverb. The yi of <yì>diǎnr is often elided (hence the < >). Taiwan and other southern Mandarin regions, where the final ‘r’ is not usual, say yǒu yìdiǎn SV, without the -r. Like the English ‘a bit’, this construction conveys some sort of inadequacy. So tā yǒu yìdiǎnr gāo ‘he’s a bit tall’ suggests that his height is problematical. [Note the presence of yǒu ‘have’ in the Chinese, with no direct correspondence in the English equivalent!]

Wǒ jīntiān yǒu (yì)diǎnr máng.	I’m kind of busy today.
Jīntiān yǒu (yì)diǎnr rè.	It’s rather hot today.
Wǒmen yǒu (yì)diǎnr è.	We’re a bit hungry.

Summary of Adverbs (and other expressions of degree)

ADV	~Eng equivalent	with SVs	with Vact
bù	not	bú lèi	bú shàngbān
yě	too; also	yě hěn lèi	yě chī le
hái ~ háishi	still	hái hǎo ~ háishi hěn lèi	hái méi zǒu ne
dōu	all	dōu hěn gāo	dōu shuìjiào le
yǐjing	already		yǐjing zǒu le
tài	very; too	tài máng le; bú tài máng
hěn	very	hěn lèi
tǐng, mǎn ~ mán	very; really	mǎn bú cuò
gèng	even more	gèng rè
bǐjiào ~ bǐjiǎo	rather; relatively	bǐjiào lěng
zǒngshi	always	zǒngshi hěn máng
fēicháng	extremely; very	fēicháng lěng

Special Constructions

	~Eng equivalent	with SVs	with Vact
jíle	‘very; extremely’	hǎo jíle
yǒu <yì> diǎn <r>	‘kind of; rather; a bit’	yǒu diǎnr guì

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that conjoin linguistic units, either as equal partners, as in the case of ‘and’ or ‘but’ (called ‘coordinating conjunctions’), or in a skewed partnership, as in the case of ‘if’ and ‘because’ (called ‘subordinating conjunctions’). In Chinese, there is no word quite comparable to English ‘and’ that connects sentences; that function is often served by the adverb, yĕ:

Zuótiān wŏ bù shūfu, jīntiān yĕ bú tài hăo.	I wasn’t very well yesterday, and [I]’m not too well today, either.
Zuótiān hĕn rè, jīntiān yĕ hĕn rè.	It was hot yesterday, and it’s hot today, too.

As noted in Unit 1 (1.7), conjunctions kĕshi and dànshi (the latter probably more common in non-northern regions) correspond to English ‘but’ or ‘however’. A third word, búguò, can also be mentioned here; though its range of meaning is broader than that of the other two, it has considerable overlap with them and can also often be translated as ‘but; however’.

Tāmen hái méi chīfàn, kĕshì dōu bú è.	They haven’t eaten, but they aren’t hungry
Wŏ chīfàn le, dànshi hái méi xǐzǎo.	I’ve eaten, but I haven’t bathed yet.
Tā zŏu le, búguò jīntiān bú shàngbān	She’s left, but she’s not going to work today
cf. Tā zŏu le, búguò jīntiān bú shàngbān	She’s gone, but she didn’t go to work today.