5.4: Nouns and Modification

This section begins with some additions to your repertoire of inanimate nouns. You will have a chance to practice these in context later in this unit as well as subsequently. 

yàoshi	keys	hùzhào	passport	bǐ	pen
yǎnjìng	glasses (eye-mirror)	xié	shoes [xiézi in the South]	bǐjìběn	notebook (pen-note-book)
shū	books	xíngli	luggage	qiānbǐ	pencil (lead-pen)
shūbāo	backpack (book-bundle)	<yǔ>sǎn	[rain]umbrella	shǒujī	cell-phone (hand-machine)
màozi	cap; hat	tiānqì	weather (sky-air)	zìxíngchē	bike (self-go-vehicle)
xìnyòngkǎ	credit card (credit-card)	yīfu	clothes	chēzi	small vehicle; car
píbāo	wallet (leather-pack)	bào <zhi>	newspaper (report-paper)	dānchē	bike (unit-vehicle)
dōngxi	[physical] things	zìdiǎn	dictionary (character-records)	qìchē	car; automobile

Measure-words

Nouns lead to the subject of ‘measure-words’. In English, one can distinguish two kinds of nouns: those that can be counted directly, and those that can only be counted in terms of a container or amount.

countable: [can be counted directly]	non-countable: [counted by way of a container, amount, etc.]
book → 2 books	wine → 10 bottles of wine
fish → 1 fish	soup → 4 bowls of soup
pen → 3 pens	tea → 5 cups of tea

It is true that wine, soup and tea can also be counted directly if the meaning is ‘varieties of’: 10 wines; 4 soups; 5 teas. But otherwise, such nouns need to be measured out. In Chinese (as well as in many other languages in the region, including Thai, Vietnamese and Burmese), all nouns can be considered non-countable, and are counted through the mediation of another noun-like word. [The vocabulary in these examples is only for illustration – it need not be internalized yet.]

shū → sì běn shū book → 4 spine book 4 books	jiǔ → shí píng jiǔ wine → 10 bottles wine 10 bottles of wine
yú → yì tiáo yú fish → 1 length fish a fish	tāng → sì wǎn tāng soup → 4 bowls soup 4 bowls of soup
bǐ → sān zhī bǐ pens → 3 stub pen 3 pens	chá → sān bēi chá tea → 3 cup tea 3 cups of tea

Often a distinction is made between ‘measures’ and ‘classifiers’. The phrases on the right all involve measures, which serve to portion out a substance that is otherwise not naturally bound; all the examples are, in fact, liquids. Chinese often uses Measures where English would use them, as the examples show. Classifiers, on the other hand, are rare in English, though perhaps ‘block’ is an example, as in ‘block of apartments’. Classifiers serve to classify nouns along various physical dimensions. Tiáo for example is a classifier used typically for sinuous things, such as roads, rivers, and fish:

yì tiáo lù	‘a road’	liăng tiáo yú	‘2 fish’
sān tiáo hé	‘3 rivers’	sì tiáo tuǐ	‘4 legs’

Interestingly, in many cases, the original impetus for a particular classifier has been obscured by cultural change. Items of news, for example, are still classified with tiáo (yì tiáo xīnwén ‘an item of news’) even though news is no longer delivered by way of a sinuous tickertape. The use of tiáo for watches may also be a relic of those days when people carried a fob watch on long, sinuous chains.

Rather than keep the notional distinction between classifiers and measures, both will be referred to as ‘Measure-words’, abbreviated as M’s. Before you encounter M’s in sentences, it will be useful to practice them in phrases. We begin with the default M, gè (usually untoned). It appears with many personal nouns, including rén ‘person’ and xuésheng ‘student’. Note that when combined with an M, the number ‘two’ (but not a number ending in ‘two’, such as 12 or 22) is expressed as liǎng (‘pair’) rather than èr: liǎng ge ‘two [of them]’. And as that example shows, in context, the noun itself may be omitted.

Recall that the tone of yī ‘one’, level when counting or when clearly designating the number ‘1’, shifts to either falling or rising when yi is in conjunction with a following M. The basic tone of gè is falling (hence yí gè) and even though, as noted, gè is often toneless, it still elicits the shift before ‘losing’ its tone: yí ge.

The following sets can be recited regularly until familiar:

yí ge rén 1 person	liǎng ge rén 2 people	sān ge rén 3 people	wǔ ge rén 5 people	shí ge rén. 10 people
yí ge xuésheng 1 student		liǎng ge xuésheng 2 students		sān ge xuésheng 3 students
yí ge 1 of them	liǎng ge 2 of them	dì-yī ge the 1st [one]	dì-èr ge the 2nd [one]	dì-sān ge the 3rd [one]

The particle le following phrases like these (as in the main dialogue below) underscores the relevance of the ‘new situation’: Sì ge rén le. ‘So that’s 4 [people].’

Another particularly useful M is kuài ‘lump; chunk; piece’, which in the context of money (qián), means yuan, generally translated as ‘dollar’. The yuán is a unit of the currency known as rénmínbì [MB] ‘people’s currency’.

yí kuài qián	liăng kuài qián	sān kuài qián	wŭ kuài qián	shí kuài qián
yí kuài	liăng kuài	sān kuài	wŭ kuài	shí kuài

Possessive pronouns

In English, possessive pronouns have quite a complicated relationship to ordinary pronouns (eg ‘I > my >mine’; ‘she > her >hers’), but in Chinese, they are formed in a perfectly regular fashion by the addition of the ‘possessive marker’, de: wǒ ‘I’ > wǒ de ‘my; mine’. The full system is shown below:

wǒ de	wǒmen de	my; mine	our; ours
nǐ de	nǐmen de	your; yours	your; yours [plural]
tā de	tāmen de	his; her; hers	their; theirs

These may combine with nouns, as follows:

wŏ de zìdiǎn	my dictionary
tā de hùzhào	her passport
wŏmen de xíngli	our luggage
wŏ de xié <zi>	my shoes
nǐ de dōngxi	your things

The possessive marker de may also link noun modifiers to other nouns:

xuésheng de shūbāo	students’ bags
lăoshī de shū	teachers’ books
Zhāng lǎoshī de yǎnjìng	Professor Zhang’s glasses
zuótiān de tiānqì	yesterday’s weather
jīntiān de bào<zhi>	today’s newspaper

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns (‘this’ and ‘that’) and locational pronouns (‘here’ and ‘there’) are shown in the chart below. Examples in context will follow later in the unit.

proximate	distal	question
zhè ~ zhèi ‘this’	nà ~ nèi ‘that’	nǎ ~ něi ‘which’
zhèr ~ zhèlǐ ‘here’	nàr ~ nàlǐ ‘there’	nǎr ~ nǎlǐ ‘where’

Notes

a) The forms, zhèi, nèi and něi, are generally found only in combination with a following M: zhè but zhèi ge ‘this one’; nà but nèi ge ‘that [one]’.

b) On the Mainland, where both forms of the locational pronouns occur, the r-forms are more colloquial, the lǐ-forms, more formal. Non-northern speakers of Mandarin, who tend to eschew forms with the r-suffix, either merge the locational pronouns with the demonstratives, pronouncing zhèr as zhè, nàr as nà, and nǎr as nǎ, or [particularly in Taiwan] use zhèlǐ, nàlǐ and nǎlǐ (> nálǐ). Notice that in all cases, the distal forms differ from the question forms only in tone: nà / nǎ; nèi / něi, etc.

c) Before a pause, nà is often used in an extended sense, translated in English as ‘well; so; then; in that case’:

Nà, wǒmen zǒu ba.	Well, let’s go then. (so we leave BA)
Nà, nǐ de xíngli ne?	So how about your luggage then?

Exercise 2

Provide Chinese equivalents for the following phrases and sentences:

my wallet	3 teachers	their clothes
her glasses	2 people	the newspaper on July 4th
his things	4 students	Prof. Zhang’s passport
yesterday’s paper	2 dollars	her bike

How’s Liáng Zhìfǔ doing today? / She’s better.

How was the weather yesterday? / It was ‘freezing’ cold!