Key Terms

Subject Predicate

Verb Object

Modifiers Modified

Preposition Postposition

Coverbs

BA construction

Topic-comment sentence

Measure words Classifiers Countable nouns Uncountable nouns Mass nouns

Noun Endings: grammatical gender, number, case

Verbal Inflections: person, number, tense

Resultative complement

Key Points

Absence of verbal inflections of tense, person, number in Chinese

Absence of nominal endings of case, number and person in Chinese

Ordering between subject, verb and object

Ordering between modifiers and modified (nominal and verbal)

Ordering between pre/post-position and noun phrases

Ordering of time and location expressions with respect to verbs

Ordering between time and location expressions

Ordering among multiple time and location expressions

Across the board use of measure/classifier words