A Sketch of the Mandarin Language:
Morphology and Syntax

Introduction China has always been a land of many languages and dialects. The Mandarin language, however, emerged as the language of the ruling class during the latter part of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and is now the most widely-spoken language in the world. In the 200 census, China had a population of 840 million people, and 70% of that population spoke mandarin as their mother tongue. (Lewis, 2012) The Mandarin language is part of the Sino-Tibetan language group. All Chinese languages tonal, which means that the way words are pronounced varies their meanings. The mandarin language itself only has 4 different tones, whereas the other Chinese languages can have up to 10 distinct tones. (Krysstal) To learn about the morphology and syntax structure of the mandarin language, our field project group had contacted our consultant, Amy Zhou. She is 21 years old and was born in Hong Kong, China. She had moved to San Francisco, California with her family when she was 10 years old and came to school here in Hawaii for college in 2010. She is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. She is fluent in English as well, but prefers to speak in her native tongue.
Morphology
From the data we had gathered from our meetings with the consultant, our group concluded that the Mandarin language is a polysynthetic language and that the mandarin sentence structure is quite similar to the English language. The reason we came to this conclusion is because the mandarin language is structurally the same as the English language. In the English language, when you are to make a word plural, you would normally put “-s” after a word. However, in the mandarin language, there are no plural affixes used. The only irregularity to this is the use of “men” which is normally used in a very formal setting to say “peoples.” For example: 1.3 “The babies” (Omitted) Ying er men 1.4 “Some babies” Yo xie Ying er men
The use of “men” is optional though. According to the consultant, most native speakers tend to leave “men” out in order to shorten the sentence when spoken. But when you describe how many of a certain thing there is, you would use counting numbers to make it a plural. For example: 1.7” Two Babies” Liang ge(particle) ying er Another thing we noticed is that in the Mandarin language, the definite article – “the” is not used and in most cases, is omitted from the sentence formation. Instead, they would use the words “Zhe ge” which means “this” and “Ne ge” which means “that”, in the beginning of a sentence. 1.11 “The baby is sleeping” This baby is(present) sleeping Zhe ge ying er zai shui jiao

That baby is(present) sleeping Ne ge ying er zai shui jiao As for the indefinite article - “a”, it is also not utilized like the word “the.” Instead, it uses the word “yi” in its place, which has the meaning equal to as the number “one” in English. It indicates the numerical value of its following noun, stating its singularity. For example: 1.1 “A baby” Yi ge(particle) ying er “one baby” When it comes to the verb tenses, you will use “le” for past tense and “zai” to indicate the present tense. If it is a future verb tense, you would need to say the day that the verb will be performed on and after the pronoun, you add “will.” 2.8 “le” Past Particle (-ed/did/was) “The dog was sick” Zhe ge gou bing le(past tense) 1.11 “Zai” Present Particle (-ing) “The Baby is sleeping” Zhe ge(this) ying er zai(present) shui jiao Ne ge(that) ying er zai(present) shui jiao 4.15 Future Particle (using exact date) “What are you doing tomorrow?” Ming tian ni hui zhou shen ma Tomorrow you (time) doing what When trying to create a possessive noun in Mandarin, you would have to add “de” after a pronoun. 2.1 “My dog” Wo de gou I/My (possessive particle) dog 2.5 “The woman’s dog” Zhe ge nu-ren de gou This woman (possessive particle) dog
Syntax
The basic sentence structure of Mandarin is formed with its major constituents as the following: Subject – Verb – Object (SVO). 2.13 “The woman saw the dog” Zhe ge nu-ren kan jian le ne ge gou The(This) woman see(past tense) the(that) dog (S) (V) (O) 3.20 “The dog is eating the fish” Zhe ge gou zai chi yu The(this) dog eating fish (S) (V) (O) As for the noun phrases, the mandarin language and the English language have the same rules. NP -> det. (adj)* N 1.5 “A happy baby” Yi ge kai xin ying er Det. Adj. N One happy baby NP-> N 1.2 “The baby” Ying er N
As for the prepositional phrases, we have noticed the following rule: PP= NP P 1.20 “The dogs slept quietly under the tree.” Zhe xie gou zai shu di xia jing jing de shui le jiao. These dogs under the tree quietly (possessive) (past tense) sleep. ProN N adj art N adj 3.1 “In the house” Wu zi li N Prep House in In order for a sentence to be negated in the mandarin language, you would add “bu” in front of “she”. “Bu” means “not” and “she” means “is”.
1.11”The baby is sleeping” Zhe ge ying er zai shui jiao The(This) baby(present) sleeping
1.17”The baby is not sleeping” Zhe ge ying er bu shi zai shui jiao The(this) baby(present) not is sleeping In questioning sentences that require yes or no for its answer, the beginning of the question will start with “Zhe Ge” which means “is this” or “Ne ge” which means “is that.” The question marker “ma” would be inserted at the end of the sentence. 1.15 Zhe ge, ma Is the baby sleeping ? Zhe ge ying er zai shui jiao ma Is this baby (present) sleep ? Is the baby sleeping ? Ne ge ying er zai shui jiao ma Is that baby (present) sleep ? In the formation of the WH- questions, if it starts off with “Who” the word “Shui” would be put at the beginning of the sentence. If it started with “What”, then the word “shen ma” would be inserted at the end of the sentence. However, if you were to describe when or what time something will happen, you would insert “shen ma shi hou” at the beginning of the sentence. If you were to use “where” as a question, then you would insert “zai na li” at the end of the sentence. If you were to use “why”, then you would insert “wei she ma” in the beginning of the sentence. In these cases, you would not insert the question marker “ma” at the end of the sentence because the sentence is already asking a question.
3.14 Who, “shui” Who ate the fish? Shui chi le yu Who (to) see (past tense) fish 3.15 What, “shen ma” What did the woman eat? Zhe ge nu ren chi le shen ma This woman eat (past tense) what? 4.18 When, “shen ma shi hou” When did you go to work? ni shen ma shi hou qu shang ban You when go work 4.12 Where, “zai na li” Where does the president live? zhong tong zhu zai na li President live where 4.8 Why, “wei she ma” Why is the sky blue? wei shen ma tian shi nan ce Why sky is blue

Conclusion In conclusion, I have realized that there are similar patterns of sentence structures being formed in Chinese compared to the English language. However, there are also noticeable differences as well. For example, there are some irregularities with the syntax of the Chinese language and they contain no verb conjugations and there are no definite markers for plurals. This linguistics project was a very fun and interesting way to gain insight on a completely new language for me. Thanks to this project, I am now set on learning more about the mandarin language through classes.

Works Cited
Krysstal. (n.d.). The Sino-Tibetan Family of Languages. Retrieved from www.krysstal.com: http://www.kry tal.com/langfams_sinotibe.html
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/
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