Chinese Sentence Structure and Word Order II

This grammar section is divided into a few sub-sections, and will be described through a few week activities:

SP1.    Basic Pattern
SP2.   Direct and Indirect Objects
SP3.    Prepositional Phrases
SP4.    Location and Time Phrases
SP5.    Adverbs
SP6.    Negation
SP7.    Duration
SP8.    Noun
SP9.    Question
SP10.  Particle

SP2 : Direct and Indirect Objects

  • Similar to English, the direct and indirect objects of the verb in the sentence usually follow the verb.
  • For direct object, it has the basic pattern as mentioned in SP1

    Subject + Verb + Object (S-V-O)

    Example:

    1. I am French
    shì guó rén
    Subject Verb Object
  • For indirect object, it always precedes the direct object.

    Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object (S-V-O-O)

    Example:

    1. I give (gave) him a book.
    gěi běn shū
    Subject Verb Indirect
    Object
    Object
    2. He sends (sent) me a birthday card.
    sòng zhāng shēng
    Subject Verb Indirect
    Object
    Object
  • The verb 给 and 送 can take two objects. The first one, mostly a personal noun or pronoun, is called an indirect object and the second one, mostly a noun of non-personal reference, is named the direct object.
  • Happy learning and have a nice weekend.
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21 thoughts on “Chinese Sentence Structure and Word Order II”

    1. Hi Maggie,
      For these examples:

      “我给他一本书。”
      给 is the verb, and it takes 2 object, i.e. 他 and 书.

      “他送我一张生日卡。”
      送 is the verb, and it takes 2 object, i.e. 我 and 生日卡.

      Actually the sentence pattern almost similar to English.

  1. thanks so much for putting this together!im teaching myself chinese and this is the best thing ive come across on line!
    谢谢你!!!

  2. Hello, I am a newbie, just started leared chinese yesterday. I think I will be fine with sentence strucuture(thanks to you), but I am having hard time finding diciontary say english-chinese and I can’t type either do you know where I can find chinese words with meaning so I can practice what I learn from here?

  3. this is really helpful! thank you! even though i’ve been learning chinese for a while i still haven’t fully grasped sentence structure D:

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