If you've studied Chinese for any length of time, our questions today should be a walk in the park. In fact, they're pretty much the Chinese linguistic equivalent of managing to navigate a flat stretch of green grass.If you have trouble with these questions, you should throw yourself at our elementary lessons. These are about as easy as the HSK ever gets: assessing your comprehension of basic words and phrases and understanding of the rudimentary building blocks of the language.
henning
said on September 22, 2008
At the price of one point I learned the word 热心肠 today - which I had before not encountered even once in my life :)
johan.helenius
said on September 22, 2008
Me neither, =).
brett
said on September 23, 2008
13/15. why can't we use 真的 on question 11?
orbital
said on September 23, 2008
@brett - because the cat being cute isn't something that would be surprising.
ipsi
said on September 23, 2008
Hmm... Like most of these tests, it's actually quite hard if you don't know most of the words. I didn't do particularly well, but then I didn't know enough of the words, basically.Though I do wonder why it must be 他们高兴地玩了两个小时 (They played happily for two hours) as opposed to 他们高兴得玩了两个小时 (They were so happy they played for two hours)? Is the first one just 'better', even if the second one is technically correct? EDIT: Not that I'm certain the second one is correct...
imron
said on September 23, 2008
Is the second one technically correct? I thought 得 should follow a verb and 高兴 isn't a verb.
ipsi
said on September 23, 2008
My grammar book lists 她高兴得嘴巴都合不拢了 as an example of 'Complements of Consequential State', though it's possible that there's something else at play I'm not seeing that makes these two examples totally different.
Echo
said on September 23, 2008
@brett,
Because 真的 is trying to emphasize something is true. In this sentence, we need an adverb which means "very".
--Echo
imron
said on September 23, 2008
@ipsi, perhaps because the latter "嘴巴都合不拢了" is a state and the former isn't? Though I'm not really sure and am probably the wrong person to be commenting about grammar.
Brendan
said on September 23, 2008
高兴 is still considered a modal verb, the same as 好 in e.g. 好得不得了. 得 has two functions - preceding an adverb that follows the verb, as in 跑得快 etc., and indicating extent -- as, again, in 好得不得了 or 高兴得玩儿了两个小时, or 丑得要命 or something like that.
"他们高兴得玩了两个小时" seems perfectly grammatical to me (though we should probably wait for a native speaker to weigh in), but is a bit strange without some kind of context. Swapping out the modal 高兴 and the verb 玩 for 困 and 睡 respectively leads the perfectly reasonable 他们困得睡了两个小时, which is totally fine.
Echo
said on September 24, 2008
Thank you Brendan:)
The problem people have here is about the Modal Complement. The most obvious character of the modal complement is that there is the structurally auxiliary word 得 before it. Adverbs, adjective phrases, and clauses all can be used as modal complements.
One of the main structures of the modal complement related to today's quit is "verb/adjective +得+ complement".Here are three kinds of ways to use it as follows:
1 This structure may indicate the degree. Words can be used as the complements of the degree: 很、多、不得了、了不得、要死、要命、不行.Like Brendan's examples: 好得不得了、跑得快、丑得要命. Simply, it means "very much" here.
2 The structure "verb/adj. +得+ adj." may indicate the result of verbs and states. In this case, there are repeated form of adj. or adv. indicating the degree as 很、特别、十分 before the complement adj. In this case, the complement adj. may describe the verb. e.g. 昨天我睡得很晚。他的中文讲得很流利。 It can also describe the state how the actor appears. e.g. 我吃得饱饱的。It can also describe the state how the object of the action appears. e.g.这件衣服你洗得很干净。
3 verb/adj. + 得+ verbal phrase
This is the same structure as 她高兴得嘴巴都合不拢了 and 他们高兴得玩了两个小时.
This structure indicates the action or the state how the actor appears. The verbal phrase which is used as the complement here indicates the result. Take 她高兴得嘴巴都合不拢了 as an example, "She is SO excited THAT she can hardly close her mouth."
Some more examples:
她吓得说不出话来。--She's SO scared THAT she can't even speak out a word.
这些天我忙得一点儿时间都没有。--I am SO busy these days THAT I can't find any idle time.
Now coming to the "playing two hours" sentence. Logically, we can say "I played for two hours, and I was SO happy THAT I played for another two hours". In Chinese, we could say 我高兴得“多”玩了两个小时， but not 我高兴得玩了两个小时. It doesn't match Chinese logic, so people never say that. Instead, we say 我高兴地玩了两个小时 to describe the state.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
imron
said on September 24, 2008
@Echo how does this compare with the sentence mentioned above by Brendan: 他们困得睡了两个小时
Echo
said on September 24, 2008
@imron, Same as 我高兴得多玩了两个小时. We could say 我困得多睡了两个小时/我困得回到家就倒头大睡/我困得睡了二十个小时才醒，but can't say 困得睡了两个小时。 --Echo echo@popupchinese.com
ipsi
said on September 25, 2008
Interesting. Thanks for that. So is it grammatically correct, technically speaking? Just because it's grammatical doesn't mean it's natural, or even makes sense.
Anyway, I think I have a better sense for why it's wrong now.
Echo
said on September 26, 2008
@ipsi,
The sentence 她高兴得嘴巴都合不拢了 is ok, but the sentence 我高兴得玩了两个小时 is not. Change 我高兴得玩了两个小时 to 我高兴得多玩了两个小时 and it is ok, because the pattern fits rule #3 in my post above.Therefore, grammatically it is wrong,since it is against the rules how to use 得.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
