Mandarin Chinese Grammar Basics

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. When an action verb such as 'kan' (look) is reduplicated as 'kan kan', how does this change the meaning of the word? Reduplication suggests taking a very long look Reduplication suggests looking immediately Reduplication suggests looking very carefully Reduplication suggests looking 'a little'

2. What is the semantic effect of adding the prefix 'ke' before the verbs 'ai' (to love), 'chi' (to eat) and 'kao' (to depend), among others? The new word becomes an adjective, with the 'ke' comparable to the English suffix '-able' The 'ke' is used to create the superlative form of the verb, which then becomes an adjective The 'ke' provides a negative form, with the new compounds verbs suggesting that the actor is unwilling The 'ke' signifies that the verb is now being used in noun form

3. The word 'hao' means good in Mandarin Chinese. Frequently, 'hao' is employed as a prefix for verbs, turning them into adjectives (for example, 'hao' + 'wen' (smell) would combine to mean fragrant.) What word is used as the opposite prefix in this grammar construct? Nan (Difficult) Huai (Bad) Bu (No) Fan (Trouble)

4. What suffix is used to make plural either a pronoun (ex. 'wo', meaning 'I') or a human noun (ex. 'tongxue', meaning 'classmate')? -lan -men -guo -xing

5. Thanks to the writing system, the various Chinese languages are all monosyllabic. This results in thousands of compound words whose meanings typically make sense when one examines their two constituent parts. However, in some cases a compound word makes no sense when the constituent characters are examined. Which of the following is a case exhibiting this phenomenon? Feiji (Airplane) Feizao (Soap) Dianying (Movie) Haigou (Seal)

6. Because standard Mandarin Chinese has no system for pluralization, 'measure words' are used in order to indicate countable nouns. Which of these is the most common measure word in use with Mandarin Chinese? Ge Tiao Ba Tao

7. The word 'le' is always used at the end of a sentence to indicate something will only happen in the future. True False

8. Time words and phrases such as 'zuotian' (yesterday), 'qunian' (last year) and 'xia ge libai' (next week) must never come at the end of a sentence. True False

9. Which of the following words is used in comparative sentences? Bu Ba Bi Bo

10. A somewhat easy one, if you catch my drift. The word 'ta' can mean which of the following? All of these He She It