Re: Unilang: the Grammar

Does this clarify at all?

I think this is the most natural way to say your last sentence:

Liang3 ge xiao3shi2 qian2, wo3 jin4le fang2zi.
Two MEASURE hour before, I enter-PERF house.

This describes entering, but says nothing about coming or going. You can however
optionally add lai2 or qu4:

Wo3 jin4le fang2zi qu4.
I enter-PERF house go.

Wo3 jin4le fang2zi lai2.
I enter-PERF house come.

You are correct; to say the first, you must be outside the house, to say they
second you must be inside the house.

BTW, for what it's worth I'm speaking as an American-born native speaker of
Mandarin Chinese. I can tell you what sounds right, but my grammatical
descriptions might be off.

-Weiben

On Thu, 26 April 2001, Henrik Theiling wrote:

>
> Hi!
>
> Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> writes:
> > >    wo3 lai2 le0   tai2-wan1.
> > >    I   go   PERF  Taiwan.
> > >    (PERF is an aspect marker for a completed action but a non-completed
> > > result)
> > >    I've come to Taiwan.
>
> > Indeed. If you look at your last example, Chinese uses "go" while English uses
>
> Errm, no, sorry.  It should instead read
>
>     wo3 lai2 le0   tai2-wan1.
>     I   come   PERF  Taiwan.
>     I've come to Taiwan.
>
> `lai2' is `come', `qu4' is `go'.  Sorry...
>
> But this implies that the speaker is still in Taiwan.  Otherwise, I'd
> probably say the previous:
>
>     wo3 qu4 guo4 tai2-wan1.
>     I   go  EXP  Taiwan.
>
> I.e., the speaker went and came back.
>
> > For instance, if someone is in
> > the garden of his house, explaining what he did two hours ago, he will say "I
> > went in the house", never "I came in the house", because he's not in the house
> > anymore, while in English both sentences are grammatical, depending on what you
> > want to focus on.
>
> Hmm...  I'd say
>
>    liang2 dian3 qian3 wo3 hui2      jia1 le0.
>    two    hour  ago   I   come-back home PERF.
>
> That's yet another verb. :-)
>
> Or do you mean that two hours ago, one went into the house and back to
> fetch something and then out into the garden again?  That'd probably
> be
>
>    liang2 dian3 qian3 wo3 qu4 guo4 fang1-zi0.
>    two    hour  ago   I   go  EXP  house
>
> (The `guo4' indicates that the action is over and one went back to the
> garden also.)
>
> This uses `go'.  But would `lai2 guo4' be ungrammatical here?  I think
> so, but I don't have any proof or experience.
>
> But I'm not really sure.  Interesting question...
>
> **Henrik

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