2.14 了 as "Already" — a First Look — Epoché
What you will be able to do Put the particle after a verb to say that the action is complete, and use it with an object and in a question. Give two kinds of evidence that the particle is not a past tense. Use it for the sense of English "already", including where no action has happened at all. Negate a completed action with the other negative, and drop the particle when you do. Prerequisites : 2.13, the A-not-A question, and the negative of 2.4 Grammar , which is the one this lesson needs. Keep 2.10 Grammar in mind as well, because the time expressions of that lesson are what actually place a sentence in the past. This is the last lesson of the Grammar volume in this phase, and it is the one where an English speaker is most likely to learn something wrong and keep it. The particle 了 le is described in many places as the past tense marker of Mandarin. It is not a tense marker of any kind, and treating it as one produces mistakes in both directions: the particle added to past sentences that do not want it, and dropped from sentences about a coming change, such as "we're nearly home", that need it. (Most sentences about the future take no particle; the ones that do present a change as imminent or already settled, usually with 快 or 就 .) The lesson has two halves, and the second is as important as the first. First, what the particle does. Then, what it does not do, which takes more space because it has to dislodge something. The pattern Put it after the verb and the action is presented as complete. 我吃了。 [1] is "I've eaten" and 他来了。 [2] is "he's come". Three syllables each, and nothing else in either sentence has changed: the verbs keep the one shape they have always had. With an object, the particle stays next to the verb and the object follows it. 我买了花。 [3] is "I bought flowers" (with a bare object like this the sentence can sound unfinished, and speakers often add a number or go on to another clause) and 我看了一本书。 [4] is "I read a book", with the counting word of lesson 2.8 doing its usual work between the number and the noun. Questions behave as questions have behaved throughout this volume. A question word goes where its answer would go, so 你买了什么？ [5] is "what did you buy?" with the question word in the object's place and the particle untouched. The question particle of lesson 2.5 simply follows: 你吃了吗？ [6] is "have you eaten yet?", which is also a traditional greeting, heard less often now than it once was. A time expression can be in the sentence as well. 我昨天去那儿了。 [7] is "I went there yesterday": the time word early, as lesson 2.10 requires, and the particle at the end, after the verb and its place. So the particle has two positions: straight after the verb, as in the first sentences of this section, and at the very end of the sentence, as here. They do related jobs. After the verb it presents the action as complete; at the end it announces that a new situation now holds. Several sentences below have it at the end, and this lesson reads both positions the same way, as "and now it is so". The second phase separates them. Why it is not a past tense Two pieces of evidence, and they point in opposite directions. The first is that a sentence can be plainly in the past with no particle anywhere. 我昨天去学校。 [8] is "I went to school yesterday", and 我昨天很忙。 [9] is "I was busy yesterday". Compare the first of those with the sentence that closed the last section: the same verb, the same time word, one with the particle and one without, and both translated into an English past tense. What puts them in the past is the time word, not the particle. A tense marker that can be left out of a past sentence is not a tense marker. The second piece of evidence is stronger: the particle appears in sentences about the future. 快到家了。 [10] is "we're nearly home", which has not happened yet, and 明天就开学了。 [11] is "school begins tomorrow", which is still a day away. A past tense has no business in a statement about something that has not happened yet. What the particle actually says is that a change has been completed, and the completion can be located anywhere in time. In the sentence about getting home, the change from being on the way to being home is presented as reached; the sentence is about the arrival of a new state, and the new state is imminent rather than past. Once you read the particle as "and now it is so" rather than as "-ed", both halves of the evidence stop being a puzzle. The sense of "already" This is why the particle so often corresponds to English "already", and why that is a better first gloss for it than the past tense. It frequently keeps company with the adverb for "already", which goes before the verb while the particle goes after it, so the two wrap around the verb: 他已经走了。 [12] is "he has left already". The clearest case has no action in it at all. 已经9点了。 [13] is "it is already nine o'clock". Nothing was done by anybody; what is reported is that a new state has been reached, namely that the time is now nine. The particle marks the arrival at that state, and there is no verb for it to be a tense of. A learner who reads the particle as a past tense cannot make sense of this sentence, and a learner who reads it as "and now it is so" has no difficulty with it. The negative, which drops the particle To say that something did not happen, use the negative that lesson 2.4 gave the verb of having, and leave the particle out. 我没吃饭。 [14] is "I haven't eaten" and 我昨天没去上班。 [15] is "I didn't go to work yesterday". The reason the particle goes is the same reason it was there in the first place. It says that a change was completed; the negative says that no such change took place; and asserting both at once would contradict itself. So in a simple sentence like these the two do not appear together: put that negative in front of the verb and leave the particle out. The adverb for "still" or "yet" combines with the negative for the useful sense of something not having happened so far. 他还没来。 [16] is "he hasn't come y