2.11 Place with 在 — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say where something is with a single word that is both the verb and the preposition, and negate it. Put a place expression before the verb, in the slot after the time expression, where Mandarin wants it. Add the words for inside, on top and underneath to a noun, and say when they can be left out. Recognise the same syllable in front of a verb, where it does a different job that a later phase will take up. Prerequisites : 2.10, which put the time expression before the verb. Place turns out to work the same way, so this lesson is the second half of one rule: 2.10 Grammar for the first half, and 2.4 Grammar for the verb of existence that returns here. Lesson 2.10 said that an expression naming a point in time goes early, before the verb, and not at the end. Place does the same. If you have that habit already, most of this lesson is one word and three suffixes; if you have not, this is the second chance to acquire it, and having two rules point the same way is the best help you will get. The one word is 在 zài, and it is unusual enough to be worth a whole lesson on its own. It is a verb meaning "to be at" and it is also the preposition "at, in, on", and it is the same word in both jobs with no change of form. English needs two words for that, a form of be and a preposition, and keeping them apart is most of the difficulty English speakers have here. The pattern Start with the verb. Subject, 在 , place: that is a complete sentence and there is nothing else in it. 我在家。 [1] is "I am at home" and 我在中国。 [2] is "I'm in China". Count the words: three in Mandarin, against four in "I am at home". There is no separate word for am , because 在 is the verb, and there is no separate preposition, because 在 is that too. The negative is the plain one from lesson 2.3, placed in front. 他不在这里。 [3] is "he's not here". Being somewhere is a state, and states take that negative rather than the one for completed events, so this is the pattern you want whenever you are saying that someone is out. The subject can be a thing as easily as a person. 书在桌子上。 [4] is "the book is on the table". Look at the end of that sentence and you will see a word after the noun for table; hold that until the third section, because it is the other half of how Mandarin builds a place. Now the preposition. Put 在 with its place in front of the verb and you have said where an action happens. Subject, place, verb, object. Chinese English 我在这里吃。 [5] I eat here. 我们在学校学英文。 [6] We study English at school. 我在里面等你。 [7] I'll wait for you in here. 明天在学校见。 [8] See you tomorrow at school. Every one of those four English translations has the place at the end and every one of the four Mandarin originals has it before the verb. Read the column aloud and the shape settles faster than the rule does. The fourth row is the one to study, because it has a time expression as well and it shows the order when both are present: time first, then place, then the verb. That is the ordering rule of the last lesson extended by one slot. Compare it with 我们昨天在学校。 [9] "we were at school yesterday", where there is no second verb, so the time comes before 在 in its job as the verb. Either way the time word is further to the left than the place word, which is the reverse of the English habit of saying the place first and the time last. Place after the verb A small group of verbs puts 在 and its place after the verb instead of before it, and they are worth learning as a set because they are common. 我住在这里。 [10] is "I live here", with the verb for living first and the place second. 我生在中国。 [11] is "I was born in China", built the same way. What these verbs have in common is that the place is where someone stays or something ends up: living, being born, sitting, standing, and putting something down (where it is the thing put down, not the subject, that ends up there). The place is not the setting of the action but its result, so it follows the verb, exactly as an object would. A few of them, the verb for living among them, are also heard with the place in front. For most other verbs the place is the setting and it comes first. If you are unsure which kind you have, ask whether the sentence is saying where something happened or where something finished up. Inside, on top and underneath Mandarin does not treat an ordinary noun as a place. A table is a thing; the top of the table is a place; and the difference is marked by a word after the noun. So "on the table" is the noun for table followed by 上 shàng, and there is no way to leave it out. English does this work with the choice of preposition in front of the noun, so a learner who translates word for word produces a place with a hole in it. Three of these words cover most of what you need. After a noun they can be used as they are or with 面 miàn added, and the meaning hardly changes; but only the longer forms can serve as a place with no noun in front (see the word list). Word Where it puts things 里 （ 裡 ）, or 里面 inside: in a room, in a box, in a house 上 , or 上面 on, on top of, on the surface of 下 , or 下面 under, underneath, below The corpus shows them in both of the frames you now know, the one with 在 and the one with the verb of existence from lesson 2.4. Chinese English 我在家里。 [12] I'm at home. 房间里有人吗？ [13] Is there anyone in the room? 桌子上有本书。 [14] There is a book on the table. 桌子下面有一只猫。 [15] There is a cat under the table. The last three are the existential frame: place, the verb for having, thing. Lesson 2.4 gave it as "place has thing", and the localiser is what turns the noun into the place it needs. English inverts the whole sentence and invents a subject, "there is", where Mandarin simply begins with the place. There is one exception worth having, and the first row bears on it. Nouns that are already places do not need the extra word: home, school, a country, a city. With a country or a city it is not added at all: 在中国 , never 在中国里 . With home and school it is optional: 我在家里。 and the 我在家。 of the first se