2.10 Time Comes Before the Verb — Epoché
What you will be able to do Put an expression of time after the subject and before the verb, where Mandarin wants it. Move the time expression to the head of the sentence, in front of the subject, and say what that changes. Order the parts of a time expression from the largest unit to the smallest. Say why a Mandarin sentence needs its time word more than an English sentence does. Prerequisites : 2.7, which gave you the clock and the calendar. This lesson is about where those expressions go once they are in a sentence: 2.7 Grammar . This lesson deals with another word-order habit that English speakers carry into Mandarin and have to unlearn. Lesson 2.6 dealt with the question word that refuses to move to the front. Here it is the expression of time, which English usually puts at the end of the sentence and Mandarin puts early, before the verb. It is one of the easier habits to fix, because the choice is small: after the subject, which is the ordinary place, or in front of the subject to set the scene. It is also the place where the design of the language becomes visible. Mandarin verbs do not change for tense: the word for "go" is the same word whether you went, are going or will go. Something else has to say when, and very often that something is the time expression. English can leave the time unsaid because the verb is carrying it. Mandarin often cannot, and its grammar gives the time expression a fixed early position rather than an afterthought at the end. The pattern The default position is between the subject and the verb. Subject, time, verb, object. Everything else you have learned keeps its place; the time word simply slots in after the subject. The corpus shows it with two different times, and with verbs and an adjective. 我明天能来。 [1] is "I can come tomorrow": I, tomorrow, can, come. 他明天会来。 [2] is "he will come tomorrow". 我今天很忙。 [3] is "I'm busy today", and it shows that the rule holds for the adjective predicate of lesson 2.3 as well as for verbs: I, today, hěn , busy. Read all three aloud and notice that the English translations all end with the time word and all three Mandarin originals have it in second place. Past time behaves identically, because nothing in the sentence changes for tense. 我昨天很忙。 [4] is "I was busy yesterday", and the only difference from the sentence before it is the time word. English had to change am to was ; Mandarin changed nothing. 她昨天去那里。 [5] is "she went there yesterday": the verb is the same word as in "she goes there", nothing in the sentence is a past form, and the time word is still in second place. (In conversation a single finished trip like this usually also takes the particle of lesson 2.14; the point here is only where the time word goes.) Chinese English 我每天去上班。 [6] I go to work every day. 她每天学习英语。 [7] She studies English every day. 我每天都吃水果。 [8] I eat fruit every day. 我早上会在家。 [9] I'll be at home in the morning. 她早上在那儿。 [10] She's there in the morning. 我在晚上工作。 [11] I work at night. Every one of those six English translations ends with the time expression and every one of the six Mandarin sentences has it immediately after the subject. Read the column top to bottom and the pattern becomes a shape you can see rather than a rule you have to remember. The last row adds a preposition before the time word, which is possible with parts of the day; the position is the same with or without it. The same position holds in a question, which is worth checking because it joins this lesson to lesson 2.6. In lesson 2.6 you read a corpus question asking what time somebody goes home, and the question word stood exactly where the hour stands in the twelfth and thirteenth sentences below. That is the substitution rule and this rule working together: the time slot is early, and a question about the time puts its question word in that early slot rather than at the front of the sentence. Nothing has to be remembered twice. Largest unit first When a time expression has more than one part, the parts run from the largest unit to the smallest. A day comes before a part of that day, a part of the day comes before the hour, and the hour comes before the minute. There are no exceptions and no alternative orders. Chinese English 我每天6点起床。 [12] I get up at six every day. 她早上7点起床。 [13] She gets up at seven in the morning. 我晚上睡觉很早。 [14] At night I go to bed early. The first two rows each have two parts, and in both the wider unit comes first: every-day then six-o'clock, morning then seven-o'clock. A full date and time runs the same way all the way down: year, month, day, part of day, hour, minute, and then the verb. English does the reverse, working outwards from the smallest unit: "at seven in the morning on the eighth of April". If you find yourself building an English-shaped time expression, the cure is to say the units aloud in order of size before you say the sentence. The third row is worth a second look, because it contains two different kinds of word that both look like time. The night is the time expression and sits in the normal place, before the verb. The word for "early" at the end does not name a point in time: it is a comment on the timing, used as the predicate, and that is why it can stand at the end. Keep the two apart. A word naming a time goes early; a comment on how early or late something happened can be the predicate, as here, or stand before the verb, as 很晚 does in 他晚上很晚回家 "he gets home late at night". Moving the time word to the front The time expression may also stand in front of the subject, at the very head of the sentence. 今天我回家。 [15] is "today I am going home", with the time first and the subject second. This position is not a free alternative; it sets the scene, and it is the natural choice when the time is what the sentence is about, or when the same subject is being contrasted across two times. When there is no subject at all, the time word necessarily comes first. 明天会有风。 [16] is "it will be windy tomorrow": tomorrow, will, have, wind. English n