Saying that English is subject-prominent means that English prefers to put the subject first, obeying its SVO word order. In the sentence “John likes cheese”, the subject is “John” as he is the one doing the liking. The subject of a sentence is the person (or thing) that performs the action in the sentence. This sounds complicated but is actually fairly straightforward. One of biggest differences between English and Mandarin sentence structure is that Mandarin is topic-prominent, whereas English is subject-prominent.

Mandarin sentence structure is topic-prominent Note how in each case the modifier comes before the thing it’s modifying. Nàge hěn gāo de nánrén cōngcōng de zǒule. Some examples with modifiers highlighted in green: To attach qualities to things, so it goes in between the modifier and the thing that’s been modified. Modern Mandarin and Classical Chinese both follow this rule.Īdjectives go before the nouns they modify and adverbs go before the verbs they modify. This is a great rule to learn, as it applies pretty much everywhere in the Chinese language. Mandarin sentence structure is pretty complicated, but there are a few general pointers that make it easier to break down.Īpart from word order, the following points make useful guidelines: the “modifiers precede what they modify” rule, Mandarin’s topic-comment structure, balancing syllables, and “aspect not tense”.

Homework in mandarin