Classical Chinese (2) Four basic elements in Classical Chinese Sentences

There are four basic elements in Classical Chinese sentences. To understand the sentences, we have to distinguish what the elements of the words are. Here are the four elements.

1.      Noun (will be marked as [N] in my blog.)

2.      Verb (will be marked as [V] in my blog.)

There are many types of verb in classical Chinese. Some of them are not considered verbs in English. For example, in modern Chinese, there are not adjectives. The words considered to be adjectives in English are considered to be stative verbs in Chinese, because they are used as verb in Chinese. In classical Chinese, it is the same.

Another example is co-verb like “自zì (from)” is a verb in classical Chinese.

Besides, nouns can be used as verbs. Just like the example in “Introduction”: “父fù 不bú 父fù”. “父fù (father)” can be used as a verb.

3.      Attribute (will be marked as [A] in my blog.)

Attribute is the element to describe the main noun or verb.

4.      Grammatical particles (will be marked as [G] in my blog.)

Noun and verb and attribute can be words.  In addition, sometimes they are phrases which were formed by words.