Editing Chinese language (section)

== Grammar ==
{{Main|Chinese grammar}}
{{See also|Chinese classifiers}}

Chinese is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a ''[[morpheme]]'', the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both [[Bound and free morphemes|bound and free]], such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of the more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic {{em|[[words]]}}, especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is [[phonetic erosion]]: sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including the tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English.{{efn|name=DeFrancis p42}}

Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic [[compound word|compounds]]. In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in {{zhi|c=窟窿|p=kūlong}} from {{zhi|c=孔|p=kǒng}}; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to a corresponding increase in the number of [[homophone]]s. As an example, the small ''Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary''<ref>{{cite book |title=Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary |editor-first=Peter |editor-last=Terrell |publisher=Langenscheidt KG |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-58573-057-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/langenscheidtpoc00lang}}</ref> lists six words that are commonly pronounced as {{tlit|zh|shí}} in Standard Chinese:
{| class="wikitable" cellpadding="5"
! Character !! Gloss !! {{abbr|MC|Middle Chinese}}{{efn|Using [[Baxter's transcription for Middle Chinese]]}} !! Cantonese
|-
| {{zhi|c=十}}
| 'ten' || {{tlit|ltc|dzyip}} || {{tlit|yue|sap6}}
|-
|{{zhi|s=实|t=實}}
| 'actual' || {{tlit|ltc|zyit}} || {{tlit|yue|sat6}}
|-
| {{zhi|s=识|t=識}}
| 'recognize' || {{tlit|ltc|syik}} | {{tlit|lmc|dzyek}} || {{tlit|yue|sik1}}
|-
| {{zhi|c=石}}
| 'stone' || {{tlit|ltc|dzyi}} || {{tlit|yue|sek6}}
|-
| {{zhi|s=时|t=時}}
| 'time' || {{tlit|ltc|dzyi}} || {{tlit|yue|si4}}
|-
| {{zhi|c=食}}
| 'food' || {{tlit|ltc|zyik}} || {{tlit|yue|sik6}}
|}

In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century [[Yuen Ren Chao]] poem ''[[Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den]]'' exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced {{transliteration|cmn|shi}}. As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only the first one, {{zhi|c=十}}, normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of
{| class="wikitable" cellpadding="5"
! Word !! Pinyin !! Gloss
|-
| {{zhi|s=实际|t=實際}}
| {{tlit|cmn|shíjì}} || 'actual-connection'
|-
| {{zhi|s=认识|t=認識}}
| {{tlit|cmn|rènshi}} || 'recognize-know'
|-
| {{zhi|s=石头|t=石頭}}
| {{tlit|cmn|shítou}} || 'stone-head'
|-
| {{zhi|s=时间|t=時間}}
| {{tlit|cmn|shíjiān}} || 'time-interval'
|-
| {{zhi|c=食物}}
| {{tlit|cmn|shíwù}} || 'foodstuff'
|}
respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable is specifically meant.

However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, {{zhi|c=石|p=shí}} alone, and not {{zhi|s=石头|t=石頭|p=shítou}}, appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as {{zhi|c=石膏|p=shígāo|l=plaster}}, {{zhi|c=石灰|p=shíhuī|l=lime}}, {{zhi|c=石窟|p=shíkū|l=grotto}}, {{zhi|c=石英|l=quartz|p=shíyīng}}, and {{zhi|c=石油|p=shíyóu|l=petroleum}}. Although many single-syllable morphemes ({{zhi|c=字|p=zì}}) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as {{zhi|s=词|t=詞|p=cí}}, which more closely resembles the traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese {{tlit|zh|cí}} can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more.

Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include {{zhi|s=汉堡包|t=漢堡包|p=hànbǎobāo|l=hamburger}}, {{zhi|s=守门员|t=守門員|p=shǒuményuán|l=goalkeeper}}, and {{zhi|s=电子邮件|t=電子郵件|p=diànzǐyóujiàn|l=e-mail}}.

All varieties of modern Chinese are [[analytic language]]s: they depend on [[syntax]] (word order and sentence structure), rather than [[inflectional morphology]] (changes in the form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|p=10}} In other words, Chinese has very few [[grammatical inflection]]s—it possesses no [[tenses]], no [[grammatical voice|voices]], no [[grammatical number]],{{efn|There are plural markers in the language, such as {{zhi|s=们|t=們|p=men}}, used with personal pronouns.}} and only a few [[Article (grammar)|articles]].{{efn|A distinction is made between {{zhi|c=他|l=he}} and {{zhi|c=她|l=she}} in writing, but this was only introduced in the 20th century—both characters remain exactly homophonous.}} They make heavy use of [[grammatical particle]]s to indicate [[grammatical aspect|aspect]] and [[grammatical mood|mood]]. In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as {{zhi|c=了|p=le|l={{gcl|PFV}}}}, {{zhi|s=还|t=還|p=hái|l=still}}, and {{zhi|s=已经|t=已經|p=yǐjīng|l=already}}.

Chinese has a [[subject–verb–object word order]], and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the [[topic–comment]] construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of [[classifier (linguistics)|classifiers]] and [[measure word]]s, another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of [[serial verb construction]], [[pro-drop language|pronoun dropping]], and the related [[null subject language|subject dropping]]. Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences.