得/的/地 – a plague on all your houses!
Insanity, embrace me in that firm 34C bosom.
As Chris's comments to the previous post reveal, this whole thing gets murkier and messier by the minute. (See, it's even making me alliterate. Not a good sign.)
Obviously, the construction is [verb]得[verb] and, depending on the nature of the verb, we might be talking about a consequence or manner (the latter functioning pretty much like an adverb).
Anyway, let me address the following from Chris's last comment to the previous post.
This seems to be PC and R causing confusion by using pinyin. They say
From the index, I can only assume that the de of tā hěn kuài de pǎozhe is 得, although at first I thought it was 地 – and why not? I'm seeing something functioning as an adverb. It's telling me something about the action. But after I checked again, it seemed that the marker was 得. Huh? Yeah, you heard. Huh? Bottom line – PC and R don't make it clear which de they mean, and from recent evidence, 得 seems more likely.
This tends to come back to the issue of words like 快 kuài "fast". In English, this is an adjective as in "the fast car" or "the car is fast". It's also one of those adjective in English which has the same form when it's an adverb (e.g. "The car was travelling fast"; substitute "quickly" for "fast" if you think Uncle Angel's talking through his rusty halo). In Chinese, 快 is both an adjective and a (stative) verb. It's an adjective in 很快的车 hěn kuài de chē "the fast car" (I believe I'm using the right 的 de), but the predicative form doesn't require some form of the verb be as we do in English. That's implicit, hence 车很快 "The car [is] (very) fast".
If the car is travelling fast, should I be using 地 or 得? My English-speaking brain is saying 地. If that's the equivalent to -ly and I can't see any consequences or manners, it'd seem to be the better option. In probably bad Chinese, 车很快地去 (chē hěn kuàide qù). If 车很快得去 is (semi-)grammatical, would it actually mean anything different? "The car is fast with respect to its going."
My own tubby dictionary (New Age Concise Chinese-English Dictionary) gives the following entries for 得 de.
Well, that helped. [Sarcasm? Was I right? –ed.] Just pretend you didn't see 底 because I'm having quite enough trouble with this as it is without some other character meaning de.
I thought I might be making some progress with this, but I'm not sure I am. I know there's a [[verb]得[verb]] construction. Let's savour that moment of certainty.
As Chris's comments to the previous post reveal, this whole thing gets murkier and messier by the minute. (See, it's even making me alliterate. Not a good sign.)
Obviously, the construction is [verb]得[verb] and, depending on the nature of the verb, we might be talking about a consequence or manner (the latter functioning pretty much like an adverb).
Anyway, let me address the following from Chris's last comment to the previous post.
No,no,no.... 很快地跑着，NOT 很快得跑着
This seems to be PC and R causing confusion by using pinyin. They say
14.1 Adverbials of manner consist of adjectives, normally two-syllable, followed by the particle de.
From the index, I can only assume that the de of tā hěn kuài de pǎozhe is 得, although at first I thought it was 地 – and why not? I'm seeing something functioning as an adverb. It's telling me something about the action. But after I checked again, it seemed that the marker was 得. Huh? Yeah, you heard. Huh? Bottom line – PC and R don't make it clear which de they mean, and from recent evidence, 得 seems more likely.
This tends to come back to the issue of words like 快 kuài "fast". In English, this is an adjective as in "the fast car" or "the car is fast". It's also one of those adjective in English which has the same form when it's an adverb (e.g. "The car was travelling fast"; substitute "quickly" for "fast" if you think Uncle Angel's talking through his rusty halo). In Chinese, 快 is both an adjective and a (stative) verb. It's an adjective in 很快的车 hěn kuài de chē "the fast car" (I believe I'm using the right 的 de), but the predicative form doesn't require some form of the verb be as we do in English. That's implicit, hence 车很快 "The car [is] (very) fast".
If the car is travelling fast, should I be using 地 or 得? My English-speaking brain is saying 地. If that's the equivalent to -ly and I can't see any consequences or manners, it'd seem to be the better option. In probably bad Chinese, 车很快地去 (chē hěn kuàide qù). If 车很快得去 is (semi-)grammatical, would it actually mean anything different? "The car is fast with respect to its going."
My own tubby dictionary (New Age Concise Chinese-English Dictionary) gives the following entries for 得 de.
1. Used after certain verbs to indicate possibility or feasibility.
这种蘑菇吃得 (zhè zhǒng mógu chīde) "Mushrooms of this kind are edible."
这东西晒得晒不得 (zhè dōngxi shàide shàibùde) "Can we dry it in the sun or not?"
2. Used between a verb and its complement to indicate possibility.
买得起 (mǎide qǐ) "can afford (sth.)"
过得去 (guòde qù) "passable; so-so"
你到底拿得动还是拿不动 (nǐ dào de náde dòng hái shì nábùdòng) "Can you carry this or not?"
3. Used after a verb or an adjective to introduce a complement of result or degree.
玩得痛快 (wánde tòngkuai) "enjoy oneself to one's hearts content; have a wonderful time."
风刮得很大 (fēng guāde hěn dà) "The wind is blowing hard."
Well, that helped. [Sarcasm? Was I right? –ed.] Just pretend you didn't see 底 because I'm having quite enough trouble with this as it is without some other character meaning de.
I thought I might be making some progress with this, but I'm not sure I am. I know there's a [[verb]得[verb]] construction. Let's savour that moment of certainty.
Comments
Now:
很快地跑 or 很快得跑?
Definitely 地. Why? Because here 快 is not a stative verb. The verb is 跑, therefore 很快地 is an adverb modifying 跑.
很快得跑 to me looks like 'He was runningly fast' or 'He was fast, consequently he was running.' Either way, it doesn't make much sense in either English or Chinese.
很快地跑 is definitely '(subject) was running fast.' Well, the exact subject and tense depend on the context, obviously.
So, to make things as clear as possible, in this case:
很快地 is the adverb
跑 is the verb
Therefore, 地, definitely.