Thursday, October 8, 2015

Degree complement

We can use degree complements to modify verbs and adjectives. They always come after the word they modify. The structure is Verb/Adjective +  得 + Degree Complement.The chart below illustrates the structural pattern you should expect to see with degree complements. Note that the structural particle 得 is used in many cases, but not in every case.

Until now, you may have probably been getting by just fine modifying your verbs with adverbs. You can use 非常 to say "very" and all that. Great. But once you learn to use degree complements, a whole new layer of expressiveness is infused into your language. You will be able to express degree of verbs and adjectives with much more precision and color. But how do you know when to use the degree complement? Here are the main reasons to use it:


  • To express how a verb happened or assess its quality
  • To express to what extent (or degree) an adjective is true
For the first case, the most typical examples would be describing how well an action is done, or in asking how well an action is done:


  • 他 做 得 很 好 。The complement tells us that "he did it well."
  • 他 做 得 很 差 。The complement tells us that "he did it poorly."
  • 他 做 得 怎么样 ?The complement is used to ask "how he did it."

For the second case, instead of using the good old standby adverbs 很 and 非常, we can use all kinds of degree complements to spice up our adjective. In this case, the sample sentences below are going to revolve around how fat a cat is.


  • 猫 胖 得 很 。The complement tells us that "the cat is very fat."
  • 猫 胖 得 不得了 。The complement tells us that "the cat is terribly fat."
  • 猫 胖 死了 。The complement tells us that "the cat is fat to death" (but the cat didn't die; this is an exaggeration expressing the cat is very fat).
Please answer the questions by using the words given:


  1. 他说中文说得怎么样?(很,快 )
  2. 她说英文说得怎么样?( 非常,好 )
  3. 他解释得怎么样?(不太,清楚 )
  4. 她穿得怎么样?(特别,好看)
  5. 她长得怎么样?(不怎么样)
  6. 这个人跳舞跳得怎么样?(比较,不错)
  7. 你的想法想得怎么样?(有些,复杂 )
  8. 孩子们表现得怎么样? (好) 
  9. 今天天气怎么样?(热,暖和,凉快,冷,冻;不得了,极了,死了)
  10. 他怎么这么早就睡了?(累)

Please answer the questions 


  1. 你游泳游得怎么样? 
  2. 你唱歌唱得怎么样?
  3. 你跳舞跳得怎么样?
  4. 你写字写得怎么样?
  5. 你踢球踢得怎么样?



Reference:
http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Degree_complement

1 comment:

  1. Exercise: 怎么样 (zěn me yàng) How about/ What about

    https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/zenmeyang-how-about-what-about-beginner

    ReplyDelete