I can’t tell you how many times I see students get their duration structure in a pickle – even advanced students seem to get this wrong quite often. By duration structure, I mean when you want to say how long an action was done for e.g. ‘I watched Korean dramas FOR 3 HOURS.’ [though it really should be NO HOURS, because they suck 😉 ]. Now, remember that there are TWO different ways to ‘do the duration’, as it were. Let’s take a look:
PATTERN #1: subject + verb + object + verb + 了 + duration
PATTERN #2: subject + verb + 了 + duration + (的) + object
I think that for most people, provided that they know what a ‘subject’ is and what a ‘verb’, an ‘object’ and a ‘duration’ are, they can follow these patterns and fill each slot with the right word. The problem, in my humble opinion, is that they don’t have an intuitive FEEL of why it should be said this way – it’s just a random structure, or so it seems.
For PATTERN #1, the logic is to ‘say what happened’ and THEN ‘say how long it took’. If you look at the word order pattern above, you’ll notice that PATTERN #1 in fact begins with subject + verb + object – essentially a full sentence. We then need to add 了 and say the duration, but as we already know, we can’t put 了 on the end of a noun, and have to add it to the end of a VERB. That’s one reason why we copy the verb (or reduplicate it, if you prefer longer words) – to license the presence of the 了. Note also that this way of expressing duration is also quite ‘topic-comment’ in flavour (see the previous tip, tip #7) e.g. ‘I watch TV, (and I) watched it for 3 hours’ (notice how I killed off the K-dramas from the example – shame). You may in fact recall that this is not the only structure in which we copy the verb – we’ve also done it with the complement of degree structure, which uses 得 e.g. 她唱歌唱得很好听. So let’s try a few examples with PATTERN #1:
我学汉语学了很久。 ‘I learnt Chinese for a long time.’
我昨天跑步跑了一个多小时。 ‘I ran for more than an hour yesterday.’
老师训我们训了好半天。 ‘The teacher was telling us off for ages.’
Now let’s take a look at PATTERN #2. The logic for this one is something like ‘I’ve watched 3 hours OF TV.’ In this pattern, we make the duration a part of the object (hence it is linked to the noun with 的 – though this 的 is often dropped). Here’s some examples:
大家上了一整天的课，可是晚上还得做作业、复习今天的生词。
‘Everyone has had a full day of classes, but still has to do homework and revise today’s new words in the evening.’
我才睡了一个小时觉就被邻居吵醒了。
‘I only slept an hour before being woken up by the noise coming from my neighbour’s house.’
Note that in both of these patterns, there are times when the 了 should be dropped, but these are usually in the same contexts in which you wouldn’t use 了 anyway e.g. with habitual actions, when speaking more hypothetically etc. Take a look at some examples without 了:
PATTERN #1 example:
如果上课上一个小时，我们到Chadstone可能来不及了。
‘If we have class for an hour, we perhaps can’t make it to Chadstone in time.’
PATTERN #2 example:
从今天开始，我每天都要复习一个小时汉字。
‘Starting from today, I want to study characters for an hour every day.’
So, there we have it. The 2 ways to express duration in Chinese.
OR, MAYBE THERE’S ALSO A THIRD WAY???? *cue dramatic music*
The super ‘on it’ ones amongst you maybe noticed that both of the above 2 patterns used action verbs (action verbs being verbs like ‘run’, ‘jump’, ‘learn’, ‘study’, ‘speak’, ‘read’ etc.). However, what happens when we want to give the duration of a state verb like 有 ‘have’、认识 ‘know’、住在中国 ‘be in China’ etc., which are clearly not actions? Well, in these cases, there’s another pattern (with a few variations):
PATTERN #3: subject + verb + object + (已经) + (有) + duration + 了
The logic for this one is something like ‘I have been living in China, and it’s already been 3 years now.’ Here’s a few examples to whet your appetite:
我们认识已经三年了。
‘We’ve known each other for 3 years now.’
我的家人住在中国已经有十几年了。
‘My family have been living in China for more than 10 years now.’
我这么难过大概有一年多了吧。
‘I’ve been feeling this sad for probably a year or more.’
So, Anthony老师, we’re probably done now, right? Just the 2 different patterns for action verbs and the 1 pattern (with variations) for state verbs. What more could there be?
Sorry, but there’s one more thing to tell you – though it’s not another pattern, thankfully. There are some verbs which indicate actions that are what we call ‘punctual’ in nature – this means they are perceived by the relevant language as having no duration, and instead are considered to either ‘have happened’ or ‘not have happened’. In English, an example of this kind of verb is sneeze – generally we don’t say ‘I am sneezing’, just ‘I sneezed’; in other words, to us English-speakers, ‘sneezing’ is an action that just…well, happens.
In Chinese, there are some action verbs that we think of as having a duration in English, but which the Chinese consider to be ‘punctual’ in nature, like ‘sneeze’. Such verbs that English and Chinese speakers perceive differently include: 死 ‘die’ – in English you can be ‘dying’, but in Chinese you can’t be 正在死; 来 ‘come’ – in English you can say ‘Alright, I’m coming!’, but in Chinese you can’t say you are 在来 and have to say you 来了 instead; and 去 ‘go’, which is similar to 来.
For this ‘punctual’ / ‘non-durative’ kind of action verb in Chinese, you need to use the structure for state verbs i.e. PATTERN #3, BUT, you have to be careful of the meaning. You’ll see what I mean below:
我父亲死了已经三年了。
‘It’s been three years since my dad died / My dad has been dead for three years.’
NOT: ‘My dad has been dying for three years.’
我来北京已经三个月了。
‘I’ve been in Beijing for three months now.’
NOT: ‘I’ve been coming (as in, travelling) to Beijing for three years.’
他们分手快一个月了。
‘They’ll soon have been broken up for a month.’
NOT: ‘They’ve been breaking up for almost a month.’
你去多久？
‘How long will you be there for / how long are you going for?’
NOT: ‘How long will you be going (i.e. travelling) there for?’
And that’s it – we’re done! Hardly any textbook gives the structure for expressing the duration of states, so treasure this knowledge!
Peace!
中文秘诀 | The Secret of Chinese 