Chapter 3.Grammar and Culture（1）
1. Grammatical explicitness in English VS grammatical implicitness in Chinese
Grammatical morphemes（smallest units of meaning. Can classified into two categories:inflectional morpheme(such as –s, -es, ed, er, ing) and derivational(the other prefix and suffixes).）
Subjects and objects
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subjective
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I
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you
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He
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she
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It
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we
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You
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they
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objective
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Me
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You
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Him
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Her
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It
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Us
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You
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Them
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determinative
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My
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Your
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His
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Her
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Its
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Ours
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Your
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Their
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Genitive independent
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mine
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Yours
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his
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Hers
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its
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Ours
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your
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Their
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For example: 下雨了 it is raining
已经九点了 it is 9:00 already
很冷 it is very cold
In Chinese subjects and objects are equal in importance in that they are both deletable, as shown in the examples in the preceding paragraphs. We don’t’ mean to say that the subjects and objects are not important in Chinese, They are only “implicit” in some situations which is not synonymous to “less important.” English speakers refer to convey meaning explicitly, while the Chinese people, when having no problem identifying the subjects or objects in sentences, allow them to become implicit.
Paratactic and hypotactic relations
In many languages these linguistic units are related in meaningful ways. The ways in which the relationship beteen linguistic units are represented in speech or writing vary from language to language. It is often said that English is a hypotactic language and Chinese a paratactic one.
For examples:
Strike while the iron is hot 趁热打铁
We will not attack unless we are attacked 人不犯我，我不犯人。
It has been claimed that the English speaking people use more conjunctions more frequently because they are good at analytic thinking and thus understanding the relationship between linguistic units better, while the Chinese people who are inclined to think holistically may not like to indicate explicitly the logical relationship between the linguistic components in Sentences.
Recipients and modifiers
For example: John hit the pocket on the head 约翰打中小偷的脑袋
He caught me by the arm他抓住我的胳膊
He was deprived of the right t participate in the Olympic Games他被剥夺了参加奥运会的权力
He was robbed of all his money 他的钱被抢光了
These sentences show clearly in Chinese we simply use a noun phrase to convey the meaning expressed in English by a noun or pronoun and a prepositional phrase. In the Chinese noun phrase the equivalent to the recipient in English becomes a modifier. Chinese is structurally simpler than English in this connection.