1.Word order, an important syntactic tool used to form phrases
As a language having no inflections, Chinese is more dependent on word order than English. Words in different orders tell different grammatical nature or different meanings in phrases, e.g.
红花(red flower) ---- endocentric phrase
花红(The flower is red) ---- subject-predicate phrase
医学(medical science) ---- endocentric phrase
学医(study medical science) ---- verb-object phrase
爱她(love her) ---- verb-object phrase
她爱(she loves) ---- subject-predicate phrase
演唱会(concert) ---- endocentric phrase
会演唱(be good at singing) ---- verb-object phrase
银行信贷(bank credit) ---- endocentric phrase
信贷银行(credit bank) ---- endocentric phrase
2. Multifunctional words
Having no inflections, most Chinese words can be used in a multifunctional way. A word may work in different positions and at different posts in phrase without changing its form. We take the word “发展” as an example. Firstly, let's see what grammatical nature the word is:
Testing way Yes/No
Can it follow a numeral-classifier just as a noun does? No
Can it be modified by a "不" just as a verb or an adjective does? Yes
Can it be modified by a "很" just as an adjective does? No
Can it be followed by an object just as a verb does? Yes
Note
You can say 发展经济.You shouldn't say 很发展. Correctly, you can say 很发达. You can say 不发展.You can not say 一个发展. It is ungrammatical.
According to the above test, the word “发展” can't be a noun or an adjective, but should be classified as a verb. Now let's see what functions in Chinese phrases the word may have:
Function
as the predicate core eg. 发展生产 (develop production)
as the object eg. 期待发展 (hope for development)
as the subject eg. 发展是主题。(Development is the theme.)
as an attribute eg. 发展过程 (process of development）
as the head qualified by an attribute eg. 中国的发展 (China's development)
as an adverbial eg. 发展地看问题 (look at things in a development way )
So, be sure not to take “发展” as a noun or an adjective or even an adverb when you meet it in different positions as exampled above. Otherwise you would be misled and so confused why a Chinese word may belong to almost every classes without any indication in its form. “Can it be superfluous to make Chinese words classified?”
