哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace
Today we’re going to talk about a special grammar point in Chinese
the 把 construction
Many of my students have told me that
they don’t understand why we use 把
and therefore don’t know when to use it
So today let’s figure this out together!
First of all, what is the 把 construction?
As you might know, the basic Chinese word order is SVO
and the 把 construction has a different word order: S + 把O + VP
把 was commonly used as a verb, meaning “to hold”
and now it’s a function word
You can imagine that 把 originally means “to hold”
and when you hold something
you have control over it and can do something to it
So we use the 把 construction to indicate
what the subject does to the object
which causes the object to have some change
Also, in the 把 construction
because the new information is about the object of the sentence
the object is something we want to talk about
so it would be something already familiar to both of us
and important in our conversation.
For example,
Let’s take a look at the difference between
“我吃完飯了” (SVO) and “我把飯吃完了” (S把O+VP)
When you say “我吃完飯了”
we pay attention to the subject and what the subject did
the object however is not so important
Let’s see an example
In this conversation, the focus is on talking about what the person did
and there isn’t a certain object there that they want to talk about
so we wouldn’t use the 把 construction
Now let’s see when we would say “我把飯吃完了”
In this case, the person wanted to talk about
what she did to that certain object
and that caused it to be gone now
The object is important in their conversation so 把 is used here
So remember, when we focus on what a subject does,
we use the SVO structure
However if we want to focus on what a subject does to a certain object
and also the change that the object undergoes
we use the 把 construction
Now let’s have a small test:
If I ask you "他做了什麼？"
How would you respond?
Ａ他吃了蛋糕
Ｂ他把蛋糕吃了
The answer is A, because we want to focus on what he does
so the conversation could be…
Now if I ask you "我剛才買的蛋糕呢？"
How would you respond?
Ａ他吃了蛋糕
Ｂ他把蛋糕吃了
The answer is B, because there is a certain object we want to talk about
and we use the 把 construction to express what he did to the cake
and what happened to it
so the conversation could be…
Okay now let’s see some common situations where we would use 把:
The first one is
When we talk about what changes to make to a certain object
For example,
Here we are talking about making a change in position to the mug
so we use 把
When we’re moving, or decorating a house,
we often use the 把 construction
because we’re talking about where to put objects
Let’s see some examples,
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Other than using the 把 construction
to talk about what changes to make to a certain object
We can also use the 把 construction
to ask someone to do something to a certain object
For instance,
In addition, we use the 把 construction
to talk about what someone did to a certain object
and what happened to the object
For example,
Okay, now let’s do a quick recap:
When we focus on what a subject does, we use the SVO structure.
However if we focus on what a subject does to a certain object
and also the change that the object undergoes,
we use the 把 construction.
We often use the 把 construction when we…
1. Talk about what changes to make to a certain object
2. Ask someone to do something to a certain object
3. Talk about what someone did to a certain object and what happened to it
The 把 construction expresses the changes made to the object
so you can’t say “他把飯吃”, “我把功課寫” or “媽媽把家打掃”,
because they don’t express the changes made to the object,
so to make them correct,
you can say “他把飯吃完了”, “我把功課寫好了”, “媽媽把家打掃乾淨了”.
When you want to add negation words like “不” or “沒”
or auxiliary verbs like “會”, “想”, “可以” in the sentence,
put them before the 把.
For example, “我沒把功課寫完 I didn’t finish the assignment”
or “你可以把筆拿給我嗎？Could you hand me the pen?”
The 把 construction is a special grammar point in Mandarin
so it’s going to take you some time to get used to it.
But hopefully this video helped you have a better understanding of it.
I don’t want to scare you
but there are some advanced usages of the 把 construction,
like you might hear people say…
If you’re interested to know
why the 把 construction is used in these sentences
and you want to learn how to use them,
please let me know in the comments!
Okay, that’s all for today!
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And also if you’d like to learn some daily Mandarin expressions,
check out my instagram @gracemandarin
那我們就下次見囉！拜拜！ 那我们就下次见啰！拜拜！ I’ll see you next time! Bye!