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Making Sense of Grammar
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What is the difference between 我結了婚, 我結婚了 and 我結了婚了?

asked Jan 2, 2018 in Questions about Chinese Grammar by admin (25,520 points)
edited Apr 25, 2018 by admin | 1,941 views

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Le is an eventive marker that reports the actualization/realization of an event in time. When it follows right after a verb, it indicates the verb is actualized; When it follows an VP (Verb Phrase), it marks the whole VP as realized in time. The so-called ‘sentence-final le’ emphasizes the realization of the VP as it is time-relevant and thus more likely to be relevant to the current discourse.

我結了婚 (wǒ jié le hūn) only asserts the actualization of the verb . It semantically equals “I was married” in English.

我結婚了 (wǒ jié hūn le) asserts that the verb phrase 結婚 is realized. It semantically means “I am married / I have been married.”

我結了婚了 (wǒ jié le hūn le) is the combination of the phrases mentioned above, asserting the realization of the action 結 as well as the change of state 我結了婚.

Reference: Chinese: a linguistic introduction by Chao Fen Sun

answered Jan 2, 2018 by admin (25,520 points)
edited Apr 25, 2018 by admin

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