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Mandarin Vocabulary
Verbs 4

The verbs section is arranged differently than the other vocabulary lessons on this site. Instead of arranging words in terms of a theme, they will be arranged according to the type of object which they take.

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NP/S

The following verbs can take either a Noun Phrase or a Sentence as its object. In some cases the sentences can be viewed as a NP direct object followed by a VP as an object complement. If these verbs appear without an object in the sentence, an object must be understood from the context. The first selection is the verb by itself or with a default object, the second and third are the verb and an NP object, and the fourth and fifth selections are the verb and a sentence object.

bang¹ zhu⁴	help	帮助
deng³	wait for	等
gan³ xie⁴	thank	感谢
jian⁴	see	见	**
jiao⁴	call	叫	**
jiang³	speak	讲
wen⁴	ask	问	**
liao³ jie³	understand	了解	def

VP/NP/S

The following verbs can take Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, or Sentences as their objects. In some cases, the object the verb takes alters the meaning of the verb. If these verbs appear without an object in the sentence, an object must be understood from the context. The first selection is the verb by itself or with a default object, the second and third are the verb and an NP object, the fourth and fifth selections are the verb and a VP object, and the last two selections are the verb and a sentence object.

xi³ huan¹	like	喜欢				**
yao⁴	want/need	要				**

None

Mandarin has a few verbs that are generally intransitive (do not take an object). There are ways to give these verbs an object like most other Chinese verbs, but they do not need either explicit or understood objects to be grammatical in common speech.

shui⁴ jiao⁴	sleep	睡觉	"jiao⁴ " can be seen as the object of "shui⁴ ", and there are grammar constructions where "shui^2* " can be reduplicated and act as its own object(e.g. shui⁴ yi¹ shui⁴ )
ku¹	cry	哭	as with fan shui⁴ jiao⁴ , ku¹ can be reduplicated
zhu⁴	reside	住	zhu⁴ can take a place as its object, though this is simply omitting the location marker zai⁴
xiao⁴	smile	笑	xiao⁴ can also mean "to laugh at" or "to mock", in which case it can take an NP, which is the object of mockery.
xiu¹ xi²	take a break		this verb can take a time period as an object

Notes

IO- This verb can take an Indirect Object
RC- Can take a resultative complement in place of an object
Def- The first choice in the box is the verb's default object

jian⁴ means "to see", not to watch.

jiao⁴ is a very versatile verb. It is used to mean "to call" in the sense of "call something a name", "call out to someone", and also "call someone over". It also is used to mean "tell someone or ask someone to do something".

wen⁴ , when taking a sentence as an object, always takes an interrogative (question) sentence.

xi³ huan¹ can mean to "prefer" as well as "to like".

yao¹ can often be ambiguous. It can mean "to want", "to need", "to require". At times it is ambiguous. The default meaning should be "to need" since there are unambiguous ways of expressing the other meanings. It is also alternately read with the fourth tone, depending on how it is being used.

Verbs 1 | Verbs 2 | Verbs 3 | Verbs 4