All language depends on context. I was thinking about this in the context of my latest Chinese homework (faults my own): The task is to connect a set of given words to make sentences.1
Given a list of words, arrange them into sentences.
明天 - 起了床 - 去跑步 - 就 - 打算 - 我
她 - 睡觉 - 下班 - 就 - 一 - 想
开会 - 老板 - 喝咖啡 - 想 - 就 - 一
邮件 - 回家 - 我 - 就 - 了 - 写完
The first time I went through the list, I came up with these answers:
明天我打算起了床就去跑步。
Tomorrow I plan to get up and go for a run right away.
她一下班就想睡觉。
As soon as she finishes work, she wants to sleep.
老板一想开会就喝咖啡。
As soon as the boss wants to have a meeting the boss drinks coffee.
我写完了邮件就回家。
After I finish writing the email, I’ll go home straight away.
I wasn’t sure about 3… and I was prompted to wonder about all the possible variations.
Variations
Sentences that don’t really work or make sense without additional context or clarification are marked *. The translations may not be quite right, or at all right. They reflect my attempts to figure things out. Please leave comments with corrections!
明天 - 起了床 - 去跑步 - 就 - 打算 - 我
明天我打算起了床就去跑步
Tomorrow, I plan to get up and go for a run right away.
我打算明天起了床就去跑步
I plan that tomorrow I’ll get up and go running right away.
她 - 睡觉 - 下班 - 就 - 一 - 想
她一下班就想睡觉
As soon as she finishes work she wants to sleep.
*她一睡觉就想下班
As soon as she sleeps she wants to finish work. This doesn’t make sense unless perhaps there is more context. Perhaps she is dreaming?
*她一想下班就睡觉
As soon as she wants to finish work she sleeps. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless perhaps the feeling of work usually keeps her awake.
她一想睡觉就下班
As soon as she wants to sleep she finishes work.
一下班她就想睡觉
As soon as work finishes, she wants to sleep.
*一睡觉她就想下班
As soon as asleep, she wants to finish work. Again, needs more context: dreaming?
*一想下班她就睡觉
As soon as wanting to finish work, she sleeps.
一想睡觉她就下班
As soon as wanting to sleep, she finishes work.
她想一下班就睡觉
She plans to sleep as soon as she gets off work.
*她想一睡觉就下班
She plans to get off work as soon as she falls asleep. Mmmh.
开会 - 老板 - 喝咖啡 - 想 - 就 - 一
老板一开会就想喝咖啡
As soon as the boss has a meeting the boss wants to drink coffee.
*老板一喝咖啡就想开会
As soon as the boss drinks coffee, the boss wants to have a meeting. This is not unimaginable. The impulse could be an interesting effect of coffee: having a coffee triggers the desire/need for a meeting, maybe a result of Pavlovian (self-)conditioning, or an irresistible creativity and need to share unleashed by the stuff.
老板一想开会就喝咖啡
As soon as the boss wants to have a meeting the boss drinks coffee.
*老板一想喝咖啡就开会
As soon as the boss wants to drink coffee the boss has a meeting.
一想开会老板就喝咖啡
Just when a meeting is wanted, the boss drinks coffee.
*一想喝咖啡老板就开会
Just when it is desired to drink coffee, the boss starts a meeting.
一开会老板就想喝咖啡
Just when a meeting starts, the boss wants to drink coffee.
*一喝咖啡老板就想开会
As soon as coffee is being drunk, the boss wants to start a meeting.
邮件 - 回家 - 我 - 就 - 了 - 写完
我写完了邮件就回家
After I finish writing the mail/letter, I’ll go home straight away.
写完了邮件我就回家
After finishing the mail/letter, I’ll go home straight away.
Note: 写完了 (finished/completed) has to be in front. 我回了家就写完邮件 (after returning home, I finish my mail ) doesn’t work unless I’m writing all the way back and finish writing at the moment of return. What would work is to change the order with an additional marker of future intent afterwards, e.g. 我回了家就 要/会 写完邮件 (After returning home I will finish writing the mail).
Reflections
Too often I ask whether a sentence I’ve come up with ‘makes sense’ without having thought it through. The natural response is: “what are you trying to say?” A sentence may be grammatically correct, but not make sense without further context.
老板一喝咖啡就想开会 is an example: it’s not natural to suppose that the act of drinking coffee would prompt ‘the boss’ to call a meeting right away. But one could make up a story within which that does make sense. Maybe there is a particular 'boss' and when 'this boss' has some time and drinks coffee ‘the boss’ has ideas and feels stimulated, and calls a meeting to talk them through. One might imagine that in this context ‘the boss is having coffee’ becomes a way of saying ‘get ready, a meeting is imminent.’
This is a distraction within a distraction: isn't 'boss' a strange word? I think so. And it feels stranger and stranger with repetition.
boss, n1.a. A protuberance or swelling on the body of an animal or plant; a convex or knob-like process or excrescent portion of an organ or structure; in 16th cent. applied to the lobe of the liver, spleen, etc....
boss, n6.a. An originally American equivalent of ‘master’ in the sense of employer of labour; applied also to a business manager, or any one who has a right to give orders. In England at first only in workmen's slang, or humorously, = ‘leading man, swell, top-sawyer’; now in general use in Britain.2
Context is important: obvious, but I forget it sometimes.
It’s important to know what one wants to say. But how do you know? And how do you know that you know? And, do you really know?
How does a thought arise and develop in language? Thought is inspired by familiarity with language. Language provides a structure of associations to take us from one stepping stone to another.
… l’idée vient en parlant.3
In language learning, when I don’t have immediate access to the ‘target language’, I have to refer back to the language I know and construct what I want to say. Everything is explicit and laborious, I am not at a level to shape language and thought creatively, and the expression is one-dimensional.
At some point, parts of the target language (should) become familiar, so that expression becomes more immediate. There may still be an underlying translation process, but it becomes more implicit, perhaps subconscious.
At a certain point the new language begins to interact with thoughts directly. You need to ‘think in Chinese’ my teacher said. It’s mysterious how that transition happens and how the interaction gradually develops (at least to me) and I suppose there are different theories connected to different theories of language learning.
The input/output model is useful because it focuses on the practical process… still, for a student there is a question of whether to focus on details and explicit understanding or whether to trust the process of gaining familiarity.
As my beginner’s homework shows, Chinese is precise, flexible, context dependent with levels of analogue richness that are new to me. To learn is to build nested feedback loops between intuition, feeling and an explicit understanding of structure.
Every language is “infinite” in that there is no limit on the variation of expression, but I think Chinese may be “more infinite” in that it can operate at different levels of definiteness and move between them seamlessly. It’s like being able to view pictures of a scene from a continuum of altitudes and resolutions. It is possible to speak in a highly resolved and definite way, but also possible to zoom-out and use the language in a way that leaves gaps, which must be filled in through context or imagination.
A feeling for these relative degrees of freedom and a sense of ‘countable’ or ‘uncountable’ infinities of expression may become most apparent in poetry and in the translation of poetry or poetic philosophy between languages.
Picture Credit: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Davoser Kaffee
Taken from a lesson from GoEast Mandarin where I’m doing 1:1 classes. The GoEast support and quality of teaching are excellent. Support has included helping me to work through my thoughts about how to learn (Chinese), allowing me to build confidence. Here’s a referral link (https://goeastmandarin.referral-factory.com/RiHNMR/join). Signing up through the link gives you a free lesson, and gives me a free lesson when I renew with GoEast.
"boss, n.6". OED Online. June 2022. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/21776?rskey=fNphxu&result=6&isAdvanced=false (accessed June 19, 2022).
Heinrich von Kleist, from an essay about how thoughts develop through speaking https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ueber_die_allmähliche_Verfertigung_der_Gedanken_beim_Reden. Various translations available, for a list of translations with a particular translation see here. For another translation, see here.