Chinese grammar语法: How to form a 把 sentence

Basic 把 sentences

A basic sentence in Mandarin is formed with a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, as in English:

Māo chī diào le jīn yú.
猫 吃 掉 了 金鱼。

The dog ate the goldfish.

A 把 sentence shakes things up a bit, and you get this structure:

subject+把+object+verb phrase

So you now have SOV word order:

Māo bǎ jīn yú chī diào le.
猫 把 金鱼 吃 掉 了。

The dog ate the goldfish.

You might notice that the character 掉 occurs after the verb in these two sentences. This is no accident! This is because 把 sentences are used for describing in some detail what happened to the object. In other words, the verb alone is not enough; there always has to be something else after the verb.

subject+把+object+verb+something else

This is often described as the disposal of the object, which might sound a bit fancy but we'll use it for convenience here. As well as the verb, you need to provide more information related to the action (in this case, that it was completed). In the example above 掉 indicates this 'disposal'.

The idea of disposal will be covered in more detail below. For now, just remember that a 把 sentence must describe what happened to the object in the end (beyond just what the verb tells you by itself). One way of thinking about the pattern which may be useful is that using 把 is similar to saying "What I did with ... was ... " or "What happened to ... was ...."

Another important rule for using 把 sentences is that they have to be about something specific or definite. The object has to be something that is clear in the context, and known to both speaker and listener.

Negating 把 sentences

To negate a 把 sentence, insert 不 (present or future) or 没有 (past) directly in front of 把. You can't put it after 把, 'inside' the 把 construction, as this would break the rule about describing what happened to the object. It would be like saying "What happened to ... was nothing". It doesn't sound natural.

Question forms of 把 sentences

You can make 把 sentences into questions in the usual three ways to form questions in Mandarin:

With a question particle
With a question word
With positive-negative verbs

Some examples:

Nǐ bǎ nǐ de shǒu jī nònɡ diū le mɑ?
你 把 你的 手机 弄 丢 了 吗？

Did you lose your phone?

Be careful how you form questions with 把 sentences though. Remember that you have to have a definite object, and you have to describe the disposal of that object. A question form could easily get in the way of one of these conditions.