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I was doing a sentence rearranging exercise and came across this:
他英语讲得很好。
Could someone explain the structure of this sentence? I feel like it would be more properly written as:
他会说英语说得很好。
I was confused thinking that 英语 is the object of 讲 and so then would go after the verb. Could I say "他讲英语。"? Maybe "他讲英语讲得很好。"? And the explanation is that the first 讲 is just left out?
Why can't it be "他讲得很好英语。"? Is it just weird to have the adverbial phrase before the language being spoken?
Maybe "他讲英语讲得很好。"? And the explanation is that the first 讲 is just left out?
Exactly this.
The grammatical rule here is pretty simple, but sometimes overlooked:
with complements of grade (得 + verbal phrase) the main verb is doubled, in order to keep the strong bound between verb + object and between verb + grade particle, so your example would be actually written:
他讲英语讲得很好
Then, the first occurrence of the main verb (the one before the object) can be omitted, so you end up with:
他 (subject)
讲 (main verb)
英语 (object)
讲 (verb doubled)
得 (grade particle)
很好 (verbal phrase)
Let's use x-bar theory to examine the grammar of this sentence:
S---他英语讲得很好
|
|--Noun Phrase---他
|--Verb Phrase---英语讲
|--Noun---英语
|--Verb---讲
|--Prepositional Phrase---得很好
|--Preposition---得
|--Complement---很好
|--Adverb---很
|--Adjective---好
Notice that this sentence has a SOV structure and there is a prepositional phrase that explain the relationship between the verb and object. In most cases mandarin follows a SVO structure so here it's an inversion. This inversion is quite common.
