For every one foreign learner who comes to study in Mandarin learning courses in China, the first thing they should know is the basic units in Chinese language. In total, the units from the small to large are respectively morpheme, word, phrase, sentence (simple sentence and compound sentence), sentence group, passage and text. In the following parts, the first four units will be explained in detail to provide convenience to Chinese learning.
Morpheme is the smallest unit that constitutes the language and has the function of expressing meaning separately. It can be divided into the monosyllable morpheme like 山、水、来and去and disyllable morpheme such as 蟋蟀、蝴蝶and沙发 as well as multi-syllable morphemes like the loan word 拖拉机.
There are also many kinds of words in Chinese language. But generally speaking, there are two large classifications, namely, the notional word and the functional word. In further step, the former one consists of noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, numeral and quantifier while the latter includes adverb, preposition, auxiliary word, onomatopoetic word, interjection and conjunction. About the phrase, those who study Mandarin online should know it is composed of subject-predicate phrase, partial phrase, verb-object phrase, complement phrase and coordinate phrase.
The sentence has two types, the simple sentence and the compound sentence. The former one includes the subject-predicate sentence and non subject-predicate sentence while the latter is composed of single layer sentence and multiple compound sentences. as a matter of fact, the subject-predicate sentence can be also divided into several conditions because of the different constitution conditions. The first one is the verb-predicate sentence, in which verbs and verbal phrases function as predicate like你改悔吧and我就往仙台的医学专修学校去.
In another case, the adjectives and verbal phrases function as the predicate such as 我母亲的气量大and我母亲心里又气又急. In the noun-predicate sentence, the noun or noun phrase acts as predicate like 没人一盏灯笼. The last but not least condition that the students who learn Chinese language should know is the subject-predicate sentence like 我的讲义，你能抄下来么. The noun subject-predicate sentence is made up of single word or the phrases except for subject-predicate phrase.