09 February 2009

nice example how a homophone is resolved by grammar

Today in class we met the following two phrases: Nǐ zuò shénme qù táiběi? and Nǐ qù táiběi zuò shénme?
The pronunciation zuò refers to two different words and from the position in the sentence they can be disambiguated: 你坐什么去台北?(Which transport did you take to Taipei?) vs. 你去台北做什么?(What for did you come to Taipei?)
Note that you don't need to know the two different Chinese characters for zuò to be able to distinguish the two words which have the same pronunciation. Basic knowledge of every-day speech grammar is enough.

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