"She lived in New York last year."
Translation:她去年住在纽约。
17 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Yeah, I was wondering about this myself. "Lived in New York" is definitely a completed action. Based upon what was presented at the beginning of this module, 了 should be in there.
去年 can be placed also at the beginning of the sentence, just before the subject. Please look at this explanation:
"Time words can appear in one of two positions in the sentence in Chinese: either at the beginning of the sentence (before the subject), or directly after the subject. The structures are:
Time + Subj. + Verb + Obj.
Subj. + Time + Verb + Obj."
Source: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Time_words_and_word_order
Can someone add the other alternative, please?
I'm really irritated with the inconsistency between past and future tense particles, in Chinese.
Important: They're not really tense.
了 is about something being accomplished, which makes it an aspect particle.
会 is exactly like English 'will' or 'going to', a modal auxiliary.
(Yes, it's true: English technically has future modality, not future tense! Your grammar book lied!)
476
I come to look at "grammar" as s.th. that is not set in stone. It is not the holy word of god, regardless what schoolteachers tried to tell you. Grammar is only the attempt to explain how language works. And there are many different attemps/grammars for each language. You don't need grammar to speak a language. I bet your mother didn't talked about "tenses" and whatnot, when you were learning your native first language. Language comes first, grammar comes later. It is not a hen-or-egg-first question. :-)
So: don't trust grammer. Sometimes the explanation is just: "Because!" ( But that is just me rambling. A German with no clue regarding grammar. Be it English or German.)
Ture, my mother didn't talk about tenses when I was learning the language, but on the other hand I had spend most of the first few years doing only that - learning the language. Also, the brain structure is different, so adults do learn far quicker when they understand the grammar. We can think in abstract logical way, we weren't able to as children. Both German and English are Germanic languages that roughly work the same in terms of grammar. There are obviously differences, but a lot of the things that are natural and intuitive to you in English aren't natural and intuitive to speakers of non-Germanic languages.
Last year means she lived in ny but it doesn't mean she moved. I think le should be written unless she still remains in ny