12 Chinese Grammar Points about Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs etc.
1. Nouns - Gender Chinese nouns do not have gender, but some given words can be used to indicate masculinity or femininity. 男女 are used only for humans. 公母 are normally used on animals. 雄雌 are more academic. usually 雄 / 雌 can be used for Biology Terms.
2. Nouns - Case In English, Case is the grammatical function of a noun or pronoun. There are only three cases in modern English, they are subjective, objective and possessive.
3. Numbers - Number Number: no separate singular and plural forms Chinese nouns are neutral with respect to number and have no separate singular and plural forms. Common Nouns can generally be preceded by a number-measure word combination. Personal nouns can be made plural with 们.
4. Nouns - Proper Nouns A proper noun is specific person, place or thing. English Proper nouns must be capitalized, but it is not the case with Chinese.
5. Nouns - Reduplication A common type of Chinese noun is formed by reduplication. For example, nouns referring to family members are formed in this way. 爸爸，妈妈，哥哥，弟弟，姐姐，妹妹，舅舅，姥姥，姨姨，爷爷，奶奶，叔叔，姑姑。
6. Case - Chinese words do not have case Chinese words do not have case. The same words are used for subjective, objective and possessive. After a pronoun, 的 can be used to indicate possession.
7. Pronouns - Gender: Only in the third person pronoun Chinese personal pronouns have gender only in the third person pronoun in the contemporary written language. Pronouns are neutral in their spoken form. 他，她，它 are different only in the written forms.
8. Pronouns - Pronoun + 们 Chinese pronouns have singular and plural forms. The suffix 们 is added to the singular form to make it the plural form.
9. Pronouns - Reflexive pronoun: 自己 self Mandarin has a single reflexive pronoun, 自己self, which is unmarked for person or gender. It can follow a personal pronoun for emphasis.
10. Pronouns - 咱们，我们 The inclusive pronoun 咱们(we) is used in northern dialects of Mandarin. 我们 can have either inclusive or exclusive meaning. It is much more commonly used than 咱们. In the exclusive sense, 我们 doesn't refer to the addressee.
11. Verbs - Inflection: Chinese verbs are not inflected Chinese verbs are not inflected. A single verb form is used regardless of the tense, aspect, and regardless of the number or gender of the subject. The number of the subject doesn't inflect the verb 想.
12. Category shifts - A Chinese word may belong to more than one category A very important feature of Chinese is that a word may belong to more than one category depending on the way it is used in a sentence. For example, some words may serve as both a noun and a verb.
