Grammatical Features

Highly inflected languages such as the Latin language and the Russian language make scores of additions to，or changes in，the sound of a word to indicate grammatical differences.

Modern Chinese，on the other hand，never changes，and seldom adds，sounds for such purposes.

Because no inflection of nouns exists to show whether they are，for example，subject or object，and no indication is given that verbs，nouns，and adjectives agree with one another in number andcase，word order is even more important than it is in English as an indicator of the relation of words to one another in the sentence.In broad terms，Chinese word order is quite like that of English:subject-verb-object，modifier-modified.On closer inspection，however，the grammar reveals greater differences between the two languages.In English every sentence must have a subject，but in Chinese a subject is not an obligatory element.For example，in the English sentence“It rains，”the pronoun“it”serves as the subject.In Chinese the equivalent might be “xia yu”（fall rain），which does not necessarily require a subject.

In general，verb tense is not expressed in Chinese either.Instead，Chinese verbs can have suffixes that express different aspects，such as perfective.In the sentence“Ta chi-le yiwan.

fan”（“He has eaten a bowl of rice.”or“”He had eaten a bowl of rice.”），the verbal marker“-le”indicates either present or past perfect tense.

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