English affixes in Mandarin

Summary

Affix function number of borrowed affixes

Description

Information and examples for Taiwanese Mandarin are from Tsai (2007) and those for Mainland Chinese Mandarin from Yang and Ouyang (2013). Drawing on social media data, both works show English -ing to be used exclusively to express continuous aspect. No mention is made of -ing being used to form gerunds or to convey other meanings that the suffix has in English.

1 TAM suffix

  • -ing, ‘continuous aspect marker’, e.g. kuángxiàoing (kuángxiào ‘to laugh crazily’) ‘to be laughing crazily’, huángkǒnging (huángkǒng ‘to panic’) ‘to be panicking’ (Tsai 2007:31), jiābāning (jiābān ‘to work overtime’) ‘to be working overtime’, yùmèning (yùmèn ‘to feel down’) ‘to be feeling blue’ (Yang and Ouyang 2013:5).