Mandarin · Chapter 7 · Lesson 7 · Grammar primer
Serial verb constructions
Grammar for HSK 2.
The short version
Verb order is event order, and nothing glues them
我去商店买东西 (wǒ qù shāng diàn mǎi dōng xī) is literally I-go-shop-buy-things, with no 和 (hé), no 然后 (rán hòu), no 'to'. The only thing carrying the sequence is the order itself, so whichever action happens first in the world goes first in the sentence. Each verb keeps its own object: 坐车 (zuò chē) then 回家 (huí jiā), never 坐回家车 (zuò huí jiā chē).
我去商店买东西。 Wǒ qù shāng diàn mǎi dōng xī.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 25 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 7 of 12 in this chapter