学校(你)怎么走?

M

mewhow

Senior Member
Japanese
Hello! My first time here:)
So you cannot put O after V 走、but you can still say,
学校　(你) 怎么　走?
How do you explain this grammatically? The language teacher told me
in this case, 学校 is S. I don't understand.
You can say, 你 怎么　去　学校？ So you can also say
学校　(你) 怎么　去？since 学校 is O and you just put O at the beginning
of the sentence to make O a topic of the sentence.
But how does the first sentence work?
 
    • A dominant theory would parse that sentence like
    Subject 学校
    Predicate 你怎么去

    And further parsing 你怎么去
    Subject 你
    Predicate 怎么去


    Of course some argue that 学校 is the object of the sentence and put at the beginning.
     
    I think it's the topic-comment structure, and I think the topic does not have to be the object.
    Literally, 学校怎么走=As for the school, how to get there?
    学校 is not the object of 走. 走 is intransitive and does not have an object.

    PS: I don't think 学校怎么走 is a short version of 学校你怎么走. The former is asking how to get to the school (asking for direction), and the latter (unnatural unless in a specific context) is asking how you would get school (asking your planned route, probably). Their meanings are different. 怎么走学校 would be wrong.
    学校你怎么去 or 你怎么去学校 are also "how to get to the school". But they are not necessarily questions asking for directions. One may expect an answer like "by bus".
     
    Last edited:
    (我)怎麼走(才能走)到學校？ 怎麼走到學校？
    (我要)到學校，(應該)怎麼走？到學校，怎麼走？
    Topicalize the prepositional phrase 到學校 "to the school" by omitting the preposition and keeping only the noun ==> 學校怎麼走？
     
    Last edited:
    Hello people Thank you so much for your help!
    Sooo, just to clarify,
    You cannot say你走学校吗? (=Are you leaving for school? /Are you going to school?) because the V 走 is intransitive and thus cannot be followed by O,
    but you can still say
    学校你走吗? (the same as above,= Are you leaving for school?/Are you going to school?)
    because in this sentence, 学校 is not O, but the topic.

    Is this 学校你走吗? also correct or do you use 去 instead, like “学校你去吗”?
     
    Don't use 走 in the example because it will make the question more complicated.

    Just use 去.
    去学校 is idiomatic.

    学校你走吗？ is also correct but used in a totally different situation.
     
    So retrogradedwithwind, what does 学校你走吗？mean? If it doesn’t mean “Are you leaving
    for school?” then, what does that say?
    In which situation can it have a certain meaning? Could you give me an example of how to use it?
     
    When in a bus station or calling a taxi, one may say 师傅，北京你走吗？ to express that I want to go to Beijing and wonder if the bus would go there.

    When both sides know what 学校 you refered, 学校你走吗 would be uttered by the passenger.

    To parse 学校你去吗？ is easier to get the grammar.
     
    Ah thank you for the nice example, retrogradedwithwind.

    I see. I’ll stick to 去 to mean “go to <place>” as a learner.
    But it’s still nice to know that 走 can be actually used with the name of the place as a topic of the sentence like that
    so I won’t go ???? when I hear something like 北京你走吗？
    Thank you very much:)!
     
    Others have give you good explanations and here are my additional opinions.
    走 is a verb which literally means “walk, go”. Technically you cannot say "walk someplace" without any preposition.
    去 is both a verb and a preposition. It can mean "go to" by itself, or connect to 走.

    Sentence like 北京你走吗 is quite special. A learner should learn 北京你去吗 or 你去北京吗 first.
     
    Thank you for your advice, Super XW, and again thank you everyone for the explanation.
    Many characters are quite familiar to me (Japanese) but I’m learning the right usage of the words since it seems like it can be very tricky!
     
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