Multiple Chinese Verbs Equivalent to the English Verb “Know”

Abstract

This chapter examines the basic grammatical and semantic features of knowledge verbs in Chinese—renshi, zhidao, and liaojie—and compares them with their counterparts in English and Japanese. The comparison is mainly based on lexical aspects like being stative or nonstative, whether they express in their basic forms a state, or an event, and so on. The authors then examine whether these verbs allow uses in orders, combine with some auxiliary verbs like the counterparts of “decide to,” “want to,” and the like (which suggest the possibility or the degree of voluntary control). Finally, they propose a possible “order of activity implication” among zhidao, “know,” and two Japanese knowledge verbs.