Directional Complements: Temporal Meaning

Chinese grammar · HSK 5 · 趋向补语表时间意义 · By Carson 木林森

V + 起来 = the action/state begins (inceptive). Works with verbs and adjectives: 天气突然冷起来了。(It suddenly turned cold.) If the verb has an object (like 下雨), the object is inserted between 起 and 来: 下起雨来了。(It started raining.)

起来 qǐ lai to stand up 下去 xià qù to go down

V + 下去 = the action continues (continuative), often despite difficulty, or a state keeps developing in the same direction:
　请你说下去。(Please keep talking.)
　情况越来越严重下去了。(The situation kept getting more serious.)

Common mistake: using 下去 when the action is just starting (should be 起来), or forgetting to split the object into the V+起+O+来 slot.

Worked examples

Chinese	Pinyin	English	What it shows
外面下起雨来了。	Wài miàn xià qǐ yǔ lái le.	It started raining outside.	起来 with a verb-object compound (下雨): object (雨) splits into V+起+O+来.
听到这个笑话，大家都笑了起来。	Tīng dào zhè ge xiào huà, dà jiā dōu xiào le qǐ lái.	Hearing the joke, everyone burst out laughing.	起来 with an intransitive verb (笑), no object to split — simplest inceptive form.
请你接着讲下去，我们都想知道结果。	Qǐng nǐ jiē zhe jiǎng xià qù, wǒ men dōu xiǎng zhī dào jié guǒ.	Please keep talking, we all want to know the result.	下去 marks that an ongoing action should continue.
虽然遇到很多困难，但他还是坚持学下去，最后终于成功了。	Suī rán yù dào hěn duō kùn nán, dàn tā hái shì jiān chí xué xià qù, zuì hòu zhōng yú chéng gōng le.	Although he ran into a lot of difficulties, he still kept studying, and eventually succeeded.	下去 combined with a concession clause (虽然…但…), showing perseverance despite obstacles.

Produce this pattern without stopping to think about it. GraphChinese drills Directional Complements across 13 exercises and schedules the review that keeps it.

What you need first

Every topic in GraphChinese names its own prerequisites, and these are the grammar points this one is built on. If a sentence here will not parse, one of them is why.

Complex directionals

The same pattern at other levels

Directional Complements — HSK 2
Directional Complements — HSK 6

Directional Complements is one topic of 829. GraphChinese teaches them in prerequisite order, so this pattern reaches you on the day everything it rests on is proven. The whole course, HSK 0 through HSK 6, is $49 once for lifetime access.

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