了: completion & state change

Chinese grammar · HSK 4 · 了 · By Carson 木林森

Function 1 — verb 了 (completion): placed directly after the verb to mark the action as completed. > 我吃了饭。 (I ate.)

Function 2 — sentence-final 了 (state change): placed at the end to signal a new situation.
> 天气冷了。(It has gotten cold.)

Common mistake: don't use both 了 at once unless the sentence requires both: 我买了三本书了 = I've already bought three books (completion + current relevance).

Negation: 没(有) replaces verb-了. ❌ 不了 ✅ 没吃

Worked examples

Chinese	Pinyin	English	What it shows
她喝了一杯水。	Tā hē le yī bēi shuǐ.	She drank a glass of water.	Verb-了 marking a completed action with an object
他长大了，可以自己决定了。	Tā zhǎng dà le, kěyǐ zìjǐ juédìng le.	He has grown up and can make his own decisions now.	Sentence-final 了 signalling a state change
我已经买了两件衬衫了，不想再买了。	Wǒ yǐjīng mǎi le liǎng jiàn chènshān le, bù xiǎng zài mǎi le.	I've already bought two shirts; I don't want to buy any more.	Both verb-了 (completion) and sentence-final 了 (current state) in one sentence

Produce this pattern without stopping to think about it. GraphChinese drills 了 across 12 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.

What this opens up

These patterns list 了 among their own prerequisites, so they become readable once this one holds.

The same pattern at other levels

了 — HSK 1

了 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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