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The potential complement 得 versus 能 I have read you can use the potential complement 得 and 能 to express almost the same: 我做得完。 我能做完。 But does it also work for the negative form of the potential complement 不? Some text books says you can substitute 能 for 得 but you can't substitute 能 for 不. Is this correct? Is this sentence wrong then?: 我不能做完。 Thanks in advance.

Answers · 10

1
得≠ 能 In Chinese : Verb+得 ("V." before "得") 能 = can So "我做得完。"and "我能做完。"two sentences means are similar ,but 得 is not 能。 不 + 能 = 不能(can't ) 能 and 不能 are opposites. If you say "我能……" = "I can……" "我不能……" = "I can't……" Hope this helps. :-)
1
Hello! They are all correct, but it is more common to use 能 for a positive and a complement with 不 for a negative. For example, the most common expressions would be: positive:我能做完。 negative:我做不完。 The following are also correct, but less common: positive: 我做得完。 negative: 我不能做完。 In my experience, using "不能" is still used occasionally, but using 得 to express ability to do something is extremely rare.
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Actually, they are the same sentence, just omit different character. 我(能)做得完 ---能 is omit here 我能做(得)完 ---得 is omit here
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得:用在单音节动词的后面,表示可能:修~好、拿~动、爬~上去 so in this case, 得 almost = 能 the difference is: 得 = could 能 = can 得 contains a kind of emotion, so it's like "could". For example, someone says "你做得完吗?" he says like this because he wants to tell u that u must finish, or he wants to tell u that if u cant he can help u. Something like this. 你能做完吗? --- 我能做完 --- 我不能做完 你做得完吗? --- 我做得完 --- 我做不完

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