"Separable verbs" get their name from their ability to "separate" into two parts (a verb part and an object part), with other words in between. In fact, you could also simply call separable verbs "verb-object phrases."
Purely from the "separable" aspect, Mandarin's separable verbs have a counterpart in English: phrasal verbs (also called two-word verbs). While the grammatical components of English's phrasal verbs are different, the "separable" quality works in a very similar way. Take the phrasal verb "check out" for example:
Do you see what happened there? The verb "check out" can split into two parts (a verb and a preposition), and other words can go in between those two parts. Separable verbs work much the same way in Chinese, except that the two parts are a verb and an object (a noun).
Let's look at a typical example in Chinese, using the verb 见面, meaning "to meet."
Below we will introduce separable verbs in more detail, provide more examples, and also offer more specific cases of where separable verbs can get tricky.
If separable verbs are simply verb-object phrases, then why the special name? It's because there are some special features of Chinese verb-object phrases worth special attention, and the name "separable verbs" helps call attention to this. Mastering separable verbs can be a little tricky, and is an essential objective of the intermediate (B1) level learner of Chinese.
Separable verbs are just one of those things you can't avoid. Many extremely common verbs, such as "to sleep" (睡觉) or "to meet" (见面) are separable verbs, and until you understand which verbs are separable verbs and how they work, you'll forever be making mistakes with these verbs, even in very basic sentences.
First, you need to understand the structure of separable verbs. Most separable verbs are a "Verb + Object" (the object is a noun) construct. One might wonder, then, why there needs to be a separate category called "separable verbs" instead of just thinking of them as a verb and an object. There are several reasons to think of them as special verbs:
The key to using separable verbs correctly is to remember that they are "Verb + Object" constructs. The verb alone must be treated as a verb, and the object cannot be treated as a verb. It's from this essential relationship that the following principles flow:
Note: unlike the particles 过 and 着, the particle 了 is especially tricky, and it can also appear after the object. So it can be correct in multiple places.
Reduplication is a way to express the casual nature of a verb, or that it happens only briefly. When it comes to separable verbs, only the verb part reduplicates.
Note that separable verbs can't used with 一下 to express it happens briefly.
Perhaps the most common examples of separable verbs that beginners struggle with are 见面 and 睡觉. For a more complete list, see the list of separable verbs.
There is some debate as to how useful the concept of separable verbs really is. For our purposes, we're only concerned with whether or not separable verbs are a useful concept for the student of Mandarin Chinese. Many learners do, in fact, find the concept to be quite useful in helping them speak more natural Chinese.