"还早着呢。" How should we analyse this? 还: 仍然。 早: 时间靠前。 着: 音zhe， 轻声，助词，表示程度深。例: 好着呢! 呢: 助词，表示确定的语气。例: 好着呢! You can understand the phrase as "Still very early" and "着" as "very" or "quite". Your original understanding of "着" as indicative of "something in progress; the present continuous tense" is not correct. Neither is your understanding of 呢 as the same. 着 and 呢 have those functions sometimes, but not in this instance. My personal preference is not to plug it into the English grammar of "subject + verb + adverb + adjective", for the very simple and obvious reason that Chinese is not English! Many Chinese "sentences" have no subject and no verb, and even the concept of what constitutes "a sentence" (一句) is vastly different between the two languages. Therefore Chinese should not be analysed according to English grammar. There is no 助词 like 吧 and 呢 in English, and I think it is counter-productive to classify them as adverbs. My personal view is that it is one of the biggest fallacies in Chinese studies to apply English grammar to the Chinese language. I firmly believe that a foreign learner should approach the language like a pristine unblemished page (白纸一张) and enter into the Chinese language ethos like an infant, leaving his native language and English behind. 在北京大学对外汉语学院就有一个课程完全不用英语或者任何外语来教授汉语的，这是最好的，有一些国家的汉语精英都是这样培训出来的。说白了，就是让自己回到童年时学母语的状态。 中国同学学习英语的时候也可以参考这种方法。

It would be 为什么急 in order for it to be "why worry"。早 simply means early and is a separate word from 着。 早= Early 着呢= yet. 早着 aren't formed together as it isn't a word that makes complete sense.

‘早呢’/‘早了’。 this is simplified version and THE most basic version. it’s not a coherent Chinese oral expression without 呢/了 in this case，but it is fine without 的/着 . and 还早worked，yes indeed，but it will change the intonation. basic 1，早-呢 basic 2，早-了 with 的 3，早-的呢 with 的 4，早-的了 with 着 5，早-着呢 with 着 6，早-着了 altogether with '着什么急' ,it formed a whatever-attitude that whoever said that knows it is early exactly and try to make a strong point，'can't you see it's early? why the hell you worry’. If anyone I don't know him/her well said that to me like a boss，probably we would lost the ticket to the friendship trip permanenatly. you can say this in a calm way wihtout that character,its cool with or without 呢. 1，别急，现在还早（呢）。 2，别急么，天还早（呢）。 3，别急啊，时间还早（呢）。 4，别着急嘛，这会还早(呢)。 too many variations for this. or add 嘛/呀，么 in the end to neutralize that intonation 着什么急呀/嘛/么，还早着呢么。 there is not much grammar involved I think,it is just the way it is. better way is listening local people using it. 'when you know what sounds right，everything else is easy.'

"着什么急，还早着呢 "means DON'T WORRY, IT'S STILL EARLY.呢NE is a Chinese modal partical, which makes you sentence more colorful.But it will not change the meaning basicly.It's totally ok to say "着什么急，还早着".着zhe indicates the situation in the progress; 呢is not. You can consider 早 as a verb. For example, "今天天气很好", there's no verb in grammar. 好 is a adjective, but it worked as a verb here. It's typical.

thanks :) I found that "着呢" after an adverb can be replaced by “很" before the adverb. 很早 ＝ 早着呢