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Mandarin Grammar Lesson 5
Possessives & Adjective Phrases

Vocabulary

de	{attributive}	的	hao³	very/good	好
shu¹	book	書	mang²	busy	忙
ke⁴ ben³	text book	課本	kuai⁴ le⁴	happy	快樂
che¹	car	車子	piao⁴ liang⁴	pretty	漂亮
jia¹	family	家	hong² se⁴	red	紅色
xue² sheng¹	student	學生	lv⁴ se⁴	green	綠色
ren²	person	人	lan² se⁴	blue	藍色

Grammar explanation

Adjective Phrases

Adjective phrases are used to give more detail about a noun. An example of an adjective phrase in English would be "three very big, blue" in the sentence "I have three very big, blue books."

As in English, Mandarin descriptors come right before the thing they describe. There are a few differences between Chinese and English adjective phrases, though. For one, Mandarin uses a special particle (de) to separate the descriptions from the thing being described.

Note that some adjectives do not require the de particle, although it is still grammatically correct to use it even in these cases. It just won't sound like native speech. Colors in particular are often used without the de.

Chinese adjective phrases can be very complex, combining long series of descriptions and varying types of modifiers. More will be said on this in a later lesson.

Possessives

In English, words change form to show possession (thief's painting), ownership (collector's painting), and relationship (thief's mother). Most words add a form of (-'s). Some words, like many pronouns, undergo more drastic changes, like "my" becomes "mine." Additionally, some words have different possessive forms depending on whether they are the subject or object of the sentence.

brother	->	brother's		I	->	my		me	->	mine
sisters	->	sisters'		they	->	their		them	->	theirs

Chinese words do not change form. Instead, possession is treated the same way as any adjective phrase. The possessive noun or pronoun goes on the left, the particle de goes in the middle, and the object goes on the right. This is true whether the possessive is acting as the subject or object of the sentence.

Note that if the object being described is understood, it can often be omitted. For example, if all the objects on a table were books, you won't have to say "Gei³ wo³ na⁴ ben³ shu¹" ('give that book to me') you could simply say "Gei³ wo3 na4 ben³" ('give me that one').

Possession or ownership almost always require the use of of de. On the other hand, showing relationship often allows the de to be omitted, although it is still correct to include de. Family terms are great examples of this: "my mother" can be expressed either " wo³ de ma⁴ ma³" or "wo³ ma⁴ ma³".

Notes

Sometimes including or omitting the de particle makes a slight difference in the meaning of an adjective phrase. For example, a hong² (se⁴) bi³ can be understood to be a "red pen" (perhaps used to refer to a teacher's correcting pen) while hong² se⁴ de bi³ would be understood to be "a pen that is red" or "pens that are red". While the difference between these terms are slight, there can be a difference in meaning.

hen³	de

	de