De (structural particle)

Revision as of 03:52, 5 August 2011 by Xiuyuan (talk | contribs) (→‎得)

The structural particle "de" has three written forms in modern Chinese, each with its own uses:

There is also a modal particle 的.

See also: structural particle 的

的 is known as baishao de in Chinese as it's composed of the characters 白 and 勺. It's used to mark possession or modification. One way to think about 的 is that it works like s' in English (apostrophe s), e.g.

Xiaoli's house
小李房子

This analogy works very well for possession, as it shows how English and Chinese handle possession in a similar way. Just remember that Chinese uses this 'possession' far more widely than English. Modifying, describing qualities and assigning attributes are all handled in the same way as possession, by using 的.

红色自行车

Here 的 is used to modify 'bike' with the colour 'red'. You could still think of this as possession - a bike that belongs to the category red.

See also: structural particle 得

得 is known as shuangren de, as the radical 彳 is often known as shuangren - 'double person'. This de is probably the trickiest to crack for English speakers as it has no obvious equivalent in English. 得 is used to construct two kinds of complements: the degree complement and the potential complement.

See also: structural particle 地

References


Sources and further reading