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A marker for Chinese modifiers

While Czech is an inflectional language which has regular and explicit
marking of syntactic case information on adjectives and nouns,
syntactic case information in Chinese adjectives are not marked at
all. As for Chinese nouns, traces of case marking can only be found in
genitive nouns. In Chinese, genitive is marked by the particle Ss,
e.g.:
* SfSfSs¤â (sister's hand)
* SNZvSsZr¤l (teacher's table)
* Sú¤NSs z (tomorrow's ticket)
* TeaSs¨Z¤l (the car in front)
* ¤¤°e¤HSssDzwC[ (Chinese morality)
* §ÚSsZN (my book)
* §ÚESsZa (our home)

In the above examples, the nouns preceding Ss are genitive, i.e. in
the form of ``B of A'' or ``A's B''. The particle Ss in here behaves
like the morpheme 's in English. In addition to appearing after
genitive nouns, the particle Ss also appears after adjectives, e.g.:
ZoSâSs (red), sRSâSs (yellow), ¤jSs (big), ZüÄRSs (beatiful), ÁrZSs
(ugly), Zy§QSs (fluent), °Z bSs (clean), AaSs (bad) etc. Thus, we can
view Ss as a particle for forming modifiers for Chinese nouns,
i.e. either:
* to form a possessive from a noun so as to specify the ownership of
another noun, or
* to mark an adjective for modifying the meaning of a noun.

In summary, the particle Ss can appear:
* as a suffix of a noun or a pronoun (i.e. possessive)

lo       Lt      ZN   ZO   SnSn  Ss AC
this  QUANTIFIER book  is  sister 's
This book is (my) sister's.
lo¨Ç      ZN      ZO  LLE    Ss   AC
these    book    are  they   's   
These books are theirs.

* as a suffix of an adjective

§Ú    lßLw   SnSY    Ss  SFSc  AC
I     like good-eat      thing 
I like delicious food.
SnSY    Ss     ¤L     Sn   ZÝ   AC
good-eat        not    good  see  
Delicious (food) are not good-looking.

* after a verb

LXZu  Ss  Sl     ¤GSE       ¤H          AC
attend    have two hundred people        
There are two hundred people attended (the meeting).

* after a verb phrase

LXZu   Zb |   Ss  Sl     ¤GSE       ¤H      AC
attend banquet    have two hundred people    
There are two hundred people attended (the) banquet.

* after subject+verb

§Ú  ÁÜ D  Ss  Sl   ¤¤Q    ¤H   AC
I  invite    have fifty people
Fifty people are invited by me.
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next up previous contents 
Next: Tenses & Aspects Up: Introduction to Elementary Chinese
Previous: Quantifiers   Contents

Shun Ha Sylvia Konecna Wong 2001-02-19