When should one omit 的 when describing adjectives?

[TezUK]

神秘人物

可爱的女人

Is it a matter of choice? Here are two examples above taken from random text.

Hopefully someone can shed some light.

p.s. I am aware that 的 can be omitted when describing possessive personal relationships e.g. 我妈妈

Thanks

[Dengxiaomai]

You can omit 的when talking about close human relations or pronouns, i.e. 我妈妈，我朋友. It has to be human though, so you can't say 我狗，我房子, etc. Choosing to say 的 will not change the meaning of the sentence and won't necessarly make the sentence more or less formal.

As for 神秘人物, it can go both ways. I've ask a friend who used to teach at IUP and SYA and he said that if you leave out the 的 it“feels" more formal than saying 的, though the difference is very small.

If you have the word 很 in the sentence, then you must use 的. ex, 很帅的学生

I hope this helps. If not, try looking through a Chinese grammar book (though they may explain more than you'd ever hope to know).

Regards,

Max

[trevelyan]

Leave 的 out for common, single-character adjectives, but (yes) only when you don't include adverbs of degree like 很 or 挺.

p.s. there is a big difference between 可爱的女人 and 我妈妈. In the first 的 links a xingrongci to a noun (adjectival modifier), in the second it is establishing a possessive relationship between two nouns.

[monto]

For omitting the "的" , there is no cut-clear line. We Chinese just deal with it by feeling.

However, there are some loose criteria to decide to leave the 的 there or drop it.

1) logical closeness of the two parts (noun and the adjectives (strictly say the modifier).

In the examples you given,

神秘 is close to 人物, the nature or characteristic or something virtue of the person, so the 的 in 神秘的人物 is ready to be dropped out.

In comparison, 可爱的 is not so to the 女人, it's something "given" to her. so the 的 here is usually not omitted. If we say 漂亮的女人，then in most cases it will be OK to say 漂亮女人；

2）Simpleness of the modifier:

我的妈妈、你的妈妈、他的妈妈 may be 我妈妈、你妈妈、他妈妈.

but not for 我们的妈妈、你们的妈妈、他们的妈妈。

3）Compromise or balance:

It often in the situation there a sentence appear to be very long with eccesive "的"s there making the sentence awkward to utter.

For example:

可爱的女人的儿子的女朋友。。。。

can become

可爱的女人儿子的女朋友。。。。

though alone any of 可爱的女人、女人的儿子、儿子的女朋友 can be considered proper to drop the 的。

[semantic nuance]

You can omit 的when talking about close human relations or pronouns, i.e. 我妈妈，我朋友. It has to be human though, so you can't say 我狗，我房子, etc.

But how about: 我房間很亂. (My room is messy.) Use or not use 的 in the sentence won't change any meaning.

[HashiriKata]

But how about: 我房間很亂. (My room is messy.) Use or not use 的 in the sentence won't change any meaning.

Very true, unless you tidy the room first!

PS: I think whether you want to use or not use 的 in this particular case (and many other similar to this) depends on how delibarate you want to sound, for the reason that, as Semantic Nuance's said it, with or without 的 in this case hardly makes any difference.

[Lu]

It has to be human though, so you can't say 我狗，我房子, etc.

This is not correct, you can for example say 你家, or in semantic nuance's example, 我房間. I'd say that you can leave out more 的 in kouyu than in writing.

As to 可爱的女人, there's a song called 可爱女人, so I fully agree that there's no clear-cut line on when you have to use 的 and when you can leave it out.

You will have to leave out some 的 if there are a lot of them after one another, to make the sentence sound better. Generally in such cases you leave the last 的, and remove some of the earlier ones.

[TezUK]

Thanks people, really good replies. I think logical closeness of adjectives to their nouns is something id never really thought about before. Also omitting 的 when they appear in succession is very interesting.

Thanks again:mrgreen:

[zozzen]

if an adjective is placed at the end of the sentence, is there any example that "的" MUST be used? I can't think of any, except 媽的.

真捧

多漂亮

太牛了

很黃很暴力

if we add "的" to them, it looks so non-native.