From: "H. S. Teoh"
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 07:33:09AM -0800, Marcus Smith wrote:
> > The first three words are part of a relative clause modifying the rice.
> > [ta1 chu3 de fan4] wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
> > The rice which he cooks tastes very good
> > A more literal translation would be:
> > 'The he-cooks-rice tastes very good.'
> But isn't wei4dao4 a noun?
Yes. One can't "wei4dao4" something, no matter how hard one tries :)
Marcus' initial analysis works.
> > The first three words are part of a relative clause modifying the rice.
> > (1) [ta1 chu3 de fan4] wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
What I find interesting is that I, as a non-native speaker, find the above
sentence a little strange. The two nouns, "fan" and "weidao" juxtaposed
maked me a bit squeamish. *I* could take:
(2) ta1 zhu3 fan4 de wei4dao4 [implying "the smell of his cooking rice" or
perhaps, "the smell of the rice he cooked"]
or
(3) ta1zhu3 de fan4 de wei4dao4 [implying more explicitly "the smell of the
rice he cooked"]
but H.S. has already expressed discomfort at too many "de"s in a sentence.
H.S., where do you weigh in on this? Your sentence makes me cringe. My third
sentence makes you cringe. Where do you put the second sentence?