Order of adjective and noun

Question

I have a question about the order of adjective and noun in Chinese. In this phrase 生活奢侈 the order is noun+adjective. But in this phrase 奢侈品 the order of noun + adjective is reversed.

What is the difference between the two structures? There are lots of such examples, which I get confused with every time when I want to use them.

Thank you for your answer.

Answer 1

Placing adjective before the noun, like '奢侈品' is a normal grammar structure, you cannot go wrong with that

When you put an adjective after a noun, the noun is acting as the topic, and the adjective is acting as a comment.

他的生活奢侈

他的生活 (his life) is the topic

很奢侈 (is luxury) is the comment,

you can replace 'is luxury' with other adjective (comment), for example '艰难' --> "他的生活艰难" (his life is difficult)

Not all noun can be a topic, especially a single character noun like 品.

Not all adjective can be a comment

For example:

'这家公司的发展非常迅速' make sense;

'这家公司的发展非常海外' doesn't make sense,

although '海外' is a legit adjective for '发展' as in '这家公司的海外发展'

Without clear context, 生活奢侈 can also be interpreted as a [verb + adverb] structure, with 生活 as a verb, and 奢侈 as an adverb. That's why I add a subject and possessive 的 to clarify '(他的)生活' is a noun

Answer 2

In Chinese, as in other languages, adjectives can come before or after a noun:

That woman (is) beautiful.
那位女士很漂亮。
That beautiful woman.
那位漂亮的女士是我的女朋友！

Have a look here for some tips.

English has all kinds of suffixes to change words from noun to verb to adjective to adverb and back again. Chinese does not do that. This begs the question, 'How do you identify which word is what in Chinese sentences?'

生活奢侈

你是否生活奢侈，却对有需要的人不闻不问？
Do you live in luxury, not caring about the needy?

You can translate 生活奢侈 as 'live luxuriously' or 'live in luxury'

他的生活很奢侈。 His life(style) is luxurious.

Whereas 'His life is luxury.' means 'the goal and sole aim of his life is to attain and enjoy luxury'

奢侈品 is a compound noun 'luxury goods'. Chinese makes no distinction between luxury and (luxury + -ous) = luxurious and in 'luxury goods', neither does English! While the phrase 奢侈的品 is unlikely or at least unusual, 奢侈的 is not unusual.

1。 谁会为她奢侈的假日买单？
Who is paying for her extravagant holiday?

However, in 2。, 奢侈的 is probably not an adjective.

2。 你能分出慷慨与奢侈的区别吗？
Can you tell the difference between generosity and luxury?
Not: *Can you tell the difference between generosity and luxurious difference.

So, how do you know what kind of word you are dealing with? Could you write a computer program to do that?