Possession-I have something
Emotion-I want something
Thought-I know something
Senses-I see something
In Chinese, what we English speakers know as adjectives take the stative verb form. Words such as be/is/are/am are implied in the adjective, thus making it stative. In other words, in English if someone asked “Are you cold?”, we would reply:
“I am cold.”
We would never say:
“Cold.”
However in Chinese, if someone asked, “Nĭ lěng ma? (你冷吗)",
a perfectly grammatical answer would be:
“Lěng (冷)”, or “Hěn lěng (很冷)”
There is no need for the pronoun “I”, or the copula “am”. Both of those are implied. In fact, it would be bad grammar to say “shì lěng (是冷)”. It would be the same as saying “Am am cold.”
Where the subject is known from the context, only the predicate is needed. The word “hěn (很)” can mean “very” or it can also be just a positive emphasizer, taking the place of “am”. The opposite would be "bù (不)", as in "bù lěng (不冷)"="[am] not cold".
All stative verbs can be preceded by hěn (很). If the stative verb is a single syllable, a modifier must precede it. Hěn (很) is the default positive modifier, and bù (不) the default negative.
breakdown of sentence | |||
| subject [can be implied/omitted] | predicate | ||
| pronoun | adverb [can be omitted] | stative verb/adjective [essential] | |
| I | am (or very) | cold | |
| wŏ | hěn | lěng | |
| 我 | 很 | 冷 | |