"是...的 construction" inside a noun phrase

[咖乐]

Hi everyone!

 

I just found this wonderful forum and this is my very first post.

 

Recently, I came across the following Chinese sentence:

 

"... 杰克需要经过一棵满是枝干的大树"

 

(It appears in one of Little Fox's children's stories on Youtube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=etdl8e1Xcz4&t=130s ).

 

As far as I can tell, 枝干 (zhi1gan4) means something like "branches [and] tree trunks" (quite literally). But what function / purpose does the "是...的 construction" fill?

 

We're all familiar with the typical "是...的 construction(s)" performing different kinds of emphatical functions, and my guess would be that that's what is going on in this sentence as well(?). It's just that the thing emphasized seems to be a noun phrase filling an attributive(?) function inside a noun phrase.

 

I.e. "一棵满是枝干的大树"

 

I would be very thankful if someone could explain this to me, and perhaps even include some reference material (none of the grammars I've checked seem to deal with this kind of construction).

 

Thank you all in advance!

 

 

[edelweis]

满是 seems to be a word in itself, or at least a set expression meaning "full of".

So you probably should not parse it as 满 and 是 separately.

I don't think there's a 是...的 structure here.

 

[roddy]

I agree. 

[咖乐]

Dear edelweis and roddy,

 

You wouldn't by any chance have a, say, dictionary reference, or something like that, to 满是?

 

I can't find any occurrences of 满是 in any of the dictionaries I've checked. But, I did find three occurrences of constructions which support your (?)suspicion, edelweis: https://dict.naver.com/linedict/#/cnen/search?query=满是

 

Eg. 满是针的

 

It definitely seems that you're right, i.e. this would not be a "是...的 construction". But then, what is it? What sort of construction is this? The 3 example sentences given in the dictionary above would suggest that there's some kind of construction like "满是 + [adjective phrase] or [noun phrase] + 的 + noun phrase". Which overall isn't anything out of the ordinary, except for the "满是", i.e. "[adjective] + 是" = roughly "[adjective] + of". Are there any other adjective constructions like this (i.e. for which 是 takes on a similar meaning of "of")?

[edelweis]

https://www.moedict.tw/滿是

also lists 皆是 and 盡是.