GE

The particle "ge 個/个" is one of the most frequent characters in written Chinese (12th in a list of 9,933 unique characters).  It is generally thought of as a classifier, numerary adjunct, measure word.  Indeed, it functions as the almost universal, default classifier when you're not sure what the correct / proper measure word for a given noun should be.  In addition, "ge" has more than a dozen other definitions and usages, for which see Wiktionary. However, I'm not sure that any dictionary or grammar accounts for a very special usage that I have long been intrigued and enchanted by, namely the "ge" in this type of sentence:

Wǒ máng de gè yàosǐ

我忙得個要死!

"I'm so busy I could die!", i.e., "I'm incredibly busy!"

Here de 得 is a particle marking the complement of degree.

Because I lived with a big household full of Chinese (Shandong) in-laws, I picked this construction up very early in my learning of spoken Mandarin, but I always had a visceral feeling that it was extremely colloquial and unlikely to be encountered in written texts and was probably not covered in conventional grammars.  So I asked around among colleagues and native speaker informants how they would explain this unusual "ge", grammatically or otherwise.  Here are some of the replies I received.

A speaker of northwest Mandarin says that she never heard this usage in her whole life and thinks it may be a southernism.

Here are some examples given by other respondents:

Jīn wǎn wánr gè tòngkuài!

今晚玩儿个痛快!

Let's have a really good time tonight!

Xiān chī ge bǎo zài shuō!

先吃個飽再說！

Let's have a full meal first, then we'll decide what to do!

One of my favorite insults:

Nǐ dǒng gè pì

你懂个屁

"You know shit."

I don't think that any of these sentences exactly fit the paradigm of the original example, but they are illustrative of other idiomatic usages of "ge".

The following are some longer communications:

Maiheng Dietrich:

I don't really have an answer for your question. I don't think it can be explained with grammar, because the "ge" is not present in standard Mandarin máng dé yàosǐ 忙得要死. My guess is this colloquial expression fulfills or stresses a certain emotion of the speaker, similar to some people's usage of swear words for purpose of emphasis or intensification (of course, "ge" is no swear word).

Zheng-sheng Zhang:

So "ge" is not restricted to occur only after "de".  One more example:  Dǎ (le) gè luòhuāliúshuǐ 打（了）个落花流水。("beat somebody to pieces / a pulp")

"ta" [3rd person pronoun] often occurs before "ge": 打他个落花流水。 了 doesn't seem to fit here.  I wonder why?

Jing Hu:

I think that  "ge" here in this sentence is to emphasize the speaker's opinion / tone subjectively (in a colloquial language):

1. to emphasize "do something / or something is too big / to a great extent (subjectively)"; "个” is put between verb / adjective and complement, for example:

喝（得）个痛快 / 喝（得）个一醉方休

玩个痛快

打他个落花流水

扫得个干干净净 Adjectives:

忙/饿/累 得个要死 脏得个要命 （there is "死“ in the above sentences, so the adjectives are normally negative）

2. to emphasize the small quantity/the degree is light subjectively (the speaker subjectively feels "easy, relax, not a big deal etc.):

For example:

面个试还这么紧张。

吃个饭还这么捯饬。

逛个街还这么麻烦。

一天走个十来里路不算什么啊！

Anwei Feng:

I think I heard such ‘ge’ in a sentence like this before, but I don’t think it is always employed in speech. My gut feeling is that it might be used by speakers of a specific dialect(s) / topolect(s). The explanation for that ‘ge’ should therefore be best given by dialectologists who know that dialect(s).

Don Snow:

First, I'm pretty sure it doesn't come from Cantonese – at least it doesn't sound right to me in Cantonese (though I am open to correction from those who know the language better than I do). However…. I have been studying Suzhounese with one of the staff in my center, and asked her about this; she in turn consulted with some friends. The consensus was that inserting a ge in examples like the one you gave is fairly normal in both Suzhounese and in Mandarin spoken by Suzhounese people. As to function, it basically adds emphasis. So, at least around here, by adding ge instead of simply saying "I am busy to death", you are saying "I am really busy to death!"

Neil Kubler:

rang ni chide ge bao

—

Wolfgang Behr:

Historically, both ge and de could serve as complement (補語) markers in [VP + ge/de + complement] constructions since the Yuan period, with subtle differencces in the kinds of complements, types of definiteness, negation etc. involved. To me the construction looks like a conflation of both types, where BOTH ge and de are prosodically reduced markers introducing the complement. There is, however, a sizeable group of well-known scholars who consider ge as a measure word or classifier in such constructions, which would belong with the object, such that in sentences with both ge and de, de's function would be to introduce a complement NP, which would be internally classified by ge. I am attaching three papers [VHM:  omitted for this post] related to this problem: Sun Tianqi discusses all theoretical approaches proposed in the literature (and adds his own generative solution); Zhu Yubin provides a historical dimension since the Yuan period; and the old article by You Rujie offers a simple breakdown of the different semantic types of VP + ge vs.  VP + de.

Zihan Guo:

Although I knew 個頭 with the pronunciation and meaning gètóu ("height; build; stature"), I had never encountered it with the pronunciation and meaning gè tóu ([slang, mildly rude] "my ass / arse"), so I am especially grateful to Zihan for helping me increase my command of genuine, spoken Mandarin.

Incidentally, the difference between gètóu and gè tóu supports my contention for the vital semantic, syntactic, and grammatical significance of pauses in Sinitic speech, which I have often argued for on Language Log — even micropauses and slight differences in intonation matter and convey important information / nuances.

Selected readings

• "GA" (8/6/17)
• "Dwindling measure words in Mandarin" (2/13/20)
• "A [class.] zoo" (1/18/15)
• "'That, that, that…', part 3" (9/14/20)
• "'That, that, that…', part 2" (8/28/20)
• "That, that, that…" (1/24/16)

[Thanks to David Moser, Robert Sanders, Cynthia Ning, and Diana Zhang]