黄的鱼 huang2 de0 yu2 means ‘a fish that is yellow’, while 黄鱼huang2yu2 means ‘a species of sea fish (yellow croaker)’, even though it could also mean a fish with yellow color. Similarly, 白的菜bai2 de0 cai4 ‘white vegetable’ denotes any type of vegetable of which the Color is white, while 白菜 bai2cai4 means ‘a particular species of vegetable’, namely, ‘cabbage’.
Reference:
Shi, Dingxu. 2016. Nouns and nominal phrases. In A Reference Grammar of Chinese, eds. by Chu-Ren Huang and Dingxu Shi. Cambridge University Press.
