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This paper introduces and explores two recent syntactic theories by applying them to a special Mandarin Chinese construction. Both theories, GPSG (Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar) and LFG (Lexical-Functional Grammar), originate from developments to remedy the inadequacies of Transformational Grammars. They agree with each other in taking actual surface strings as the input to syntax and in abandoning transformations among various abstract levels as an explanatory tool. GPSG emphasizes the mathematical and formal properties of grammars. It builds on the concept of categories as partial functions on features to enrich the grammatical information conveyable by a simple context-free phrase structure grammar. LFG, on the other hand, focuses on psychological reality and assumes grammatical functions, instead of categories, to be primitives. Its formalism encodes grammatical functions and treats many syntactic phenomena as extensions of lexicon. Wasow's (1985) assessment that these two theories represent re-emphasis on observational and descriptive adequacies respectively is followed in this paper, while the eventual cause is ascribed to the rising influence of computational linguistics. Mandarin Chinese Possessive Subjects offer a good test for surface-based syntactic theories because of the mismatch between grammatical functions and their structural positions. It is shown in this paper that previous transformational analyses do not account for the grammatical facts satisfactorily. It is shown instead that both theories in discussion can account for this special construction. In GPSG, a special semantic translation of the morpheme de is the only thing needed in addition to the usual PS rules and feature percolation mechanisms. In LFG, explicit reference of grammatical functions in functional equations annotated on tree structures, a design feature of the theory, helps accounting for the data. The fact that a construction with surface mismatches is better accounted for in surface-based syntactic theories lend support to such approaches. This paper foresees promising results in future studies of Chinese syntax in these theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]