'的'has the following functions: 1. possessive, means belong, same function with 's or 'of ' in English 我的书(my book)，老师的办公室(teacher's office)，房子的前边( front of the house---now you can understand why Chinese people speaks this kind of phrase: house's front) 2. used between adj. and noun. 漂亮的城市( beautiful city) , 聪明的女孩 (smart girl) 3. used in 'which' 'what' 'that' ...sentence clause ( in Chinese, sentence clause in front of the noun been modified and add 的 in between 他是我在美国的朋友.( He is the friend who is in US.) 这是我长大的地方. (This is the place where I grew up.) There are also 'de' 得,地. They are different.

when sth belongs to another stuff or ppl,e.g我的房子，my house it also can be used after an adjective,like,漂亮的pretty,她是个漂亮的女生，she is a pretty girl when it's used after a word or a phrase,it can be a pronoun,e.g.吃的 food

adj.+n.——adj.的n. 例：美丽的花。 adv.+v.——adv.地v. 例：努力地学习。 v.+adj.——v.得adj. 例：跑得快。 的：adj. 例：美丽的、快乐的……

Sorry I have no idea what the term "structural particle" means. But I think the general rule of thumb is that people should use "de" whenever they are using adjectives. In the case of Possessive adjectives, you have: Wǒ de, wǒmen de, Nǐ de, Tā de, and tāmen de In the case of other other adjectives, you can have: 高的, 瘦的, 胖的, and 轻的 Gāo de, shòu de, pàng de, and qīng de Hope that's useful. Cheers!! :D

Well if you already perfectly, naturally use 的 as a native, your colloquial Mandarin is almost equal to 80% of a native. Beauty of briefness is never as simple as we think.