The Syntax and Semantics of Cantonese Particles in the Left Periphery
| Autor: | John C. Wakefield |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
cantonese
050101 languages & linguistics Linguistics and Language Discourse particles Syntax (programming languages) 05 social sciences PL1001-3208 Sino-Tibetan languages Chinese language and literature Languages of Asia Semantics 050105 experimental psychology Language and Linguistics Linguistics discourse particles left periphery 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Psychology syntax Contrastive linguistics |
| Zdroj: | Studies in Chinese Linguistics, Vol 41, Iss 2, Pp 109-138 (2020) |
| ISSN: | 1017-1274 |
| DOI: | 10.2478/scl-2020-0004 |
| Popis: | Adopting the cartographic approach, this paper proposes syntactic positions for all left-periphery particles above the tense phrase (TP) in Cantonese. These include both sentence-final particles and sentence-initial particles that can be used in isolation as interjections. Based on previous syntactic proposals for the left periphery, a modification of Rizzi’s (2001) split-complementizer phrase (Split-CP) structure is proposed. A Deictic Phrase (DeicP) is added above the finite phrase (FinP) for the Cantonese “tense” particles laa3 and lei4(ge3). Then, based on a number of proposals inspired by Speas and Tenny (2003), two functional phrases are added above the force phrase (ForceP) – a higher affect phrase (AffectP) for Cantonese sentence-initial particles and a lower discourse phrase (DiscourseP) for most of the sentence-final particles. The resulting structure is tentatively proposed to account for the word order of all left-periphery particles in Cantonese, bringing the description of their syntax closer in line with a number of proposals based on left-periphery particles in other languages. This proposal includes a three-way distinction of the functions and meanings of left-periphery particles: 1) particles that lie between ForceP and TP do not refer directly to the discourse context; 2) particles that head DiscourseP do refer directly to the discourse; and 3) particles that head AffectP refer to the discourse and express human emotions. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|