booktheque

Cantonese Particles And Affixal Quantification

Peppina Po Lee · 2012

Where to buy

Check today’s price on Amazon. We do not show prices because they change daily.

View on Amazon

Affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

About the book

Cantonese, the lingua franca of Hong Kong and its neighboring province, has an unusually rich repertoire of verbal particles. This volume significantly augments the academic literature on their semantics, focusing on three affixal quantifiers, -saai, -hoi and -maai. The author shows how these verbal suffixes display a unique interplay of syntax and semantics: used in a sentence with no focus, they quantify items flexibly, according to an accessibility hierarchy; with focus, focus comes into effect after syntactic selection. This fresh and compelling perspective in the study of particles and quantification is the first in-depth analysis of Cantonese verbal suffixes. It compares the languageâs affixal quantification to the alternative determiner and adverbial quantifiers. The bookâs syntax-semantics mapping geography deploys both descriptive and theoretical approaches, making it an essential resource for researchers studying the nexus of syntax and semantics, as well as Cantonese itself.

Book details

Year
2012
Language
English
Publisher
Springer
Editions
1
Pages
253
ISBN
9789400743861

Data source: Wikidata