Abstract
Previous analyses of -hoi, -saai and -maai emphasize their non-aspectual nature, separating them from verbal suffixes like perfective marker -zo, experiential marker -gwo, imperfective marker -zyu and progressive marker -gan, which are generally considered to be falling under the aspectual group. However, the problem is even if it is correct to claim for their non-aspectual nature, the basic semantics of -hoi, -saai and -maai remains unknown. As discussed in Chap. 2, despite that previous analyses do correctly describe some meanings of these suffixes, no unified meaning has been provided to any of them, with the underlying semantics of these suffixes yet to be revealed. What is peculiar about -hoi, -saai and -maai is that although they are morphologically attached to the verb, they can interpret with all verbal arguments. These suffixes are essentially quantificational, since it is from the suffix that the quantificational meaning of the sentence in question is derived. Hence, any analyses which aim to adequately capture the semantics of these verbal suffixes must account for their quantificational meaning.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Quine (1960) relates the extensions of plural NPs and mass NPs by two formal properties, namely cumulativity (i.e., if a set contains two entities, it also contains their sum) and atomic.
- 2.
“The” gives the NP a meaning of a unique reference and such a meaning is omitted in the three representations given in (11) for simplicity.
- 3.
The symbol of the proper part-of relation, <p, is adopted from Krifka. For the detailed definition of < p, readers are referred to Krifka (1998).
- 4.
It should be noted that readings resulting from quantification over different dimensions do not constitute ambiguities of the quantifier and can only be traced to different part structures that an object or an event may have in different dimensions.
- 5.
Pan’s study is on the Mandarin perfective marker -le. I assume that Cantonese -zo and Mandarin -le are the same in this respect.
- 6.
As will be shown later, when there is no focus, the scope of -maai is restricted to vP and fails to interpret with the subject. The only case where -maai can quantify over the grammatical subject is when the verb involved is an unaccusative verb. However, under such a case, the grammatical subject is in fact base-generated at the DO position.
- 7.
I do not exclude the possibility that bare nouns can have specific interpretations if they are well-introduced by previous discourse. However, in examples like (76b), and subsequently (80) and (84), I will focus on the role of bare nouns as a part of a VO compound, hence non-argument use, in order to examine the hierarchical order between postverbal PPs and subjects, between postverbal PPs and IO indirect arguments, and between IO indirect arguments and preverbal PPs regarding their accessibility for saai’s selection.
- 8.
Following Tang (2003), we will consider the bei ‘to’ in (77) as a dative marker or a preposition, not a verb.
- 9.
In Chinese, the verb heoi ‘go’ when used as a postverbal element is difficult to distinguish between its verbal use, namely as the verb “go”, or its more gramaticalized use, namely as the preposition “to”. When heoi is used as a postverbal element, as demonstrated in (97a) and (97b), I will simply take it as a preposition, on a par with “to”.
- 10.
- 11.
For the sake of simplicity, the past-tense interpretation of (103) is ignored in the representations given in (103i) and (103ii).
- 12.
One may argue that the reading “(Besides some other things that John has done for them,) he has done the recording as well”, which is resulted from maai’s selection of the VO compound, can be conveyed by (118b). We agree that such a reading does exist, but represents a focus-affected reading only. Without focus, -maai tends to select the preverbal PP, giving the sentence a reading of “John has done the recording for them as well (in addition to someone else)”, the default reading of (118b). However, when focus is imposed on the VO compound or the predicate, it is true that -maai can associate with the focus, due to its focus-sensitive nature, giving the reading as described. For the focus-sensitive nature of -maai, readers are referred to Chap. 5 of the book.
References
Cheng, Lisa, and Rint Sybesma. 2004. Postverbal ‘can’ in Cantonese (and Hakka) and agree. Lingua 114: 419–445.
Cheung, Hung Nin. 2007. Xianggang Yueyu Yufa de Yanjiu [A study on Cantonese grammar]. Rev. ed. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
de Swart, Henriëtte. 1993. Adverbs of quantification: A generalized quantifier approach. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Ernst, Thomas, and Chengchi Wang. 1995. Object preposing in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4(3): 235–260.
Francis, Elaine J., and Stephen Matthews. 2006. Categoriality and object extraction in Cantonese serial verb constructions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 24: 751–801.
Guéron, Jacqueline, and Teun Hoekstra. 1988. T-chains and the constituent structure of auxiliaries. In Annali di Ca’ Foscari, ed. A. Cardinaletti, G. Cinque and G. Giusti, 35–100. Special Issue, Constituent Structure.
Guéron, Jacqueline, and Teun Hoekstra. 1995. The temporal interpretation of predication. In Syntax and semantics 28: Small clauses, ed. A. Cardinaletti and M.T. Guasti, 77–108. New York: Academic Press.
Hamm, Fritz, and Erhard Hinrichs (eds.). 1998. Plurality and quantification. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Hoeksema, Jack. 1983. Plurality and conjunction. In Studies in model-theoretic semantics, ed. A.G.B. Ter Meulen, 63–83. Dordrecht: Foris.
Huang, Shuanfan. 1981. On the scope phenomena of Chinese quantifiers. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 9(2): 226–243.
Huang, C.T.James. 1982b. Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.
Iljic, Robert. 1994. Quantification in Mandarin Chinese: Two markers of plurality. Linguistics 32: 91–116.
Krifka, Manfred. 1998. The origins of telicity. In Events and grammar, ed. Susan Rothstein, 197–236. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Landman, Fred. 2000. Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Larson, Richard. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 335–392.
Lasersohn, Peter. 1995. Plurality, conjunction and events. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Lee, Thomas Hun Tak. 1986. Studies on quantification in Chinese. Unpublished PhD dissertation, UCLA.
Lee, Thomas Hun Tak. 1994. Yueyu ‘saai’ de luojitedian [The logical properties of Cantonese -saai]. In Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Yue Dialects, ed. Sin Chou Yiu, 131–138. Hong Kong: XianDa Jiaoyu Yanjiush.
Lee, Thomas Hun Tak. 1995. Postverbal quantifiers in Cantonese. Paper presented at the 10th workshop on Asian Oriental Linguistics, May 16–17, 1995. Paris: Centre de Recherches Linguistiques L’Asie Orientale.
Link, Godehard. 1983. The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In Meaning, use and interpretation of language, ed. R. Bäuerle et al., 302–323. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Luke, Kang Kwong, and Adams Bodomo. 2001. A comparative study of the semantics of serial verb constructions in Dagaare and Cantonese. Languages in Contrast 2: 165–180.
Matthews, Stephen. 2006. On serial verb constructions in Cantonese. In Serial verb constrictions: A cross-linguistic typology, ed. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon, 69–87. London: Oxford University Press.
Milsark, Gary Lee. 1974. Existential sentences in English. Unpublished PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge.
Mo, Hua. 1993. Shi lun ‘saai’ yu ‘maai’ de yitong [A comparative study between -saai and -maai]. In Guangzhouhua Yanjiu yu Jiaoxue, ed. Tingou Cheng and Zhou Xiaobing, 74–84. Guangzhou: University of Zhongsan Press.
Moltmann, Friederike. 1997. Parts and wholes in semantics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pan, Haihua. 1993. Interaction between adverbial quantification and perfective aspect. In Proceedings of the Third Annual Linguistics Society of Mid-America Conference, Northwestern U, ed. L.S Stvan, 188–204. Bloomington: Indiana U Linguistics Club Publications.
Quine, Willard. 1960. Word and object. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Schwarzschild, Roger. 1996. Pluralities. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Sharvy, Richard. 1980. A more general theory of definite descriptions. Philosophical Review 89: 607–624.
Simons, Peter. 1987. Parts: A study in ontology. Oxford: Clarendon.
Tang, Sze Wing. 1996. A role of lexical quantifiers. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 26(1/2): 307–323.
Tang, Sze Wing. 2003. A parametric theory of Chinese dialectal grammar. Beijing: Peking University Press.
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Unpublished PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge.
Yue-Hashimoto, Anne. 1993. Aspects. In Collection des Cahiers de Linguistique d’ Asie Orientale 1: Comparative Chinese Dialectal Grammar – Handbook for investigators, 69–88. Paris: Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l’ Asie Orientale.
Zhan, Bohui. 1958. Yue fangyan zhong de xuci ‘qin, zhu, fan, mai, tian’. Zhongguo Yuwen 3: 119–122.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lee, P.Pl. (2012). The Quantification Accessibility Hierarchy for Affixal Quantifiers. In: Cantonese Particles and Affixal Quantification. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4387-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4387-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4386-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4387-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)