Two types of aa3-nominals in Cantonese

This paper provides an overview of the grammatical properties of the Cantonese aa3, a nominal element that only attaches itself to [+human] nouns. We provide evidence to show that there are in fact two types of aa3-nominals. Their syntactic and semantic properties correlate with the number of syllab...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLanguage and linguistics (Taipei) Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 80 - 103
Main Authors Sio, Joanna Ut-Seong, Tang, Sze-Wing
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Taipei Academia Sinica, Institute of Linguistics 01.01.2020
Subjects
Cantonese
Dialects
Prosody
Semantics
Syllables
Syntax
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Summary:This paper provides an overview of the grammatical properties of the Cantonese aa3, a nominal element that only attaches itself to [+human] nouns. We provide evidence to show that there are in fact two types of aa3-nominals. Their syntactic and semantic properties correlate with the number of syllables they consist of. There is a two-way split between disyllabic aa3-nominals and multisyllabic aa3-nominals. Aa3 in disyllabic aa3-nominals should be treated as a prosodic template filler while aa3 in multisyllabic aa3-nominals occupies a syntactic position in the referential layer of the Chinese nominal.
ISSN:1606-822X
2309-5067
DOI:10.1075/laN.00058.S10