Properties of ngaang and the Syntax of Verbal Particles in Cantonese
粤语"硬"的特点和动词助词的句法
Sze-Wing Tang 邓思颖

Abstract 摘要
This article explores various grammatical properties of the postverbal particle ngaang ‘must’ in Cantonese. It is shown that the existence of ngaang ‘must’ is subject to the telicity requirement, the aspectual requirement, and the monosyllabic requirement. Furthermore, it is argued that ngaang ‘must’ should not be analyzed as a resultative verb. By virtue of their grammatical similarities, ngaang ‘must’ can be treated on a par with two postverbal particles in Cantonese, namely saai ‘all’ and dak ‘only’. These three verbal particles are overt realizations of a functional category associated with modality, distributivity, and focus semantically, whose projection dominates the verb phrase in the clausal structure.

这篇文章探讨粤语动后助词“硬”的语法特点。本文发现“硬”的出现受到事件结构条件，体貌标志的出现和单音节条件的限制。此外，本文指出“硬”不能分析为一个结果补语。由于他们在语法上的相似性，“硬”应该与“晒”和“得”这两个粤语动后助词归为同一类。这三个动后助词同属于一个功能性词类。在句法结构上，这个功能性词类位于动词短语之上；至于在意义上，它与情态，量化和焦点有关。

<< Back 返回

Readers 读者