Readers 读者
Grammatical diversity across the Yue dialects
粵語方言語法的多樣性
Bit-Chee Kwok 郭必之; Andy C. Chin 錢志安; Benjamin K. Tsou 鄒嘉彥
Abstract 摘要
There is a general belief that Yue constitutes a highly uniform dialect group, with its members sharing a good number of structures and lexica with the regional prestige dialect, Cantonese. Based on our first hand data collected from the field, this paper* describes the lesser known grammatical diversity across the Yue dialects, which can be illustrated by the different uses of the following features: (a) ideophonic suffixes; (b) diminutive suffixes and tone sandhi; (c) perfective aspect markers and their position in the VP, and (d) neutral question forms. The survey includes nine dialects from different subgroups, most of which are spoken far away from the Pearl River Delta where Cantonese dominates. Our study reveals that while Cantonese has obvious influence over other members of Yue, the grammatical diversity across Yue cannot simply be overlooked.
Keywords 關鍵詞
Yue dialects 粵語 Language diversity 語言多樣性 Ideophonic suffix 狀貌詞後綴 Diminutive 小稱 Perfective aspect 完整體標記 Neutral question form 中性問句