Quantification in Cantonese

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Cantonese, this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in chapter “ The Quantifier Questionnaire ”. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Cantonese, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationStudies in Linguistics and Philosophy
EditorsDenis Paperno , Edward L. Keenan
Place of PublicationDordrecht
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media B.V.
Pages61-111
Number of pages51
ISBN (Print)978-3-319-44328-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Publication series

NameStudies in Linguistics and Philosophy
Volume97
ISSN (Print)0924-4662
ISSN (Electronic)2215-034X

Keywords

  • Cantonese
  • Classifiers
  • Determiners
  • Morpho-syntactic
  • Quantification patterns
  • Quantified noun phrases
  • Quantifiers
  • Semantic

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