CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
香港城市大學
A Semantic Study of Restrictive
Particles in Cantonese
粵語限制焦點助詞的語義研究
Submitted to
Department of Linguistics and Translation
翻譯及語言學系
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
哲學博士學位
by
Li Yee Na
李綺娜
August 2014
二零一四年八月
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ABSTRACT
Cantonese has a rich inventory of restrictive focus particles across syntactic categories,
including verbs, adverbs, affixes, and sentence-final particles. Specifically, the
restrictive sentence-final particles have a comparatively intricate set of manifestations
(cf. Fung 2000 on a comparative study of seven restrictive sentence-final particles).
Intriguingly, these particles are found to be naturally co-occurring with each other,
suggesting that the restrictive particle system in Cantonese presents a more
complicated picture than expected. However, studies focusing on their semantics are
still lacking.
The objective of this dissertation is to explore the underlying semantic system of five
Cantonese restrictive particles, namely zinghai, zaai, postverbal -dak, zaa3 and ze1.
The current study has taken the sentence-final particles zaa3 and ze1 as the first step
to investigate the semantic composition of restrictive particles. Three basic semantic
components constitute the core semantics of the restrictive sentence-final particles
zaa3 and ze1: (i) the denotation of the corresponding sentence without the particle; (ii)
the negated existential quantification functioning as ―exclusion‖; (iii) scalar
presupposition, which is arguably the crucial factor of explaining the distributional
behavior of zaa3 and ze1 and the subtle differences in their interpretations contributed
to sentences. Crucially, in contrast to the low ranking scalar presupposition of zaa3,
ze1 encodes a high-to-low ranking scalar presuppostion.
Having established a semantic framework for restrictive particles based on the
examination of zaa3 and ze1, the analysis is extended to postverbal -dak, zinghai, and
zaai. Due to the selectional restriction on the associated item, namely, that it must be a
quantized nominal, the basic semantics of -dak is comprised of the first two: (i) the
ii
denotation of the corresponding sentence without the particle; (ii) the negated
existential quantification. The absence of scalar presupposition in constituting the core
meaning of -dak has led to an important assumption that it is a scalar particle. On the
other hand, despite the absence of such a selectional restriction on zinghai, it shares
the same set of semantic components with postverbal -dak. In this respect, zaai is
analyzed on a par with zinghai and postverbal -dak, due to its status of being a
non-scalar restrictive particle.
Along with the above lines of thoughts, the current study sheds some light on a
landscape capturing the class of Cantonese restrictive markers on the basis of their
distributional patterns on two semantic properties, namely scalarity and scale selection.
The two properties that help distinguish between the particles ultimately introduce
five types of restrictive particles, each of which is represented by the corresponding
manifestation: (i) zaai can only interact with non-scalar contexts, hence belongs to
[scalar] type; (ii) -dak can only interact with scalar contexts along a semantic scale,
hence characterized as [+scalar] and [flexible-scale] type; (iii) ze1 can interact with
scalar contexts along a semantic scale or a pragmatic scale, hence belonging to
[+scalar] and [+flexible-scale] type; (iv) zinghai can interact with a non-scalar context,
or a scalar context only along a semantic scale, hence residing in [scalar] and
[flexible-scale] type; (v) zaa3 can interact with a non-scalar context, or a scalar
context along a semantic or pragmatic scale, hence characterized as [scalar] and
[+flexible-scale] type.
On the basis of the above classification, the interplay of these semantic properties and
the scope relation in the co-occurrence of the particles is examined, with a special
reference to an additional restrictive particle, namely preverbal dak. The hierarchical
ordering of the particles, namely, that restrictive particles that are closer to the
associated item in terms of hierarchical structure have priority to associate with the
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item, helps predict the interaction of the particles within a sentence. The relation
between the syntactic scope and the semantic properties of the particles would lend
support to a speculation that the associated items at each syntactic level have a typical
restrictive particle and zaa3 is the most flexible among these particles. Having built
up a more comprehensive picture with respect to the semantic properties displayed by
the particles and their division of labor within the same sentence, it is hoped that the
semantic analysis developed in this thesis can provide a basis for studies on other
restrictive particles cross-linguistically, as well as other quantifiers such as additive
particles in Cantonese in future research.
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Table of Contents
1
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Scope and Goals ............................................................................................ 1
1.2 Major Proposals ............................................................................................. 8
1.3 Organization ................................................................................................ 10
2
Theoretical Background and Previous Analyses on Cantonese
Restrictive Sentence-Final Particles .................................................................. 12
2.1 English Only ................................................................................................ 12
2.1.1 Non-scalar and Scalar only ................................................................... 12
2.1.2 Implications of only .............................................................................. 18
2.2 General Issues on the Semantics of Gradable Adjectives ............................ 25
2.3
Previous Analyses of Restrictive Sentence-Final Particles
in Cantonese zaa3 and ze1 ........................................................................... 31
2.3.1 Previous Analyses of the Semantics of zaa3 ........................................ 33
2.3.2 Previous Analyses of the Semantics of ze1 .......................................... 42
2.3.2.1 Propositional: What is ―Downplaying‖? ..................................... 43
2.3.2.2 h-assumption: Different Speaker Presuppositions? .................... 49
2.3.2.3 Concession vs. Contrasting ......................................................... 51
2.3.2.4 Epistemic: Can zaa3 and ze1Associate with
Adjectival Predicates? ................................................................. 52
3
The Semantics of zaa3 and ze1 ........................................................................... 58
3.1 Basic Semantics of zaa3 and ze1: Assertion and Presupposition ................ 59
3.2 Scalar Presupposition of zaa3and ze1 ......................................................... 61
3.2.1 The Association of zaa3 and ze1 with Non-Adjectival Scales ............. 69
3.2.1.1 Cases where zaa3 and ze1 are interchangeable ........................... 69
3.2.1.2 Cases where only ze1 is possible ................................................ 77
3.2.1.3 Cases where only zaa3 is possible .............................................. 87
3.2.2 The Association of zaa3 and ze1 with Adjectival Scales ..................... 93
3.2.2.1 The Association of zaa3 and ze1 with ―A-A-dei‖ ........................ 94
3.2.2.2 The Association of zaa3 and ze1 with Positive Forms.............. 101
3.2.2.2.1 Positive Forms with zaa3 ................................................ 101
3.2.2.2.2 Positive Forms with ze1 ................................................... 120
3.2.2.3 The Association of zaa3 and ze1 with
Negation of Positive Forms ..................................................... 127
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4
The Semantics of Postverbal Restrictive -dak ................................................ 137
4.1 An Overview: Multiple Roles of dak ........................................................ 137
4.2 Previous Analyses of -dak: Selectional Restrictions ................................. 138
4.2.1 The Nominal and Cardinality Requirement of -dak ........................... 139
4.2.2 The Boundedness/Telicity Requirement of -dak ................................ 143
4.3 Basic Semantics of -dak: Assertion and Presupposition............................ 145
5
The Landscape and the Co-occurrence of
Cantonese Restrictive Particles........................................................................ 161
5.1 Summary of zaa3, ze1 and -dak: Negated Existential Quantifier.............. 161
5.2
Properties for Classification: Scalarity and Flexibility in
Scale Selection ........................................................................................... 162
5.2.1 The ―Scalarity‖ Property: -dak, zaa3 and ze1 .................................... 163
5.2.1.1 The Notion of Scalarity ............................................................. 163
5.2.1.2 Scalarity of zaa3 and ze1 .......................................................... 164
5.2.1.3 Scalarity of -dak ........................................................................ 168
5.2.2 The ―Flexibility in Scale Selection‖ Property:
-dak, zaa3 and ze1 .............................................................................. 170
5.2.2.1 Types of Scales .......................................................................... 170
5.2.2.2 Flexibility in Scale Selection of zaa3 and ze1 .......................... 172
5.2.2.3 Flexibility in Scale Selection of -dak ........................................ 173
5.3 The Landscape of Cantonese Restrictive Particles .................................... 177
5.3.1 Zinghai................................................................................................ 178
5.3.2 Zaai ..................................................................................................... 187
5.3.3 Completing the Landscape with Zinghai and Zaai............................. 189
5.4 The Co-occurrence of Cantonese Restrictive Particles ............................. 191
5.4.1 The Syntax-Semantics Mappings of
zaa3, ze1, -dak and zinghai................................................................. 192
5.4.1.1 Scope for zaa3: Wider than TP? ............................................... 192
5.4.1.2 Scope for ze1: A Scope Wider than zaa3 .................................. 196
5.4.1.3 Syntactic Status of -dak: Prenominal Quantifier or
Verbal Suffix? ......................................................................... 197
5.4.1.4 Scope for zinghai: VP ............................................................... 200
5.4.2 Preverbal dak ...................................................................................... 200
5.4.3 The Division of Labor among Cantonese Restrictive Particles
in the Co-occurrence cases ................................................................. 205
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6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 221
6.1 Summary of Major Findings...................................................................... 221
6.2 Theoretical Implications ............................................................................ 225
6.3 Further Research ........................................................................................ 226