A unified study of verbal and adjectival -haa5 in Cantonese

Abstract

ABSTRACT:-Haa5 (吓) 'a bit' is a frequently used affix attached to verbal and adjectival phrases in Cantonese. The investigation of the distributions, grammatical properties and functions of -haa5 reveals that all usages of -haa5 are derived from its original meaning 'a stroke, a bit, or a tiny amount'. The distributions of -haa5 are highly restricted: predicates eligible to co-occur with -haa5 are verbs/adjectives with an innate event/degree argument, excluding those whose semantics are of extreme/polarity reading. The function of -haa5 is to delimit events when following verb phrases (henceforth VPs) and make slight adjustments of degree when attached to adjective phrases (henceforth APs). Moreover, -haa5 is of the function of subjectivity encoding. -Haa5 has been grammaticalized from a verb classifier, event delimiter/degree adjuster to a subjectivity marker and is syntactically at the left periphery of the extended projection of predicative lexical categories.摘要:"-吓"是粤语动词和形容词短语之后经常出现的一个后缀。通过对 "-吓"的句法分布、语法性质和功能的研究，本文发现"-吓"的所 有用法都源自其"一下"的初始意义。"-吓"的句法分布非常受限： 能与"-吓"合法共现的谓词都是内含事件/程度论元的动词/形容词， 并且这些谓词不能包含极限/极项意义。当附着在动词短语之后时， "-吓"的功能是切分事件，当它出现在形容词短语后时，其作用是 对形容词表达的程度意义进行细微调整。除此之外，"-吓"还能表达 说话者的主观判断。我们认为粤语的"-吓"已经完成了从动量词、事 件切分/程度调节成分到主观性标记的语法化，它在句法上处于谓词 性词汇短语扩展投射的左边界位置。