On the Syntax of the Negative Marker mei6 in Cantonese

Abstract

Syntactic properties of the negative marker mei6 in the preverbal and sentence final positions in Cantonese are examined in this paper. It is argued that the preverbal mei6 is the head of NegP in the lexical layer while the sentence-final mei6 is a sentence-final particle of the temporal type in the head of TP that belongs to the inflectional layer, forming VP-Neg questions. A number of empirical facts, such as matching restrictions on the predicate, coexistence with the sentence-final particles of the temporal type, occurrence in embedded clauses, and distribution of the adverb zung6 ‘still’, can be explained under the base-generation approach to the derivation of the VP-Neg questions.