The Subject Function in Cantonese

This dissertation, "The Subject Function in Cantonese" by On-man, Lee, 李安敏, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled THE SUBJECT FUNCTION IN CANTONESE submitted by LEE On Man for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in July 2003 This dissertation is a study of the syntax of the grammatical function, Subject, in Cantonese, a variety of Chinese, within the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) (Bresnan and Kaplan 1982, Bresnan 2001). Subject is a prominent notion in almost all theories of grammar, and yet there is no consistent definition of Subject cross-linguistically. Based on previous literature on Chinese, it is shown that there remain controversies over the designation of Subject in the language. It is thus proposed that a set of collective properties is needed to identify Subject in Chinese. The proposals are made based on evidence from Cantonese data. In the current study, the collective criteria for identifying Subject in Cantonese are based on Keenan (1976)'s Subject Properties List (SPL) which includes coding, behavior and control, and semantic properties. It is found that not all the 30 properties proposed by Keenan (1976) can be attested in Cantonese. Indeed, only two syntactic properties, reflexivization and possessor relativization, are salient for characterizing Subject. It is concluded that Subject often takes an unmarked preverbal position, and should be an argument function of its predicate. These two unique subject properties are also used to examine the subjecthood of an NP in controversial constructions. This study also explores lexical mapping between Subject and its argument role in certain syntactic structures in Cantonese based on the Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) within LFG. The limitations concerning the LMT model are addressed by three morphological rules for passivization and locative inversions in Cantonese. This work further demonstrates that Cantonese is a kind of null subject language. The null subject phenomenon is indeed very productive in the language. Three types of null subjects, including non-referential null subject, discourse-referential null subject and embedded null subject are introduced. The null subjects are retrievable by the LFG approach augmented by Information Structure (Lambrecht 1994). The lexical mapping between null subjects and argument roles can also be accounted for. Finally, this study has proposed a detailed analysis of Subject in Cantonese in the hope that it will offer new insights for the theoretical framework of LFG from the perspective of Cantonese linguistics. (352 words) DOI: 10.5353/th_b2962473 Subjects: Cantonese dialects - Subjectless constructions Cantonese dialects - Syntax