COMPLEMENT FUNCTIONS IN CANTONESE:
A LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR APPROACH

LEE Yat Mei

　

This dissertation explores issues with regards to the syntax of complement functions in Cantonese, a variety of Chinese, from the theoretical perspective of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). The central question we are concerned with is the extent to which LFG is applicable to Cantonese based on the examination of complement functions.

Syntactic properties of various Cantonese complement functions have been presented. The following functions have been identified: OBJ, OBJ_q, OBL_BEN/GO, OBL_AG, OBL_LOC, OBL_TH,COMP, and XCOMP. Each of them differs from one another in terms of the structural configuration, categorial realization, and passivizability. Considerable focus has been placed on the function COMP. Based on previous studies which introduce the concept of mixed languages as the motivation of retaining the COMP function, evidence has been shown that Cantonese is a mixed language. Upon this, evidence has also been adduced to support the idea of introducing degrees of OBJ/COMP mixedness in the description of natural languages.

The work also addresses the limitations concerning the Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) arising from some typical constructions in Cantonese predicates like passives, ditransitives, and locative inversions. On this account, a revised version of LMT with a rearranged Thematic Hierarchy and two morpholexical rules for passivization and locative inversions have been proposed for the analysis of Cantonese.

Furthermore, an additional pair of argument structure feature [+ p] '(non)propositional' has been proposed for the LMT in the light of distinguishing COMP and XCOMP from other argument functions. This move is thought to result in a more elaborate argument structure theory with three pairs of binary features for argument function classification and a new markedness hierarchy of argument functions. This introduction of a new feature represents an initial step towards maximizing the predictive power of LMT.
　

In sum, it is shown that LFG, to a large extent, is a plausible linguistic model.

INTERNET CHATTING AS AN EMERGENT REGISTER:
A STUDY OF ICQ TALK IN HONG KONG

Internet communication has become a feature of everyday life in the 21^st Century and ICQ (I Seek You) is one of the most popular Internet tools which makes possible synchronous Internet communication. It is thus not surprising that ICQ conversation, along with other forms of computer-mediated communication, has become a hot topic of research in recent years. In ICQ chats, each user has a unique number and a database called 'history' to store all incoming and outgoing events. Thus, actual wordings and chat sequences can be recorded verbatim and extracted from the 'history' folder. In this way, a database of ICQ conversations, conducted largely in Cantonese and English, has been collected in Hong Kong. It is observed that a specialized kind of writing has been developed among Hong Kong ICQ chatters. It is found that ICQ conversations have some properties of ordinary conversations: they are spontaneous and colloquial. They also contain distinct linguistic features, which have come about as a result of the need to represent colloquial speech.

In this research, several forms of written representations of Cantonese in ICQ chat sessions are discussed. It is noticed that ICQ chatters sometimes choose to romanize or translate Chinese characters. The representations are usually not standardized or codified; instead they are ad hoc and to some extent an improvisation. Yet, the romanized forms and translations are widely understood amongst frequent ICQ chatters. It is found that the informal representations used in these ICQ conversations, though uncodified, are not without regularities. It is also found that Cantonese-speaking chatters frequently employ Chinese sentence-final particles in their English sentences so as to better express what they wish to say. As a result, the traditional patterns of written forms of Chinese and English have undergone some modification in Hong Kong.

It is observed that a considerable number of abbreviations, special symbols and expressions are used in Internet chatting to represent facial expressions, emotions, and feelings. These special features contribute to Internet chatting as an emerging register which has both the characteristics of written and spoken language. At the same time, ICQ language embodies its own peculiarities which make it different from other registers.

This study shows that Internet chatting is in the process of evolving into a new medium. It is developing into a register with identifiable elements and relatively stable characteristics.

CHINESE AND ENGLISH COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
IN THE CONTEXT OF NEW LITERACY STUDIES

LEE Ka Man

This thesis investigates aspects of text-based Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) in Hong Kong within the framework of New Literacy Studies (NLS), a theory of literacy which studies how language and literacy are used in social context. The analysis is based on a 70,000-word corpus of email and ICQ messages (composed in Chinese/Cantonese and English). Two concepts of NLS – literacy events, occasions where literacy has a role, and literacy practices, ways of using language and literacy in different contexts, are examined in detail.

The study first explores the constitution of a CMC literacy event and proposes that participants, settings, forms of interaction, codes, subjects of discussion, artefacts, and underlying contexts are the basic components. These elements are observed in a case study of a CMC event in a domestic setting. The research further reveals that in CMC events, the relationship between speech and writing is indeterminate since features vary across messages. It is, however, noted that code-mixing plays a prominent role in CMC texts in Hong Kong.

The research has also identified seven literacy practices in text-based CMC. It first presents these practices under the topics of shortenings, emoticons, openings and closures, typographical, grammatical, orthographic, and ‘coding’ practices. It then examines various cultural and linguistic specific CMC textual practices, which include:

Textual findings are supported by questionnaire and interview surveys which investigate participants’ thoughts and values on their textual practices. Respondents’ opinions indicate that practices are not the same in all situations, which reveals the importance of ‘context’ in CMC.

Three categories of CMC context are proposed - contexts of social interaction (‘chat’ and ‘non-chat’), communicative situational contexts, and language-specific contexts, which are associated with subsets of CMC practices according to the nature of the contexts. This characterisation of CMC context demonstrates its compatibility with the theory of NLS.

The research suggests that language and literacy researchers and practitioners should recognise the set of new literacy practices in CMC. Subsequent studies in the Chinese context are necessary for a more complete understanding of the impact of CMC language on students' reading and writing habits.

THE ACQUISITION OF RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTIONS BY CANTONESE-SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

There has been a growing concern that students in Hong Kong have low proficiency levels in English. This constitutes a challenge to language planning policy, which aims at providing opportunities for extending knowledge and experience through the acquisition of English grammar. Grammar forms a major component in English language teaching, and mostly has priority over other parts of the language. The acquisition of second language syntax is the focus of this research. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the development of relative clauses in the interlanguage of native Cantonese learners of English within the framework of Keenan and Comrie’s Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (1977, 1979). The study also seeks to distinguish the features of Cantonese-English interlanguage which may be attributed to language transfer from those which may be considered as universal to second language acquisition. The role of L1 is then examined. The study focuses on the theoretical concepts of language transfer, comparative study of Cantonese and English relative clauses as well as language universals from a typological perspective.

The issues are investigated with a database of syntactic judgements and production by a group of Cantonese-speaking students of English as a second language in Hong Kong. A number of features, namely, the use of resumptive pronouns, the retention of the head noun, shift of noun functions, non-adjacency of head noun and relative pronoun, preposition stranding/deletion, and avoidance of the use of zero relativizer are found in the data. These features are discussed and it is shown that they are more attributable to universal and developmental factors than to direct L1 transfer. One important finding of the study is that there exists an uncommon feature of retention of the head noun. Its presence is suggestive of lower proficiency levels in the target language.

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.

Discontinuous Verb-Object Compounds in Cantonese and Mandarin

YU So Sum

This thesis addresses theoretical aspects of Cantonese and Mandarin Verb-Object Compounds (VOCs). While most studies in the past approached the topic by discussing the wordhood status of VOCs and the validity of various criteria in determining their status, this research explores key aspects of the syntactic and morphological behaviours of Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs.

There are three main objectives for this thesis. The first objective is to show that although, syntactically, a VOC can be interrupted in certain contexts in which the verbal constituent acts as a predicate and the nominal constituent is a syntactic object, semantically, and in some morphological aspects, the VOC is still like a single lexical item with unitary lexical semantics. This study defends the view that VOCs exhibit both syntactic and morphological properties. Based on this, a novel interpretation for the discontinuous VO compounds as idiom-like expressions is provided.

Taking into consideration the fact that most studies of VOCs were done on Mandarin and nothing in detail has been attempted on Cantonese VOCs, the second aim of this thesis is to look at the Cantonese VOCs in detail, together with the Mandarin VOCs, and to make a comparison between them with regard to the lexical, syntactic, and phonological aspects. It is found that Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs reveal both similarities and differences in these two aspects.

Based on these descriptions of VOCs we then offer a revised formal representation of VOCs within the syntactic framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). A critical review of two studies (C.-R. Huang 1990, Her 1997) that have dealt with the representation of VO constructions in LFG and the proposal of making a distinction between Verb-Object compounds and Verb-Object phrases through the argument structure and the use of constraining equation are presented. The LFG framework is shown to be a plausible syntactic model to account for the kind of lexical discontinuity observed within Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs.

The results of the research developed here could have practical applications and implications for the field of computer technology for the development of large-scale computational lexicons.


	Abstracts of Postgraduate Research Theses (supervised by Dr. A. Bodomo)
Lee Yat Mei (M.Phil., 2002), *Complement Functions in Cantonese: A Lexical Functional Grammar Approach* Cheng Kin Ying Jeanne (M.Phil., 2002), *Internet Chatting as an Emergent Register: A Study of ICQ Talk in Hong Kong* Lee Ka Man (M.Phil., 2002), *Chinese and English Computer-Mediated Communication in the Context of New Literacy Studies* Cheung Ying Ying, Carina (M.Phil., 2002), *The Acquisition of Relative Clause Constructions by Cantonese-Speaking Learners of English* 　 Lee On Man (M.Phil., 2003), *The Subject Function in Cantonese* Yu So Sum (M.Phil. 2004), Discontinuous Verb-Object Compounds in Cantonese and Mandarin Charles Marfo (Ph.D.) Lam Shi Ching, Olivia (M.Phil.) Tai Chung Pui (M.Phil.) Mok Yuen Kwan, Sally (M.Phil.) Ho Wing See, Vincie (Ph.D)
Compiled by (c) 2002-2004 Adams Bodomo, Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, All Rights Reserved. Last updated: July 6, 2004 　　　　　　　　 COMPLEMENT FUNCTIONS IN CANTONESE: A LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR APPROACH by LEE Yat Mei 　 This dissertation explores issues with regards to the syntax of complement functions in Cantonese, a variety of Chinese, from the theoretical perspective of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). The central question we are concerned with is the extent to which LFG is applicable to Cantonese based on the examination of complement functions. Syntactic properties of various Cantonese complement functions have been presented. The following functions have been identified: OBJ, OBJ_q, OBL_BEN/GO, OBL_AG, OBL_LOC, OBL_TH,COMP, and XCOMP. Each of them differs from one another in terms of the structural configuration, categorial realization, and passivizability. Considerable focus has been placed on the function COMP. Based on previous studies which introduce the concept of mixed languages as the motivation of retaining the COMP function, evidence has been shown that Cantonese is a mixed language. Upon this, evidence has also been adduced to support the idea of introducing degrees of OBJ/COMP mixedness in the description of natural languages. The work also addresses the limitations concerning the Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) arising from some typical constructions in Cantonese predicates like passives, ditransitives, and locative inversions. On this account, a revised version of LMT with a rearranged Thematic Hierarchy and two morpholexical rules for passivization and locative inversions have been proposed for the analysis of Cantonese. Furthermore, an additional pair of argument structure feature [+ p] '(non)propositional' has been proposed for the LMT in the light of distinguishing COMP and XCOMP from other argument functions. This move is thought to result in a more elaborate argument structure theory with three pairs of binary features for argument function classification and a new markedness hierarchy of argument functions. This introduction of a new feature represents an initial step towards maximizing the predictive power of LMT. 　 In sum, it is shown that LFG, to a large extent, is a plausible linguistic model. 　 INTERNET CHATTING AS AN EMERGENT REGISTER: A STUDY OF ICQ TALK IN HONG KONG by CHENG Kin Ying, Jeanne Internet communication has become a feature of everyday life in the 21^st Century and ICQ (I Seek You) is one of the most popular Internet tools which makes possible synchronous Internet communication. It is thus not surprising that ICQ conversation, along with other forms of computer-mediated communication, has become a hot topic of research in recent years. In ICQ chats, each user has a unique number and a database called 'history' to store all incoming and outgoing events. Thus, actual wordings and chat sequences can be recorded verbatim and extracted from the 'history' folder. In this way, a database of ICQ conversations, conducted largely in Cantonese and English, has been collected in Hong Kong. It is observed that a specialized kind of writing has been developed among Hong Kong ICQ chatters. It is found that ICQ conversations have some properties of ordinary conversations: they are spontaneous and colloquial. They also contain distinct linguistic features, which have come about as a result of the need to represent colloquial speech. In this research, several forms of written representations of Cantonese in ICQ chat sessions are discussed. It is noticed that ICQ chatters sometimes choose to romanize or translate Chinese characters. The representations are usually not standardized or codified; instead they are ad hoc and to some extent an improvisation. Yet, the romanized forms and translations are widely understood amongst frequent ICQ chatters. It is found that the informal representations used in these ICQ conversations, though uncodified, are not without regularities. It is also found that Cantonese-speaking chatters frequently employ Chinese sentence-final particles in their English sentences so as to better express what they wish to say. As a result, the traditional patterns of written forms of Chinese and English have undergone some modification in Hong Kong. It is observed that a considerable number of abbreviations, special symbols and expressions are used in Internet chatting to represent facial expressions, emotions, and feelings. These special features contribute to Internet chatting as an emerging register which has both the characteristics of written and spoken language. At the same time, ICQ language embodies its own peculiarities which make it different from other registers. This study shows that Internet chatting is in the process of evolving into a new medium. It is developing into a register with identifiable elements and relatively stable characteristics. CHINESE AND ENGLISH COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF NEW LITERACY STUDIES by LEE Ka Man This thesis investigates aspects of text-based Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) in Hong Kong within the framework of New Literacy Studies (NLS), a theory of literacy which studies how language and literacy are used in social context. The analysis is based on a 70,000-word corpus of email and ICQ messages (composed in Chinese/Cantonese and English). Two concepts of NLS – literacy events, occasions where literacy has a role, and literacy practices, ways of using language and literacy in different contexts, are examined in detail. The study first explores the constitution of a CMC literacy event and proposes that participants, settings, forms of interaction, codes, subjects of discussion, artefacts, and underlying contexts are the basic components. These elements are observed in a case study of a CMC event in a domestic setting. The research further reveals that in CMC events, the relationship between speech and writing is indeterminate since features vary across messages. It is, however, noted that code-mixing plays a prominent role in CMC texts in Hong Kong. The research has also identified seven literacy practices in text-based CMC. It first presents these practices under the topics of shortenings, emoticons, openings and closures, typographical, grammatical, orthographic, and ‘coding’ practices. It then examines various cultural and linguistic specific CMC textual practices, which include: Cantonese-based shortenings (88 ‘bye-bye’); Asian-specific emoticons (>v<, :?); Transfer of native intuition to CMC texts (subject omission); Common grammatical errors which are made by second language learners of English (e.g. problematic verb forms, inappropriate choice of word classes); Creative Cantonese representations (e.g. coined romanisation and transliteration) Textual findings are supported by questionnaire and interview surveys which investigate participants’ thoughts and values on their textual practices. Respondents’ opinions indicate that practices are not the same in all situations, which reveals the importance of ‘context’ in CMC. Three categories of CMC context are proposed - contexts of social interaction (‘chat’ and ‘non-chat’), communicative situational contexts, and language-specific contexts, which are associated with subsets of CMC practices according to the nature of the contexts. This characterisation of CMC context demonstrates its compatibility with the theory of NLS. The research suggests that language and literacy researchers and practitioners should recognise the set of new literacy practices in CMC. Subsequent studies in the Chinese context are necessary for a more complete understanding of the impact of CMC language on students' reading and writing habits. THE ACQUISITION OF RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTIONS BY CANTONESE-SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ENGLISH by CHEUNG Ying Ying, Carina There has been a growing concern that students in Hong Kong have low proficiency levels in English. This constitutes a challenge to language planning policy, which aims at providing opportunities for extending knowledge and experience through the acquisition of English grammar. Grammar forms a major component in English language teaching, and mostly has priority over other parts of the language. The acquisition of second language syntax is the focus of this research. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the development of relative clauses in the interlanguage of native Cantonese learners of English within the framework of Keenan and Comrie’s Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (1977, 1979). The study also seeks to distinguish the features of Cantonese-English interlanguage which may be attributed to language transfer from those which may be considered as universal to second language acquisition. The role of L1 is then examined. The study focuses on the theoretical concepts of language transfer, comparative study of Cantonese and English relative clauses as well as language universals from a typological perspective. The issues are investigated with a database of syntactic judgements and production by a group of Cantonese-speaking students of English as a second language in Hong Kong. A number of features, namely, the use of resumptive pronouns, the retention of the head noun, shift of noun functions, non-adjacency of head noun and relative pronoun, preposition stranding/deletion, and avoidance of the use of zero relativizer are found in the data. These features are discussed and it is shown that they are more attributable to universal and developmental factors than to direct L1 transfer. One important finding of the study is that there exists an uncommon feature of retention of the head noun. Its presence is suggestive of lower proficiency levels in the target language. The SUBJECT FUNCTION IN CANTONESE by LEE On Man 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. Discontinuous Verb-Object Compounds in Cantonese and Mandarin by YU So Sum This thesis addresses theoretical aspects of Cantonese and Mandarin Verb-Object Compounds (VOCs). While most studies in the past approached the topic by discussing the wordhood status of VOCs and the validity of various criteria in determining their status, this research explores key aspects of the syntactic and morphological behaviours of Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs. There are three main objectives for this thesis. The first objective is to show that although, syntactically, a VOC can be interrupted in certain contexts in which the verbal constituent acts as a predicate and the nominal constituent is a syntactic object, semantically, and in some morphological aspects, the VOC is still like a single lexical item with unitary lexical semantics. This study defends the view that VOCs exhibit both syntactic and morphological properties. Based on this, a novel interpretation for the discontinuous VO compounds as idiom-like expressions is provided. Taking into consideration the fact that most studies of VOCs were done on Mandarin and nothing in detail has been attempted on Cantonese VOCs, the second aim of this thesis is to look at the Cantonese VOCs in detail, together with the Mandarin VOCs, and to make a comparison between them with regard to the lexical, syntactic, and phonological aspects. It is found that Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs reveal both similarities and differences in these two aspects. Based on these descriptions of VOCs we then offer a revised formal representation of VOCs within the syntactic framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). A critical review of two studies (C.-R. Huang 1990, Her 1997) that have dealt with the representation of VO constructions in LFG and the proposal of making a distinction between Verb-Object compounds and Verb-Object phrases through the argument structure and the use of constraining equation are presented. The LFG framework is shown to be a plausible syntactic model to account for the kind of lexical discontinuity observed within Cantonese and Mandarin VOCs. The results of the research developed here could have practical applications and implications for the field of computer technology for the development of large-scale computational lexicons.