Cantonese sentence-final particles
Language Log 2017-03-24
Even if you don't know any Cantonese but listen carefully to people speaking it, you probably can tell that it has an abundance of particles. For speakers of Mandarin who do not understand Cantonese, the proliferation of particles, especially in utterance final position, is conspicuous. Non-speakers of Cantonese, confronted by all these aa3, ge3, gaa3, laa1, lo1, mei6, sin1, tim1, and so on naturally wonder why there are so many particles in this language, what are their various functions, why they are often drawn out (elongated), and how they arose.
Cantonese speakers, on the other hand, just take them in stride as a natural part of their expressive equipment and don't think that there is anything unusual about them.
Abstract
With the popularisation of the Internet, the use of e-mails and computer-based chats (CBCs) has increased dramatically among university students. An interesting feature of such communication, however, is that a written medium is treated like speech (cf. Maynor, 1994). Conversations turn into notes where grammatical accuracy and conventional formalities take a backseat to instant communication. In the case of on-campus CBCs, informality and a certain disregard of the conventions of standard English are all the more manifest.
It is commonly believed in Hong Kong that this general freedom to write ‘bad English’ has encouraged the habit of randomly incorporating Cantonese words into English e-mails. Yet an examination of students' e-mails and icq (‘I Seek You’) communications reveals that far from ‘polluting’ their English by substituting Cantonese words haphazardly for English ones, or by applying Cantonese structures to their English writing, students tend to incorporate certain kinds of Cantonese words systematically into their texts for specific identifiable purposes.
Just as we saw that there is great latitude of opinions about how many tones there are in Cantonese, so do opinions differ concerning the number of sentence final particles in the language:
From Gregory James, "Cantonese particles in Hong Kong students’ English e-mail":
Yau (1965) lists 206 forms Yau, S. C. 1965. ‘A study of the functions and of the presentation of Cantonese sentence particles.’ MA, University of Hong Kong.Ball (1924:122–25) 77 forms
Ball (1924:122–25) 77 forms Ball, J. Dyer. 1883, 1924. Cantonese made easy. 4th edition. Hong Kong: Kelly and Walsh.
Egerod (1984) gives 62 Egerod, S. C. 1984. ‘Verbal and sentential marking in Indo-European and East Asian languages.’ In Computational Analyses of Asian and African Languages 22, 71–82.
Neidle (1990) claims between 35 and 40 Neidle, C. 1990. ‘X|-structures and sentence-final particles in Cantonese.’ Syntax Workshop at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, 29th May. Abstract in CSLI Calendar, 24 May, vol. 5, 29.
Kwok (1984:8), 30 Kwok, H. 1984. Sentence particles in Cantonese. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, Centre of Asian Studies.
Matthews & Yip (1994:340) list 36 Matthews, S. & Yip, V. 1994. Cantonese. A comprehensive grammar. London & New York NY: Routledge.
So the number is variously estimated at 30 to 206. One wonders:
When I was teaching at the University of Hong Kong during 2002-2003, after a public lecture that I gave on the place of topolects within Sinitic, someone in the audience suggested that many Cantonese particles are derived from substrate Austroasiatic languages of the region. I later tracked down a few articles by the questioner, and after reading them I felt that what he said made sense. I forget the man's name now, though I think it might have been Yau Shun-Chiu, and I have not been able to relocate the articles I read (as I recall, they seem to have been published in local newspapers and journals).
I believe that Yau Shun-Chiu has been based in Paris for some years now, but he has a web presence here. Since his thesis was on particles, he may have been the questioner at my talk and the author of the interesting articles that I am no longer able to locate.
There is some discussion of an Austroasiatic substrate in Ann Yue-Hashimoto's The Dancun Dialect of Taishan (she says that it's possible but premature, whereas the Tai substrate is likely).
Stephen Matthews remarks:
I don't think we have a good explanation for the profusion of particles in Cantonese, but the best clue may be to observe how new particles come into being. For example there is now a particle /lu33/ which Virginia [Yip, Stephen's co-author,] does not use and which we only began to notice in the 21st century. There are now one or two theses on it and the consensus seems to be that it is a variant of /laa3/. If so, this illustrates how families of related particles such as wo33/wo21/wo23 develop.
One of the sources cited by James Gregory above takes us back to 1883, so we have some historical depth for further study of these issues:
Ball, J. Dyer (James Dyer) (1847-1919)
Cantonese made easy: a book of simple sentences in the Cantonese dialect, with free and literal translations, and directions for the rendering of English grammatical forms in Chinese. Hongkong: Printed at the 'China Mail' office, 1888
If you want to hear some of the Cantonese utterance final particles in vivid action, listen to the clips here: "Cantonese intonation" (4/20/15).
[Thanks to Mark Liberman]