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Poly-functionality of the preverbal “acquire” in the Nanning Yue dialect of Chinese: an areal perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2011

Kwok Bit-Chee ,
Andy C. Chin  and
Benjamin K. Tsou
Kwok Bit-Chee*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong
Andy C. Chin*
Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Benjamin K. Tsou*
Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
*
bckwok@cityu.edu.hk
andychin@ied.edu.hk
btsou@ied.edu.hk
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Abstract

This paper aims to explore the origin and to reconstruct the path of the development of a preverbal element, glossed as ACQ here, in the Nanning Yue dialect (NY) spoken in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south-western China. Apart from being a full verb meaning “acquire”, this morpheme can also appear in preverbal and post-verbal positions, expressing different modalities. It is argued that the preverbal ACQ in Early Cantonese (i.e. the ancestral language of modern Cantonese spoken in the Pearl River Delta as well as NY) is relatively non-productive, and this leads us to consider that the emergence of this peculiar grammatical element in modern NY might involve external factors. One possible such factor is language contact. Specifically, we argue that the new readings derived from the preverbal ACQ in NY were transferred from Zhuang, the most common non-Sinitic language of the Tai-Kadai family in Guangxi, by contact-induced interference.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 119 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2011

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Footnotes

*

The first draft of this paper was presented at “The 16th Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics” (IACL-16) hosted by Peking University on 29 May–1 June 2008. We would like to thank Samuel H.-N. Cheung 張洪年, Shin Kataoka 片岡新, Thomas H.-T. Lee 李行德, Huayong Lin 林華勇, Yi Lin 林亦, Fengyu Qin 覃鳳余, Rint Sybesma, Fuxiang Wu 吳福祥, Chusheng Zhuang 莊初昇, and the anonymous reviewer for providing valuable comments and information. Of course, all errors are our sole responsibility. This study is supported partly by a grant from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (CityU 144507/07).

Abbreviations: 1 sg. – first person singular, 2 sg. – second person singular, 3 sg. – third person singular, asp. – aspect marker, cl. – classifier, det. – determiner, foc. – focus, neg. – negation, part. – particle, prep. – preposition.

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