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Part of
New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax: Studies in honor of Yen-Hui Audrey Li
Edited by Andrew Simpson
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 272] 2022
► pp. 77–110

Place and distance

Locative expressions in Mandarin and Cantonese

| Leiden University
| Leiden University

The topic of this chapter is locatives containing a measure expression (like the English 60 yards behind the palace) in Mandarin and Cantonese. More generally, it is about the structure of locative PPs. The hypothesis in Terzi (2010), which says that locatives are modifiers to an N Place (which itself is the complement to a locative P), offers a helpful framework in accounting for our data. We observe that in Mandarin and Cantonese, the N Place is obligatorily overt if the location denoting expression which modifies it is not an inherent location and not headed by an AxPart. It is optionally overt when it is modified by an inherent location (like a toponym) or by a phrase headed by an AxPart.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Preliminaries
  • 3.The AxPart
  • 4.The AxPart and Measure
  • 5.The AxPart and Ground
  • 6.Place and the N Place
  • 7.Modification or apposition
  • 8.A brief note about the alternative form
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 April 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.272.03che
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