Whether relative clauses can be identified in Chinese is a recurrent question. We ask whether relative clauses are distinct from other noun-modifying clause constructions in Cantonese, one of many East Asian languages in which a noun can be preceded by a diverse range of modifying clauses. The relationship between head noun and modifying clause may be a grammatical one, with the head noun being understood as an argument or an adjunct of the modifying clause; or its interpretation may be dependent on semantic and pragmatic factors. We conclude that Cantonese has a General Noun-Modifying Clause Construction as proposed for Japanese (Matsumoto et al., this volume), with relative clauses forming a subset of modifying clauses in which a grammatical relation obtains.
Chan, Angel Wing-Shan, Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia. 2011. The acquisition of relative clauses in Cantonese and Mandarin. In The Acquisition of Relative Clauses: Processing, Typology and Function [Trends in Language Acquisition 8], Evan Kidd (ed.), 197–224 Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Matthews, Stephen. 2006. Cantonese grammar in areal perspective. In Grammars in Contact, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M.W. Dixon (eds), 220–236. Oxford: OUP.
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Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia. 2001. The structure and stratification of relative clauses in contemporary Cantonese. In Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives, Hilary Chappell (ed.), 266–281. Oxford: OUP.
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Yip, Virginia & Matthews, Stephen. 2007a. Relative clauses in Cantonese-English bilingual children: Typological challenges and processing motivations. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 29: 277–300.
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WU, Tong
2022. The general noun-modifying clause construction beyond Eurasia. Linguistic Typology 26:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Chan, Angel, Stephen Matthews, Nicole Tse, Annie Lam, Franklin Chang & Evan Kidd
2021. Revisiting Subject–Object Asymmetry in the Production of Cantonese Relative Clauses: Evidence From Elicited Production in 3-Year-Olds. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Huang, Jiaying & Caterina Donati
2019. Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Production of Relative Clauses in Cantonese. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 40:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
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