Cantonese GIVE and Double-Object Construction

Published 2022.

GIVE is a versatile morpheme in many languages. While there have been extensive studies on the interplay between the syntax and semantics of GIVE in many languages, not much has been done in a similar manner on Cantonese, a member of the Yue dialect group of the Chinese language family. This monograph reports on the study of GIVE and its associated functions and syntactic constructions in Cantonese from diachronic, synchronic, and typological perspectives. Drawing on cross-linguistic data, and 19th century Cantonese dialect materials, this study first traces the chronological development of the various functions played by GIVE in Cantonese. It then examines the double-object construction. Besides the typological features of this construction in Cantonese, this study investigates the use of the northern pattern in Cantonese because of the increasing influence of Putonghua and Modern Standard Chinese by means of a sociolinguistic survey with 40 native speakers of Cantonese.