A Construction-based Approach to Cantonese Classifiers

Abstract

This paper focuses on the structure and interpretation of Cantonese NPs. We first map different cognitive statuses (Gundel et al. 1993) to different forms of Cantonese noun phrases, following the hierarchy proposed in Borthen & Haugereid (2005). We then provide an HPSG analysis for Cantonese noun phrases. We account for the differences between classifiers appearing with and without a numeral, where classifiers with no numeral are interpreted as having a cardinality of ‘one’. We propose a Classifier Head Rule where the noun first takes a specifier containing the classifier, and the output further takes a determiner as its specifier. The analysis is implemented in an open-source Cantonese HPSG.