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On the semantics of classifier reduplication in Cantonese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2020

PEPPINA PO-LUN LEE Open the ORCID record for PEPPINA PO-LUN LEE [Opens in a new window]
PEPPINA PO-LUN LEE*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong
*
Author’s address: Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kongctpllee@cityu.edu.hk
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Abstract

This paper studies prenominal reduplicative classifier in Cantonese, which has been argued to be a distributive quantifier on a par with English every/each and Mandarin mei ‘every’, and a plural classifier giving the ‘many’ reading. The analysis I propose draws heavily on ideas introduced in the cover theory proposed by Schwarzschild (1996) and Brisson (1998, 2003), and ideas introduced by Partee (2004) and others on quantifying determiner many. I argue that prenominal reduplicative classifier is a quantifying determiner which is ambiguous between a quantifier type and a modifier type. When it occurs with the distributive quantifier dou1 ‘all’, it serves as a modifier, regulating the domain of dou1-quantification by imposing a maximizing effect on the nominal it modifies (see e.g. Link 1983; Gillon 1987; Schwarzschild 1996; Brisson 1998, 2003). Without the presence of a distributive quantifier, prenominal reduplicative classifier serves either as a modifier or as a quantifier, giving its NP a weak cardinal reading or a strong proportional reading, respectively. The proposed analysis implies that domain restriction in Chinese is overtly realized in grammatical form by means of the reduplicative classifier (when combined with a distributive quantifier) and that Chinese may have determiners, which is at least true in Cantonese.

Keywords

Cantoneseclassifier reduplicationdistributive quantifiersdomain restriction‘many’ readingsplurality coversquantifying determiner
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 701 - 743
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Various versions of this paper were presented at the 12th International Workshop on Theoretical East Asian Linguistics (July 2019) and the 8th International Conference on Formal Linguistics (November 2018), and the earliest version at the 20th International Conference on Yue Dialects (December 2015). The author thanks the conference participants for all the valuable comments. Sincere thanks go to the three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for their detailed, important and invaluable comments and suggestions. The author alone is responsible for all potential errors that may remain in the paper. The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No: CityU 143113) and a grant from the City University of Hong Kong (Project No: SRG-Fd 7004489). The author thus acknowledges the generous support of the relevant parties.

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