Abstract
The main objective of this paper is to analyze the meanings and moods of the most frequently used particle [aa3] in various types of modern Cantonese sentences. Promising and feasible approaches of ‘Minimal Pair’ and ‘Maximal Common Induction’ are introduced to depict the pattern of the use of Cantonese particles microscopically and macroscopically so as to establish a better grammatical description of the language. The possibilities that may occur when a sentence ends with a final particle are also discussed in this work.
Highlights
Sentence-final particlesChinese has a number of communication-oriented particles to clarify a speaker’s intention
Being a pioneering work in the study of Cantonese sentence-final particles, Cheung (1972:172-192) pointed out that there are as many as fifteen particles commonly found in everyday conversation, and they are often used in clusters of two to four to express different moods
The final particle [aa3] is used as an example to illustrate that the relationships between a sentence and a particle in Cantonese are of four types as follows
Summary
Chinese has a number of communication-oriented particles to clarify a speaker’s intention. Since Chinese is a tonal language, where changing the tone of a word may change the meaning of the word This is where the sentence-final particles come in. Sentence-final particles are bound linguistic forms that are suffixed to units higher in rank than words They are traditionally referred to as ‘tone-of-voice words’ which are usually used to express moods, attitudes, feelings and emotions. Attitudes, feelings and emotions, other than sentence-final particles a number of means can be employed in Cantonese and some other languages. They can be expressed by full words, adverbs, conjunctions, inflections, interjections or intonations. In Cantonese sentence-final particles are one of the most well developed means to express such moods
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