In a previous post, I mentioned that there were subtle differences in overlap between Mandarin 了 and Cantonese 咗, namely that the former subsumed more functions than the latter. In this post, I would like to mention another such pair of morphemes: Mandarin verbal suffix 光 (V-guang) ~ Cantonese 晒 (V-saai). These suffixes impose a universal quantifier reading on the argument(s) of the verb e.g.
Mandarin:
人 死-光 了
ren si-guang le
people die-SUFFIX DECLARATIVE.PARTICLE
‘All the people died.’
Cantonese:
人 死-晒 啦
yan sei-saai lah
people die-SUFFIX DECLARATIVE.PARTICLE
‘All the people died.’
The difference in distribution is that while Mandarin 光 is only used with one-place predicates (passives, intransitives etc), Cantonese 晒 can be used with two/three-place predicates as well in which cases it imposes a universal quantifier reading on the object(s) of the verb e.g.
我 食-哂 啲 嘢 啦
ngoh sik-saai di yeh lah
I eat-SUFFIX DETERMINER.PLURAL thing DECLARATIVE.PARTICLE
‘I ate all the food.’
我 俾-哂 佢哋 啲 書
ngoh bei-saai kuidei di shue
I give-SUFFIX them DETERMINER.PLURAL book
Either: ‘I gave the books to all of them’ Or: ‘I gave all the books to them.’
A simple substitution of morphemes would produce ungrammatical sentences in Mandarin:
*我 吃-光 東西 了
wo chi-guang dongxi le
I eat-SUFFIX thing DECLARATIVE.PARTICLE
‘I ate all the food.’
*我 給-光 他們 書
wo gei-guang tamen shu
I give-SUFFIX them book
Either: ‘I gave the books to all of them’ Or: ‘I gave all the books to them.’
Cantonese 晒 therefore has a wider distribution than Mandarin 光, which speaks against a simple morphemic substitution between Chinese dialects. There are therefore clear morphosyntactic similarities and differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, and one must beware of dialectal interference. If my Cantonese students are reading this blog, please don’t make this mistake.