??: Cantonese & Mandarin datives

[Virginia Yip (LIN)]

Dear Henrietta,

This is an area where Cantonese and Mandarin (and even different varieties
of Cantonese) differ substantially, which may be the source of the
conflicting information. Our response will be mainly focused on Cantonese.
In the DO construction with "give" respectively, the basic order is
bei2-THEME-RECIPIENT in Cantonese but gei-RECIPIENT-THEME in Mandarin. Some
varieties such as Malayan Cantonese (Killingley 1993) have both orders
productively. Here are some points on Cantonese as spoken in Hong Kong:

1.  Punctual action involving unaccompanied transfer of an object from
agent to recipient such as throw, toss, and kick:

Cantonese:   PD (okay)              *DO (ruled out)
(the PD can also be analysed as a serial verb construction: Matthews 2006)

2.  Verbs of future possession (e.g.,  offer, promise, bequeath, award)

Cantonese: 'offer' and 'promise' allow neither construction, but use a
complementation construction instead ("I promise to give you...")

"Award" can take either PD or DO: 

PD:   ngo zoeng jat baak  man    bei     keoi
      I award one hundred dollar give/to 3sg

DO:   ngo zoeng keoi jat baak   man
      I  award  3sg one hundred dollar

3.  Verbs of communication such as tell, write, e-mail, fax, telephone.

Cantonese:  PD only     *DO

4.  With respect to agentive passives (i.e., passives with a by-phrase
in English),  are there are salient differences between Cantonese and
Mandarin?  Chinese versus English?

- yes, a relevant difference is that Cantonese passives with bei2 (high
rising tone) requires the agent to be overtly expressed, whereas it's
optional in Mandarin passives with 'bei' (a different morpheme from
Cantonese). Chinese passives tend to be "adversative" in meaning and less
productive than in English overall: although there are in fact many
non-adversative passives in Mandarin and Cantonese, it's not the case that
any predicate can be passivised. For example, passive constructions cannot
be formed based on dative constructions in Cantonese (there is nothing like
"I was given a prize"). 

Some child acquisition studies involving the Cantonese datives are Chan
2003, Gu 2007, and Yip & Matthews (2007, ch. 7). 
 
Some references:

Chan, Angel Wing-Shan. 2003. The development of bei2 dative constructions in
early child Cantonese. Unpublished MPhil Thesis, Chinese University of Hong
Kong. 

Gu, Chenjie Chloe. 2007. The acquisition of dative constructions in
Cantonese-English bilingual children. Unpublished MPhil Thesis, Chinese
University of Hong Kong. 

Killingley, S.Y. 1993. Cantonese. Munich: Lincom Europa.

Matthews, S. 2006. On serial verb constructions in Cantonese. In
A.Y.Aikhenvald & R.M.W.Dixon (eds), Serial Verbs: a Cross-linguistic
Typology. Oxford University Press. Pp 69-87.

Matthews, S. & V.Yip. 1994. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar. London:
Routledge

Tang, Sze-Wing. 1998. On the 'inverted' double object construction. In
Stephen Matthews (eds.), Studies in Cantonese Linguistics. Linguistic
Society of Hong Kong, pp. 35-52.

Yip, V. & S. Matthews. 2007. The Bilingual Child: Early Development and
Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Best wishes from Hong Kong,
Virginia Yip & Stephen Matthews


-----????-----
???: Henrietta Lempert
???: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
????: 2007/10/17 ?? 05:42
??: Cantonese & Mandarin datives

 I have three students who hope to do a project on L2 acquisition
>of English datives and passives by L1 Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.
> They have received conflicting information from Chinese first
>language informants as to which sub-classes of English alternating
>datives can also alternate in Cantonese and Mandarin; which ones can
>only occur as prepositional datives (PDs), and which ones can only
>occur as double object datives (DO).  They would be grateful for any
>information regarding the following:
>
>1.  Punctual action involving unaccompanied transfer of an object from
>agent to recipient such as throw, toss, and kick (the subclasses are
>based on Pinker, 1989),
>
>Cantonese:   PD?                         DO?
>Mandarin:    PD?                          DO?
>
>2.  Verbs of future possession (e.g.,  offer, promise, bequeath, award)
>
>Cantonese:   PD?                         DO?
>Mandarin:    PD?                          DO?
>
>3.  Verbs of communication such as tell, write, e-mail, fax, telephone.
>
>Cantonese:  PD?                          DO?
>Mandarin:   PD?                           DO?
>
>4.  With respect to agentive passives (i.e., passives with a by-phrase
>in English),  are there are salient differences between Cantonese and
>Mandarin?  Chinese versus English?
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Henrietta lempert