Cantonese & Mandarin datives

[Kathryn Kohnert]

Dear Henrietta-
I forwarded your question to Pui Fong Kan and pasted below is here response.
Best, 
Kathryn 

FROM PUI FONG KAN: 
There are two books about Cantonese & Mandarin grammar that you might find
useful -- Cantonese : a comprehensive grammar by Stephen Matthews Mandarin
Chinese : a functional reference grammar by Charles N. Li and Sandra A.
Thompson

My thoughts (as a Cantonese & Mandarin speaker) about the questions ---
 
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?

# 1 & 2
Different datives are used in Cantonese & Mandarin. But basically they are
used in the same position in a sentence in both languages. Both PD & DO are
possible in both languages. #2 involves a word for the future. 

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

Cantonese:  PD?                          DO?
Mandarin:   PD?                           DO?

# 3
Differences in Cantonese & Mandarin
Mandarin -- both PD & DO
Cantonese -- PD (It would be awkward using 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?

#4
Basically the agentive passives are very similar in Cantonese & Mandarin.
Passive constructions are quite different between Chinese and English.
For more information about the differences between the passive constructions
in Chinese and in English, see
http://bowland-files.lancs.ac.uk/corplang/LCMC/
www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/xiaoz/papers/passive%20paper.doc

Pui Fong Kan (kanx0004 at umn.edu)
Doctoral Candidate
Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
University of Minnesota
www.ccsl.umn.edu



-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]
On Behalf Of Henrietta Lempert
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:42 PM
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: 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