Cherry Chit-Yu Lam

Abstract

This paper examines the negation system of Gaozhou Yue, an under-documented and under-studied Yue variety. The discussion takes the official documentation of the variety as a starting point, which reports two negators mau5 and mau5 jau5 to be equivalent to Mandarin méi(yǒu) and can appear interchangeably. Then based on systematic acceptability judgment data and field-recorded production data, the paper compares Gaozhou Yue and Mandarin negators and argues that (i) mau5 is resemblant to méi(yǒu) only in terms of viewpoint aspectual restrictions but has a much broader application where situation aspect is concerned; and (ii) mau5 and mau5 jau5 are only interchangeable in negative existential and negative possessive constructions, together with the fact that mau5 jau5 is hardly acceptable in verbal negation, these demonstrate that mau5 jau5 is not a standard negator. The empirical findings from this comparative study highlights that aspectual restriction still happens in a Chinese variety with only one standard negator. The conclusion reopens discussion on the negation-aspect interaction in Chinese varieties and points the discussion towards a more typologically generalisable formal explanation.