Object marking in three Sinitic languages: an experimental comparative study

Abstract

Chappell (2006) has described a variety of object marking (OM) constructions across Sinitic languages. She suggests 3 groupings of these markers according to their semantics and hypothesized paths of grammaticalization. Based on that foundation, this study takes an experimental approach to the OM constructions in Cantonese, Shanghainese and Teochew. To elicit OM constructions, a variant of the fruit cart paradigm (Gomez-Gallo et. al., 2007) is employed, in which participants are asked to give instructions on how to move objects. The following schemata represent the predominant structures collected from pilot results. 1) a. zoeng + [NP] + baai + hai + [LOC NP] ACC + Topic NP + put + LOC.COP + [LOC NP] b. ∅ [heavy NP] + baai + hai + [LOC NP] Topic NP + put + LOC.COP + [LOC NP] 2) næ/nɔ + [(heavy) NP] + pa + le + [LOC NP] get + Topic NP + put + LOC.COP + [LOC NP] 3) a. k’ioʔ + [NP] (+ k’ioʔ) + PREP/LOC.COP + [LOC NP] grab + Topic NP (+ grab) + PREP/LOC.COP + [LOC NP] b. ∅ [(heavy) NP] + bang/k’ioʔ + PREP/LOC.COP + [LOC NP] Topic NP + move/put + PREP/LOC.COP + [LOC NP] As we see from (1b), heavy objects in Cantonese tend not to be marked but topicalized. The surface structure resembles that used in Teochew in (3b). Shanghainese (2) in this aspect behaves like Mandarin in which heavy NPs follow ba. Compared to Mandarin, however, Shanghainese næ is less grammaticalized, as næ can still take aspect markers in other constructions. This contrasts with the case of zoeng in Cantonese which historically meant take the lead; it is no longer acceptable to attach an aspect marker. What stands out here is that object marking is unattested in the Teochew data. While it is possible to use tsiang, the equivalent of Cantonese zoeng, in Teochew, informants reported that tsiang is too literary to be used in speech. Rather, informants use serial verb constructions as in (3a) or topicalization as in (3b). Although SVC is also a possible strategy in Cantonese as in (4), it does not seem to be the preference. 4) baai bou dinsi hai go zouhapgwai dou put CL TV LOC.COP CL TV set LOC The experiment successfully elicits a range of object marking constructions, demonstrating a diversity which would easily be overlooked when studying the individual languages in the literary form or starting with elicitation from a Mandarin perspective (Chappell, 2006). Another finding is that Teochew and Cantonese adopt the same pattern of preferring topicalization to OM in the case of heavy NPs. This finding supports the proposal that topicalization of heavy NP objects is favored for reasons of processing (Matthews & Yeung 2001).