Lui, Wilson: Locative Inversion in Cantonese

Locative inversion constructions in Cantonese have received scant and isolated academic attention in the past decades. However, it relates closely to the question of assignment of grammatical functions in Cantonese, a topic-prominent language with relatively flexible word order and scant inflectional morphology, as well as a lack of case marking or noun class marking systems. This paper explores whether locative inversion constructions exist in Cantonese, and what are the features and characteristics of these constructions with reference to empirical data. It further explores the changes in grammatical functions, in particular, the locative phrase (or localiser) as the subject from a locative oblique. It considers and critically analyses the previous literature, and proposes an easy and accessible analysis based on Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) and the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) framework in general. This paper also draws on comparative perspectives by referring to relevant literature on Mandarin locative inversion where appropriate, in particular, on the use of aspect markers in these constructions.

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February 09, 2021