Cantonese pronouns

Last updated

Pronouns in Cantonese are less numerous than their Indo-European languages counterparts. Cantonese uses pronouns that apply the same meaning to function as both subjective (English: I, he, we) and objective (me, him, us) just like many other Sinitic languages. [1]

Contents

Personal pronouns

Cantonese personal pronouns [2]
PersonSingularPlural*
GeneralClassicMeaningGeneralClassicMeaning
First person
  • - ngo5
  • - ngo5 (acc.)
  • - ng4 (nom.)
'I/me'
  • 我哋 - ngo5 dei6
  • 我等 - ngo5 dang2
  • 吾等 - ng4 dang2
'we/us'
Second person
  • - nei5
  • - ji5
  • - jyu5
'you'
  • 你哋 - nei5 dei6
  • 爾等 - ji5 dang2 
  • 汝等 - jyu5 dang2
'you (all)'
Third person
  • - keoi5
  • 𠍲/渠 - keoi4 (gen.) [3]
'he/she/it'
  • 佢哋 - keoi5 dei6
  • 𠍲/渠等 - keoi4 dang2
'they/them'
* Personal pronouns are the only items in Cantonese with distinct plural forms. The character to indicate plurality is formed by adding the suffix 哋 (dei6), and classic 等 (dang2).

There exist many more pronouns in Classical Chinese and in literary works, including (jyu5) or (ji5) for "you", and (ng4) for "I" (see Chinese honorifics). However, they are not used in colloquial speech.

Third person singular (keoi5) [4] Although (keoi5) is primarily used to refer to animate nouns (people or animals)in higher registers, it can also refer to inanimate objects and abstract entities in some restricted contexts. When (keoi5) is being referred to an inanimate item it is primarily found in the object position, rather than the subject position. In colloquial speech, its use is frequently extended to refer to nothing at all. [5]

ngo5

I

soeng2

want

tai2

read

saai3

all

keoi5

it

sin1

first

waan4

return

 

(keoi5 = the book) [6]

 

我 想 睇 晒 佢 先 還

ngo5 soeng2 tai2 saai3 keoi5 sin1 waan4

I want read all it first return

'I want to finish reading it before I return it.'

[7] Plural suffix (-dei6) One of the few grammatical suffixes in the language, the suffix (-dei6) cannot be used to form plural forms of nouns.

   Example: (sin1saang1-dei6) can't be used to mean teachers

Other than the personal pronouns as shown above, its two other uses are:

1. In the form (jan4-dei6) which is used for indefinite pronouns (people, one, etc.)

人哋

jan4dei6

睇住

tai2-zyu6

lei5

人哋 睇住 你

jan4dei6 tai2-zyu6 lei5

People are watching you

In this usage, the word (jan4) 'person' can also take (dei6) to mean 'people'. Despite the suffix (-dei6), (jan4-dei6) may have a singular or plural reference depending on the content.

This form can also be used to refer indirectly to oneself:

   Example: A: Nei5 dim2 gaai2 m4 ceot1 seng1 gaa3?   Why don't you say anything?             B: Jan4 dei6 m4 hou2 ji3 si1 aa1 maa3     It's because I'm embarrassed.

2. In contracted forms with names

   Example: Paul keoi5 dei6 → Paul-dei6         Paul and his family/friends             A-Chan keoi5 dei6→ A-Chan-dei6      Chan and his family/company, etc.

Possessive pronoun

To indicate possession (ge3) is appended to the pronoun.

For serious use, (ling6) to replace , as in 令尊 (ling6 zyun1) "Your father" as 你老竇 (nei5 lou5 dau4). In literary style, (kei4) is sometimes used for "his" or "her"; e.g., 其父 (kei4 fu6) means "his father" or "her father".

Omitted pronoun

In literature, daily phrases (especially ones about family or concepts very close to the owner, or when the subject or object of the sentence is already known, then it may be omitted, e.g. 我老母 (ngo5 lou5 mou5) or replace possession indicator with classifier, e.g. 我架車 (ngo5 gaa3 ce1).

Subject and object pronouns may be omitted in Cantonese under either of these two conditions:

  1. The omitted subject or object has been the topic of a previous sentence, question or dialogue.
  2. The reference is clear from the context. This applies especially to the first and second person subjects, and to third person entities which are present at the time of speaking. [8]

Reflexive pronoun

The singular personal pronouns (for humans) may be made reflexive by appending 自己 (zi6 gei2), "self". The reflexive form (zi6 gei2) is used for all persons: myself, yourself, herself, ourselves, etc. [9] It may be distinguished into two different functions:

  1. The true reflexive pronoun
  2. An emphatic function, where it reinforces a pronoun or noun phrase. [10]

Ngo5

I

自己

zi6gei2

myself

m4

not

wui5

would

gam2

so

zou6

behave

我 自己 唔 會 咁 做

Ngo5 zi6gei2 m4 wui5 gam2 zou6

I myself not would so behave

I myself would not behave like that

[11] As a reflexive, (zi gei) is subject-oriented. Another common function is to indicate 'by oneself' or 'alone'.

Ngo5

I

自己

zi6gei2

myself

maai5

buy

sung3

groceries

zyu2

cook

faan6

rice

我 自己 買 餸 煮 飯

Ngo5 zi6gei2 maai5 sung3 zyu2 faan6

I myself buy groceries cook rice

I’ll buy the groceries and cook by myself

Pronouns in imperial times and self-deprecatory

In imperial times, the pronoun for "I" was commonly omitted when speaking politely or to someone with higher social status.[ citation needed ] "I" was usually replaced with special pronouns to address specific situations.[ citation needed ] Examples include 寡人gwaa jan during early Chinese history and zam after the Qin dynasty when the Emperor is speaking to his subjects. When the subjects speak to the Emperor, they address themselves as (shen), or "your official". It is extremely impolite and taboo to address the Emperor as "you" or to address oneself as "I".

In modern times, the practice of self-deprecatory terms is still used. In formal letters, the term (gwai; lit. important) is used for "you" and "your"; e.g., 貴公司 refers to "your company". 本人 (bun jan; lit. this person) is used to refer to oneself.

Demonstrative pronouns

Cantonese demonstrative pronouns
SingularPlural
GeneralClassicGeneralClassic
Proximal
  • 呢個 - ni1 go3
  • 爾個 - ji5*1 go3
  • 呢啲 - ni1 di1
  • 爾之 - ji5*1 zi1
Distal
  • 嗰個 - go3*2 go3
  • 箇個 - go3*2 go3
  • 嗰啲 - go3*2 di1
  • 箇之 - go3*2 zi1

Single proximal demonstrative refers to as "this," single distal as "that," plural proximal as "these," and plural distal as "those."

呢 (ni1) and 嗰 (go3*2) indicates if the demonstratives are proximal or distal, respectively; whereas 個 (go3) and 啲 (di1) indicates if the demonstratives are single or plural, respectively.

爾 (ji5) and 箇 (go3) are the classical forms of 呢 and 嗰, respectively. 之 (zi) is the classical forms of 啲.

Interrogative pronouns

Cantonese interrogative pronouns
WhatWhichWhoWhereWhenHowWhy
General
  • 乜嘢 - mat7 je5
  • 咩呀 - me1 aa3
  • 邊個 - bin1 go3
  • 邊個 - bin1 go3
  • 邊位 - bin1 wai6*2
  • 乜誰 - mat7 seoi4*2
  • 乜人 - mat7 jan4*2
  • 邊度 - bin1 dou3
  • 邊處- bin1 syu3
  • 幾時 - gei2 si4*2
  • 幾點- gei2 dim2
  • 點樣 - dim2 joeng6*2
  • 點解 - dim2 gaai2
  • 為乜 - wai6 mat7
Classical
  • 物也 - mat9 jaa5
  • 焉個 - jin1 go3
  • 焉個 - jin1 go3
  • 焉位 - jin1 wai6
  • 物誰 - mat7 seoi4
  • 物人 - mat7 jan4
  • 焉道 - jin1 dou3
  • 焉處 - jin1 cyu3
  • 幾時 - gei2 si4
  • 怎樣 - zam2 joeng6
  • 怎解 - zam2 gaai2
  • 為物 - wai6 mat7

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genitive case</span> Grammatical case

In grammar, the genitive case is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses.

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jyutping</span> Romanization scheme for Cantonese

The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).

Chinese pronouns differ somewhat from pronouns in English and other Indo-European languages. For instance, there is no differentiation in the spoken language between "he", "she" and "it", and pronouns are not inflected to indicate whether they are the subject or object of a sentence. Mandarin Chinese further lacks a distinction between the possessive adjective ("my") and possessive pronoun ("mine"); both are formed by appending the particle 的 de. Pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yuchi language</span> Language of the Yuchi people in the southeastern United States

Yuchi or Euchee is the language of the Tsoyaha, also known as the Yuchi people, now living in Oklahoma. Historically, they lived in what is now known as the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia, and Alabama, during the period of early European colonization. Many speakers of the Yuchi language became allied with the Muscogee Creek when they migrated into their territory in Georgia and Alabama. They were forcibly relocated with them to Indian Territory in the early 19th century.

A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun within the same sentence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English personal pronouns</span> Closed lexical category of the English language

The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.

Persian grammar is the grammar of the Persian language, whose dialectal variants are spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Caucasus, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is similar to that of many other Indo-European languages. The language became a more analytic language around the time of Middle Persian, with fewer cases and discarding grammatical gender. The innovations remain in Modern Persian, which is one of the few Indo-European languages to lack grammatical gender, even in pronouns.

Japanese pronouns are words in the Japanese language used to address or refer to present people or things, where present means people or things that can be pointed at. The position of things and their role in the current interaction are features of the meaning of those words. The use of pronouns, especially when referring to oneself and speaking in the first person, vary between gender, formality, dialect and region where Japanese is spoken.

Cantonese is an analytic language in which the arrangement of words in a sentence is important to its meaning. A basic sentence is in the form of SVO, i.e. a subject is followed by a verb then by an object, though this order is often violated because Cantonese is a topic-prominent language. Unlike synthetic languages, seldom do words indicate time, gender and number by inflection. Instead, these concepts are expressed through adverbs, aspect markers, and particles, or are deduced from the context. Different particles are added to a sentence to further specify its status or intonation.

Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person, second person, or third person. Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number, grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality. The term "personal" is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects.

This article describes the grammar of Tigrinya, a South Semitic language which is spoken primarily in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and is written in Ge'ez script.

An intensive pronoun adds emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it myself." While English intensive pronouns use the same form as reflexive pronouns, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive pronoun because it functions as an adverbial or adnominal modifier, not as an argument of a verb. Both intensive and reflexive pronouns make reference to an antecedent. For example, compare "I will do it myself," where "myself" is a self-intensifier indicating that nobody else did it, to "I sold myself," where "myself" fills the argument role of direct object. This sentence may be extended, as in "I sold myself myself," where the second pronoun emphasizes the fact that nobody helped me to sell myself.

Stephen Matthews is a British linguist in Hong Kong. He is Co-Director of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His specialist areas include language typology, syntax and semantics. His current interests include the word order typology of Chinese; the grammar of Chinese languages, notably Cantonese, Chaozhou and other Minnan dialects; language contact and bilingualism, with particular reference to Sinitic languages.

Livonian is a Finnic language, and, as such, is closely related to both Estonian and Finnish.

Virginia Yip (葉彩燕), is a Hong Kong linguist and writer. She is director of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre. She is a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include bilingual language acquisition, second language acquisition, Cantonese, Chaozhou and comparative Sinitic grammar, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments. When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice.

Standard Cantonese pronunciation is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is related to Guangzhou dialect, and they diverge only slightly. Yue dialects in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces like Taishanese, may be considered divergent to a greater degree.

The grammar of Modern Hebrew shares similarities with that of its Biblical Hebrew counterpart, but it has evolved significantly over time. Modern Hebrew grammar incorporates analytic, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than morphological cases.

Turkmen grammar is the grammar of the Turkmen language, whose dialectal variants are spoken in Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and others. Turkmen grammar, as described in this article, is the grammar of standard Turkmen as spoken and written by Turkmen people in Turkmenistan.

References

  1. Li, Shek Kam Tse, Hui (2011). Early child Cantonese : facts and implications. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. p. 24. ISBN   9783110240047.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. Li, Shek Kam Tse, Hui (2011). Early child Cantonese : facts and implications. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. p. 175. ISBN   9783110240047.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. 《集韻.魚韻》:「𠍲,吳人呼彼稱。通作渠。」 漢語大字典
  4. Matthews, Stephen; Yip, Virginia (2011). Cantonese a comprehensive grammar (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 95. ISBN   9780415471312.
  5. Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (2001). Intermediate cantonese: a grammar and workbook (1. publ. ed.). London [u.a.]: Routledge. p.  165. ISBN   0415193877.
  6. Matthews, Stephen; Yip, Virginia (2011). Cantonese a comprehensive grammar (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 95. ISBN   9780415471312.
  7. Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (1999). Basic Cantonese a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge. pp. 17–18. ISBN   0-203-01020-5.
  8. Matthews, Stephen; Yip, Virginia (2011). Cantonese a comprehensive grammar (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 97. ISBN   9780415471312.
  9. Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (1999). Basic Cantonese a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge. p. 20. ISBN   0-203-01020-5.
  10. Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (1999). Basic Cantonese a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge. p. 21. ISBN   0-203-01020-5.
  11. Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (1999). Basic Cantonese a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge. p. 21. ISBN   0-203-01020-5.