Wai Mun Leung - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Wai Mun Leung

Research paper thumbnail of A Study of Evidential Particles in Cantonese: the case of wo3 wo5

The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2011

The study of evidentiality, which has become an indispensable part of linguistic studies, has had... more The study of evidentiality, which has become an indispensable part of linguistic studies, has had a rapid development in the past few decades. However, studies of evidentiality in Cantonese, one of the major dialects spoken by some 70 million people in Hong Kong, Macau and most of the Guangdong province of China, are relatively few. This paper will firstly introduce evidentiality and its derived concept, mirativity, and subjectivity. Then the features of the Cantonese evidential particles wo3 (mid-level tone), which indicates unexpectedness and noteworthiness, and wo5 (low rising tone), which expresses hearsay information, will be analyzed, and a discussion on how a speaker expresses his or her understanding of the objective world through language will be given.

Research paper thumbnail of Facilitation of transference: The case of monosyllabic salience in Hong Kong Cantonese

Linguistics, 2016

Drawing on Clyne's (2003) explanatory framework of facilitation, this study presents evidence of ... more Drawing on Clyne's (2003) explanatory framework of facilitation, this study presents evidence of monosyllabic salience in Hong Kong Cantonese. Grounded in the perceptual salience of bilingual speakers of two or more languages (Clyne 1997: 95), facilitation extends Clyne's earlier work on triggering (1967, 1980), which seeks to explain why linguistic (phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, etc.) features of one's earlier-acquired language(s) may be transferred to languages learned or used later. In a corpus of texts appearing in informal discourse of Hong Kong Chinese newspaper columns in the mid-1990s (Li et al. 2014), a large number of monosyllabic English words, occurring as unintegrated insertions (Muysken 2000), were found. Building on Luke and Lau's (2008) empirically supported insight that Cantonese verbs and adjectives are more characteristically monosyllabic compared with nouns, we present additional evidence in support of the Monosyllabic Salience Hypothesis (MSH): (i) shorter average word length in Cantonese vis-à-vis Mandarin, as evidenced in miscellaneous wordlists, including the Leipzig-Jakarta list (Tadmor et al. 2010: 239-241) and the World Loanword Database (WOLD) online (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009); (ii) the truncation of the first syllable of polysyllabic words embedded in the A-not-A structure; (iii) bilingual punning; and (iv) monosyllabic Romanized Cantonese words (e.g., chok, chur, hea).

Research paper thumbnail of The Comparison of the Cantonese Sentence Final Particles bo (?) and wo (?): From the 1940s to the 1970s

Asian Culture and History, 2010

In the past decades, researchers of Cantonese treated the frequently used sentence-final particle... more In the past decades, researchers of Cantonese treated the frequently used sentence-final particles (hereafter SFPs) wo3 (喎, mid level tone) and bo3 (噃, mid level tone) as variant forms, the former being the result of sound change from the latter (Kwok 1984, Luke 1990, Li 1995, Fang 2003). However, Leung (2010) argues that wo3 in the late 20th century performs the functions of realization, reminder, hearsay and contrast while the main function of bo3 is only to show contrast, thus they are not entirely interchangeable. To explore the development of the two particles from the historical prospective, this paper attempts to examine them in Hong Kong Cantonese diachronically based on the spoken data of old Cantonese movies of 1940s and 1970s.

Research paper thumbnail of A Study of the Cantonese Hearsay Particle wo from a Tonal Perspective

International Journal of Linguistics, 2009

Cantonese is a tone language very rich in sentence-final particles which express moods and attitu... more Cantonese is a tone language very rich in sentence-final particles which express moods and attitudes. Some of them are identical in phonetic segments but different in lexical tones. This paper discusses a pair of such SFPs in Cantonese, wo3 and wo5, the former has been in use for a long time and its function has altered from indicating hearsay to unexpectedness and noteworthiness, while the latter is not found in the earlier literature and its only function is to express hearsay information. By reviewing the development of Chinese phonology and present-day Cantonese phonology, hypotheses are proposed in this paper to explain the reason why the tone of the hearsay wo would be tone 5 instead of the other tones when there are six contrastive lexical tones in Hong Kong Cantonese.

Research paper thumbnail of On the Identity and Uses of Cantonese Sentence-final Particles in the Late 20th Century: The Case of wo (?) and bo (?)

Asian Social Science, 2009

This paper mainly describes the uses of the frequently used sentence final particles wo3 and bo3 ... more This paper mainly describes the uses of the frequently used sentence final particles wo3 and bo3 in the 1990s in Hong Kong Cantonese by examining speech data. In the past twenty years, most experts treated wo3 and bo3 as variant forms, the former being the result of sound change from the latter (Kwok 1984, Luke 1990, Li 1995, Fang 2003). In order to verify whether wo3 and bo3 are different particles or free variations of the same particle, the synchronic picture of the two particles will be considered by comparing their uses and functions in the 1990s with the language examples from the Hong Kong University Cantonese Corpus and local movies.

Research paper thumbnail of A Study of Evidential Particles in Cantonese: the case of wo3 wo5

The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2011

The study of evidentiality, which has become an indispensable part of linguistic studies, has had... more The study of evidentiality, which has become an indispensable part of linguistic studies, has had a rapid development in the past few decades. However, studies of evidentiality in Cantonese, one of the major dialects spoken by some 70 million people in Hong Kong, Macau and most of the Guangdong province of China, are relatively few. This paper will firstly introduce evidentiality and its derived concept, mirativity, and subjectivity. Then the features of the Cantonese evidential particles wo3 (mid-level tone), which indicates unexpectedness and noteworthiness, and wo5 (low rising tone), which expresses hearsay information, will be analyzed, and a discussion on how a speaker expresses his or her understanding of the objective world through language will be given.

Research paper thumbnail of Facilitation of transference: The case of monosyllabic salience in Hong Kong Cantonese

Linguistics, 2016

Drawing on Clyne's (2003) explanatory framework of facilitation, this study presents evidence of ... more Drawing on Clyne's (2003) explanatory framework of facilitation, this study presents evidence of monosyllabic salience in Hong Kong Cantonese. Grounded in the perceptual salience of bilingual speakers of two or more languages (Clyne 1997: 95), facilitation extends Clyne's earlier work on triggering (1967, 1980), which seeks to explain why linguistic (phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, etc.) features of one's earlier-acquired language(s) may be transferred to languages learned or used later. In a corpus of texts appearing in informal discourse of Hong Kong Chinese newspaper columns in the mid-1990s (Li et al. 2014), a large number of monosyllabic English words, occurring as unintegrated insertions (Muysken 2000), were found. Building on Luke and Lau's (2008) empirically supported insight that Cantonese verbs and adjectives are more characteristically monosyllabic compared with nouns, we present additional evidence in support of the Monosyllabic Salience Hypothesis (MSH): (i) shorter average word length in Cantonese vis-à-vis Mandarin, as evidenced in miscellaneous wordlists, including the Leipzig-Jakarta list (Tadmor et al. 2010: 239-241) and the World Loanword Database (WOLD) online (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009); (ii) the truncation of the first syllable of polysyllabic words embedded in the A-not-A structure; (iii) bilingual punning; and (iv) monosyllabic Romanized Cantonese words (e.g., chok, chur, hea).

Research paper thumbnail of The Comparison of the Cantonese Sentence Final Particles bo (?) and wo (?): From the 1940s to the 1970s

Asian Culture and History, 2010

In the past decades, researchers of Cantonese treated the frequently used sentence-final particle... more In the past decades, researchers of Cantonese treated the frequently used sentence-final particles (hereafter SFPs) wo3 (喎, mid level tone) and bo3 (噃, mid level tone) as variant forms, the former being the result of sound change from the latter (Kwok 1984, Luke 1990, Li 1995, Fang 2003). However, Leung (2010) argues that wo3 in the late 20th century performs the functions of realization, reminder, hearsay and contrast while the main function of bo3 is only to show contrast, thus they are not entirely interchangeable. To explore the development of the two particles from the historical prospective, this paper attempts to examine them in Hong Kong Cantonese diachronically based on the spoken data of old Cantonese movies of 1940s and 1970s.

Research paper thumbnail of A Study of the Cantonese Hearsay Particle wo from a Tonal Perspective

International Journal of Linguistics, 2009

Cantonese is a tone language very rich in sentence-final particles which express moods and attitu... more Cantonese is a tone language very rich in sentence-final particles which express moods and attitudes. Some of them are identical in phonetic segments but different in lexical tones. This paper discusses a pair of such SFPs in Cantonese, wo3 and wo5, the former has been in use for a long time and its function has altered from indicating hearsay to unexpectedness and noteworthiness, while the latter is not found in the earlier literature and its only function is to express hearsay information. By reviewing the development of Chinese phonology and present-day Cantonese phonology, hypotheses are proposed in this paper to explain the reason why the tone of the hearsay wo would be tone 5 instead of the other tones when there are six contrastive lexical tones in Hong Kong Cantonese.

Research paper thumbnail of On the Identity and Uses of Cantonese Sentence-final Particles in the Late 20th Century: The Case of wo (?) and bo (?)

Asian Social Science, 2009

This paper mainly describes the uses of the frequently used sentence final particles wo3 and bo3 ... more This paper mainly describes the uses of the frequently used sentence final particles wo3 and bo3 in the 1990s in Hong Kong Cantonese by examining speech data. In the past twenty years, most experts treated wo3 and bo3 as variant forms, the former being the result of sound change from the latter (Kwok 1984, Luke 1990, Li 1995, Fang 2003). In order to verify whether wo3 and bo3 are different particles or free variations of the same particle, the synchronic picture of the two particles will be considered by comparing their uses and functions in the 1990s with the language examples from the Hong Kong University Cantonese Corpus and local movies.