Research Groups: Friday, January 29

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Language Variation and Change Research Group
Qandeel Hussain (postdoc): "Phonetic correlates of stop laryngeal contrasts of Burushaski."

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Semantics Research Group
Crystal Chen (MA): "Bare classifiers and definiteness in Cantonese."

Cheng and Sybesma (1999) claim that languages with numeral classifiers either use bare nouns or bare classifiers (Classifier-Noun) - but never both - to express definiteness. This claim was based on observations from Mandarin and Cantonese. Mandarin expresses definiteness through demonstratives and bare nouns while Cantonese employs demonstratives and bare classifiers. However, Simpson, Soh, and Normoto (2011) provide evidence against Cheng and Sybesma's claim by showing that speakers of Vietnamese, Hmong and Bangla - non-Sinitic languages with numeral classifiers - find bare nouns to be equally acceptable in instances where bare classifiers are used. Most importantly, they that this option exists in Cantonese too. Nevertheless, they conclude that despite the optionality, there is still a difference between the two constructions. More specifically, bare classifiers are used in instances involving contrast and sentential prominence, while bare nouns are licensed in the absence of contrast. I will show that despite agreeing with the claim of optionality, Cantonese bare nouns and classifiers are not distinguished by contrast. Therefore, while Cantonese shares similarities with non-Sinitic languages, there is still more to be done in determining the difference between bare nouns and classifiers in Cantonese.