Locative Inversion In Cantonese

Abstract

This paper proposes that locative inversion is a widespread syntactic process in Cantonese. The sentence-initial locative phrases in the Locative Inversion sentences are argued to be subjects which come from the postverbal complement position in the majority of cases; but it is also possible to move a preverbal adjunct locative phrase to the subject position in the existential "yau"(have) sentences. This movement hypothesis is crucially dependent on the relative distribution and cooccurrence restrictions between the sentence-initial locative phrases and their coreferent proform "hai dou"(there). One important observation drawn from the SuperRaising analysis of the sentence-initial locative phrases is that "pro" in Chinese, albeit an A-specifier, will not block Amovement, unlike what is predicted by the theory of Relativized Minimality.