Sze-Wing Tang
List of John Benjamins publications in which Sze-Wing Tang is involved.
2026 The morphosyntax of the sentence-final negative WHAT in Chinese Language and Linguistics 27:1, pp. 103–133 | Article
This paper reviews Yang’s (2024) analysis of the sentence-final negative WHAT in Chinese and argues that the sentence-final negative WHAT, which can be classified into two types — emphatic negation and quotative negation — should be analyzed as a suffix attached to the predicate in morphology.… read more
2026 On the modifying negative WHAT in Chinese New Insights into Theoretical Syntax from Asian Languages: Studies in honor of C.-T. James Huang, Simpson, Andrew (ed.), pp. 281–302 | Chapter
This chapter explores the grammatical properties and functions of the modifying negative WHAT in Chinese, proposing an adjunction approach. It argues that the modifying negative WHAT acts as a modifier adjoined to nominal phrases, which should be distinguished from the postverbal negative WHAT,… read more
2022 On the syntax of incompleteness: Evidence from the converbal construction in Cantonese New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax: Studies in honor of Yen-Hui Audrey Li, Simpson, Andrew (ed.), pp. 395–428 | Chapter
Cantonese has a rich repertoire of verbal suffixes. One type of verbal suffixes should be analyzed as inflectional morphemes that form a converbal construction, a “defective” TP with minimal functional projections within TP and no CP and beyond. Given that it cannot stand alone and cannot occur… read more
2020 Two types of aa3 -nominals in Cantonese Language and Linguistics 21:1, pp. 80–103 | Article
This paper provides an overview of the grammatical properties of the Cantonese aa3, a nominal element that only attaches itself to [+human] nouns. We provide evidence to show that there are in fact two types of aa3-nominals. Their syntactic and semantic properties correlate with the number of… read more
2015 Indefinite article or numeral one? A Study of iʔ5 ‘one’ in Shiposheng International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 2:1, pp. 33–56 | Article
This paper investigates iʔ5 ‘one’ in Shiposheng, a vernacular dialect spoken in the north of Guangdong Province. Though iʔ5 in Shiposheng and yi ‘one’ in Mandarin share similar usages, they behave differently when cooccurring with the demonstrative, i.e., iʔ5 in Shiposheng cannot follow the… read more
2011 On gerundive nominalization in Mandarin and Cantonese Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives, Yap, Foong Ha, Karen Grunow-Hårsta and Janick Wrona (eds.), pp. 147–160 | Article
This paper examines a number of variations between Mandarin and Cantonese nominalizations, including genitive agent nominals, possessive objects, relativization of idiomatic expressions, verbless de expressions, and internal de expressions. Differences between these two languages boil down to the… read more