Yes/no Question Particles Revisited: The Grammatical Functions of mo4, me1, and maa3

Abstract

This study reexamines the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic roles of question particles in Cantonese. Whereas question particles have been studied extensively in terms of their pragmatics, the syntactic and semantic characterization deserves further investigation. A comparison is made between a previously unnoticed Cantonese question particle mo4 and its counterparts me1 and maa3. The particle mo4 carries a linguistic implicature similar to that in me1. It is found that Cantonese question particles in yes/no interrogatives interact with aspect and negation markers in interesting ways. While the neutral yes/no question particle maa3 does not co-occur with these markers, mo4 and other question particles do not show this restriction.