The First Reading Group on Cantonese Grammar (8/2000)

Following the intensive reading of Chomsky's Minimalist Program, let's have something 'softer'. Since many of us are interested in Cantonese grammar, we are thinking of having a small and informal reading group on this topic. The focus will be mainly on Samuel Hung-nin Cheung's "Cantonese as Spoken in Hong Kong" published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1972). Since this is an informal group, during the meeting, you are welcome to raise any interesting issues concerning Cantonese grammar for discussion.

Tentatively, there will be four meetings on every Saturday morning at the campus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The first meeting will be on August 5, 2000 at 10am in QT502 (on the fifth floor of the building between Core Q and Core T), and we will start with Chapter 5 of Cheung's book. The tentative schedule of the meetings will be as follows:

8/5 Particles (chapter 5)
8/12 Predicative suffixes (chapter 4)
8/19 Predicative-complement structures (chapter 3)
8/26 Sentence constituents (chapter 2)

Many of us have already indicated their interest in joining the discussion. So, if you are interested in Cantonese grammar or you want to have something 'soft' during summer, please contact us by e-mail at ctplee@cityu.edu.hk or benauyeung@hotmail.com. We are looking forward to your participation.

Peppina Lee & Ben Au-yeung