advcl:coverb
: adverbial coverb phrase
Coverb phrases in Cantonese are roughly equivalent to prepositional phrases in other languages. They are headed by a coverb followed by an object (analogous to preposition + object) and together introduce an extra argument, such as beneficiary, instrument, comitative, etc. Most of these Cantonese coverbs can take verbal markers (2-4), however, and therefore these phrases are considered clausal adjuncts here (in contrast to Mandarin where they are treated as prepositional phrases).
References
- Francis, Elaine J. and Stephen Matthews. 2006. ‘On Serial Verb Constructions in Cantonese.’ In Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and R.M.W. Dixon (Eds), Seria Verb Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, 69-86, Oxford University Press.
- Matthews, Stephen and Virginia Yip. 2011. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd ed. Routledge.
advcl:coverb in other languages: [yue]