Croft’s Cycle in Mandarin and Cantonese through history and across varieties

Abstract

One of the oldest problems in Chinese linguistics is negation and currently there is no consensus on a theory for the distribution of negators. This article explores this issue from the perspective of Croft’s Negative Existential Cycle (NEC) based on diachronic evidence and synchronic comparative data from four varieties of Chinese. The results show that the NEC is attested in Chinese throughout its history and across all varieties, and that different varieties can be positioned at different stages in the Cycle. The shared historical origin of the Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin méi(yǒu), the Hong Kong Cantonese mou5 and the Gaozhou Cantonese mau5, and their involvement in the NEC account for their semantic similarity in producing a non-existence reading as a standard negator. They also provide a new understanding of the nature of these negators and their present-day structural behaviour