Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Consonants

2 Vowels and diphthongs

3 Tone

4 Pronouns

5 Possession: ge

6 Possession and existence: yauh

7 Being: haih

8 Noun classifiers

9 Adjectives

10 Adverbs of manner

11 Adverbs of time, frequency and duration

12 Comparison: gwo and di

13 Prepositions: space and time

14 Negation

15 Verbs of motion: heui and laih

16 Verbs of giving: bei

17 Verbs and particles

18 Actions and events: jo and gwo

19 Activities: gan and jyuh

20 Auxiliary verbs

21 Passives

22 Word order and topicalization

23 Yes/no questions

24 Wh-questions

25 Sentence particles

26 Imperatives

27 Requests and thanks

28 Numbers, dates and times

Key to exercises

Glossary of grammatical terms

About the Author

Virginia Yip is Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Stephen Matthews is Professor at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. They are the authors of Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar (1994, 2nd edition 2011), The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact (2007, Cambridge University Press), and co-directors of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre.