published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

Cantonese (Gu?ngd?ng Hu?), a dialect of Chinese, has origins in the city of Canton (now usually Guangzhou), the capital of Guangdong Province and its surrounding localities in Southern China. Since the province was also known as Yue, Cantonese was also given the name Yue Yu in Chinese. These names, however, are somewhat ambiguous, for such other dialects as Hakka, Teochew also prevail in Guangdong Province. Therefore, Cantonese speakers often call their dialect Gu?ngzh?u Hu?, literally the dialect spoken in Guangzhou. The people of Hong Kong mainly speak Cantonese. Insomuch as Hong Kong was a colony of Britain until 1997 after China’s defeat in the First Opium War (1839-1841), many a great Western, British in particular, institutions and thoughts were introduced to Hong Kong. The city has had a different way of life as well as socio-economic systems from those in Mainland China. The divergence was sharpened after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, for the colony was politically disconnected from the mainland. Variations in vocabulary and pronunciation are therefore found in the Cantonese in Hong Kong. A new ‘language’ termed Computer-mediated Communication Language (CMC) has even newly emerged in recent years on the Internet as a result of economic progress and technological innovation in late twentieth century Hong Kong. This research is aimed at dealing with the Cantonese variety in Hong Kong. This thesis begins with a fresh attempt to redefine Cantonese. In the second chapter, the rise of the Cantonese variety in Hong Kong will be analysed from sundry perspectives, including politics, economics, history, culture, lifestyle, and the development of information technology. Different Cantonese variants will, too, be categorised and explained. The following three issues will be analysed in detail in three separate chapters: 1) puns used in advertisements or news headline; 2) CMC; 3) variants of Cantonese in Hong Kong newspapers and magazines. Attention will also be paid to code-switching and loanword adaptation from English and Japanese etc. The last chapter is a conclusion, which restates that the Cantonese variety in Hong Kong has developed via the process of self-creation, internal selection as well as adaption of foreign words and phrases. Also, it briefly summarises the relationship between the Hong Kong Cantonese variety and the social context in which they are used. It ends with a short discussion about the standardisation of dialects. / published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

by Wai-Hoo Au Yeung. / Thesis submitted in 1997. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-v (3rd gp.)). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Acknowledgments / Abstract / Contents / Abbreviations & Tables / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1. --- What is a parameter? / Chapter 1.2. --- Parameter resetting in SLA / Chapter 1.3. --- Parameter as feature checking / Chapter 1.4. --- Research goals and outline of the thesis / Chapter 2. --- PARAMETERIZATION IN CHINESE NOMINALS --- p.18 / Chapter 2.1. --- DP-analysis and its parameterization / Chapter 2.2. --- Evaluation of the four models of Chinese nominal structures / Chapter 2.3. --- Parameterization in Cantonese and Mandarin nominals / Chapter 2.4. --- The Lexical CL Parameter / Chapter 3. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.86 / Chapter 3.1. --- The subject / Chapter 3.2. --- Timing of recording / Chapter 3.3. --- What is recorded / Chapter 3.4. --- The corpus / Chapter 3.5. --- Criteria of counting utterances and point of acquisition / Chapter 4. --- THE ACQUISITION OF CANTONESE NOMINALS --- p.92 / Chapter 4.1. --- Overall development of Cantonese nominal structure / Chapter 4.2. --- Acquisition of Cantonese-specific CLP properties / Chapter 4.3. --- Comparison with native Cantonese children's data / Chapter 4.4. --- Acquisition by resetting the Lexical CL Parameter / Chapter 5. --- AN INFORMAL EXPERIMENT ON GENERIC di AND di-N PHRASES --- p.118 / Chapter 5.1. --- Design of the experiment / Chapter 5.2. --- Materials / Chapter 5.3. --- Procedures and results / Chapter 5.4. --- Comparison between Ching's and native children's results / Chapter 6. --- CONCLUSION --- p.134 / Chapter 6.1. --- Theoretical and acquisition findings / Chapter 6.2. --- Further evidence for parameter resetting / Chapter 6.3. --- Implications for future research / Chapter 6.4. --- Concluding remarks / References / Appendix A: 3 sample files of the corpus

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

Wong, Ying Wai. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-92). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; appendix in Chinese.