A Grammatical sketch of Southern Min

Jia Chen

Student Number: 18309240

MPhil in Applied Linguistics

Describing Grammar
Prof. John Saeed
Michaelmas Term 2018

(3144 words)

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 A Grammatical sketch of Southern Min
1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction
This paper is divided into three parts. It will start by providing a brief introduction on
Southern Min. Next, a grammatical sketch will be presented by six aspects, starting from the
focus on constituent order and syntactic categories, through discussions on head-dependent
order as well as clausal negation, to the overviews of valency changing process and question
formation. Finally, a conclusion of all those discussed above would be presented.
1.2 A brief introduction of Southern Min
Firstly, this part will briefly introduce Southern Min as well as highlight a striking
difference between literary and colloquial readings. Then it comes to the fall of Southern Min
under the promotion of Mandarin and ends up with some recent efforts in protecting dialect.
Southern Min, also known as Hokkien or Taiwanese in other different contexts, is one
of the major dialects in China, which has nearly fifty-two million speakers all over the
world(Rong Li, Xiong, & Zhang, 1988). It originates from the southern part of Fujian Province,
China and spreads to Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan and many neighbouring countries in
Southeast Asia, by waves of emigrants from this region of China, due to famine and conflicts
during the 17th to the mid-20th century. The homeland of Southern Min, Fujian Province, has
another name, Min. Taking advantage of their coastal location in southeast China, the Hokkien
people are well-known for their maritime culture and connection towards the sea. Gu Yanwu,
a famous Chinese philologist and geographer, once remarked with a vivid metaphor that “the
sea is the farming field to the natives of Fujian”(Ding, 2016), portraying the active utilization
of ocean resources in this area.
Given its wide distribution within China and southeast Asia, Southern Min represents
a language unusually rich in varied sociolinguistic settings. Variants of Southern Min can be
divided into two groups: originating from Quanzhou or Zhangzhou. Among these variants,
Amoy Southern Min is a blend of two sources, which emerged only after the town, Amoy (now
Xiamen) was colonized as a port in the end of the 19th century, so as Taiwanese do. Likewise,
the rest of the Hokkien dialects spoken in South East Asia are either derived from Quanzhou
and Zhangzhou, or based on a mixture of both dialects. According to Norman (1988), the
complex geographical situation compelled Fujian to be remained for several centuries as one
of the most geographically inaccessible areas in China, which may explain the heterogeneous
nature of the Min group. The diversity of dialects in Min group leads to its mutual

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unintelligibility, in other words, speakers of Fuzhou dialect, a variant mainly in northern Fujian,
cannot understand easily with speakers of Zhangzhou dialect, a variant in the south part of
Fujian.
As for phonology, Southern Min exhibits a complex system of tone sandhi, based on
its seven citation tones, possessing 18 consonants, two semi-vowels, six cardinal vowels. Its
inventory of syllables is quite expansive with over 2,200 combinations compared with standard
Mandarin, which has approximately 1,100 different syllable types (Cheng 1997: 93).
There is a profound divergence between literary and colloquial readings found in Min dialects,
especially in Southern Min. It is attributed to the presence of diglossia before the 20th century
in China, when literary Chinese was only used as written medium and regional dialects served
complementarily in oral communication purposes. Literary readings, which are closer to the
pronunciations in the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial forms, are usually
used in formal registers such as when reading aloud literary works; while colloquial
readings are usually used in everyday vernacular speech. In other words, the way reading out
literary works tends to be closer to that in official Mandarin (but not yet Modern Mandarin),
while the way people speaking in daily conversations is closer to vernacular pronunciations.
For example, the character 行/ɕɪŋˊ/ has the literary reading /ɦɪ́ŋ/and the colloquial reading /kɪɑ́/,
the former one is used in the more elevated literary lexicon for abstract words such as /ɦɪ́ŋ-uî/
(behavior) and /ɦɪ́ŋ-dɔŋ/ (action) while the later one, /kɪɑ́/,is used in its colloquial and concrete
sense of /kɪɑ́-lɔ̀/ (walk). For the contemporary language, the different pronunciations cannot in
fact be explained simply as two different stylistic levels used in different contexts but
differences of the same character in literary and colloquial readings.
The general fall of the Chinese regional dialects in modern times has largely coincided
with the accelerated promotion of Mandarin as a national language since the mid-twentieth
century. Before that, (Ferguson, 1959) pointed out that variant of Chinese was “diglossia on
the largest scale of any attested instance”. Over the past 100 years, the paradigm under the
diglossia in China has undergone significant change dramatically, from “a system using literary
Chinese for writing and regional vernaculars for speech to a setup in which Mandarin and its
new offshoots replace both the literary language and spoken dialects in both written and oral
modes”. Including Southern Min, many of these dialects are leaving from mainstream to
obsolete in the course of two to three generations. Moreover, Southern Min is comparatively
understudied: there is merely several comprehensive published grammars of Southern Min,
almost exclusively in Chinese, for a few varieties of Southern Min spoken in eastern

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Guangdong and in Hainan. Fortunately, there are growing numbers of official or unofficial
proposes and movements attempting to promote and protecting dialect-speaking, such as pro-
Cantonese demonstrations in Guangzhou and indigenous language education movement in
Xiamen since 2009.

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 2. A Brief Grammatical Description of Southern Min
2.1 Constituent Order
Generally speaking, the neutral constituent order of Southern Min is SV(O), which is
claimed to be similar with Mandarin (Yang, 1991), as seen in example (1a) and (1b) below.
But, there are still many possibilities due to topicalization and focalization.
1. a. Guá teh khuann tsheh. (Southern Min)
S PROG V O
I in look book
“I am reading book.”
b. /uɔ211/ /ʈʂɤŋ51/ /tsaɪ51/ /kʰan51//ʂu55/ 。 (Mandarin)
S PROG V O
I PROG look book.
“I am reading book.”
As Rulong Li (1997) noted that sometimes Southern Min is subtopic prominent, he pointed out
that in the alternative orders for topicalization or focalization, the object could be often placed
in the subtopic or topic position. For example,
2. a. Lí sué sann a bue?
S V O
You wash cloth or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
b. Lí sann sué a bue?
S O V
You cloth wash or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
c. Sann lí sué a bue?
O S V
Cloth you wash or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
In examples (2a)–(2c) the object sann “cloth” appears after the subject li “you” and the verb
sué “wash” (2a), that is, in the post-verbal position; but in (2b), after the subject li “you” and
before the verb sué “wash”, that is, in the subtopic position; and in example (2c), sann “cloth”
occurs before the previous subject li “you” and the verb sué “wash”, that is, in the topic position.

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These examples prove that possibilities of different constituent orders, such as SOV or OSV,
are existed in Southern Min. The same as other Sinitic languages, there is no case marking
system in Southern Min, these confusing arguments are semantically identified by native
speakers.
However, things are different with intransitive verbs. Basically, constituents in
intransitive sentences could only follow SV order, as 3(a) and 3(b*) shows:
3. a. Lí mài siū-khì ah.
S NEG V INTERJ
You don’t angry INTERJ.
“Don’t be angry.”
*b. Siū-khì lí mài ah.
V S NEG INTERJ
angry you don’t INTERJ.
3(a) is a common sentence that could be heard in daily life, usually found in a persuasive
context; but 3(b) is ungrammatical that do not make sense for native speakers of Southern Min.
In terms of constituent order within clause, as this paper mentioned above, besides the basic
constituent order SV(O), there are several highly frequent patterns available as well, as the
results of certain syntactic features of the clause. Therefore, in Southern Min, alternation in
word order is not simply a random choice, but is determined by the given syntactic constraints.
For instance, some verb complexes may “require” the object noun to be fronted as: OVX,
because argument X do not allow a post-verbal object to follow them(Rulong Li, 1997). The
following example can proves this rule,
4. Hiám-hiám hit-tè uánn kui-ê siak-phuà.
O VC
nearly that-CL bowl whole-CL fall-break.
“(I stumbled up the stairs and) nearly broke the whole bowl.”
This sentence is selected from a narrative text and shows a clear OV order with ellipsis of the
subject noun, guá, “I”. The topic of the discourse is the narrator’s fear of dropping and
smashing a tray of bowls that he is carrying upstairs to give to a wedding party, since it means
bringing bad luck, the noun uánn “bowl” is the topic semantically and syntactically. Thus,
sometimes with “unusual” constituent order within clause, readers may need the given
syntactic context to understand the meaning.
In sum, the neutral constituent order of Southern Min is SV(O) with other alternative orders
such as SOV or OSV, as a result of topicalization and focalization, that is, it is common for

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Southern Min speakers to place objects in the subtopic or topic position, when the speaker
wants to focus on the object. But it is merely limited to sentences with a transitive predicate, if
the predicate is an intransitive verb, complement can only follow its head verb. Moreover, the
given syntactic context may be helpful in understanding “unusual” constituent order.

2.2 Word Class (syntactic categories)

2.2.1 Nouns
Let’s start with nouns. In Southern Min, as other Sinitic Languages, the nouns do not reflect
number (singular or plural), gender (masculine or feminine), nor case. Besides identifying
semantically or syntactically, there are still some methods in distinguishing word classes, for
example, the suffix -á is used as a noun maker in Southern Min. It originally refers to something
that is small, diminutive, but turns out to be an optional suffix for euphony, as seen in Example
(5).
5. gín-á iûnn-á káu-á
child (baby)sheep dog(small)
It is noticeable that although suffix -á is equivalent to the noun suffix -zǐ/-zi in Mandarin, in
some cases it does not obey this rule, such as examples in 6(a) and 6(b):
6. a. io̍h-á (Southern Min)
yào (Mandarin)
medicine
b. kiànn (Southern Min)
jìng zi (Mandarin)
mirror
Moreover, in terms of expressing number, as this paper mentioned above, there is no
distinction between the singular and plural forms of nouns. To indicate singular or plural, the
number of items must be specified. Between the number and the noun, a measure word (or
classifier), which is used to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent, cannot be
omitted. Mostly, there is a considerable amount of similarity between measure words in
Southern Min and Mandarin, while in some cases there may be a difference as well, as seen in
example (7), niá refers to pieces of cloth, and kiānn is the measure word for affairs, but both
of them correspond to a same word-jiàn-in Mandarin:
7. a. tsi̍ t-niá sann
one-piece cloth
“a piece of cloth”

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 b. tsi̍ t-kiānn tāi-tsì
one-MEASURE affair
“an affair”

2.2.2 Verbs
As one of the vital elements, in Southern Min verbs are categorized through their
functional features, such as stative verbs, action verbs, modal verb, verb complements etc,
according to Lin (2015). Among them, directional complement function essentially in daily
conversations. Before talking about directional complement, it would be necessary to figure
out what verb complement is. Functioning like extensions to the verb, the complements offer
additional explanations about the action performed. Directional complements follow verbs that
indicate movement and provide further information about the direction of this movement. For
example, the directional complements -lâi “towards” and -khì “away” refer to the direction of
movement with reference to the speaker:
8. a. I bîn-á-tsài beh puann-lâi tshī-lāi.
He/she tomorrow will move-to downtown.
“Tomorrow he/she will move to downtown (here the speaker is in downtown).”
b. I bîn-á-tsài beh puann-khì tshī-lāi.
He/she tomorrow will move-to downtown.
“Tomorrow he/she will move to downtown (here the speaker is somewhere outside of
downtown).”
Directional complements enable language has more flexibility in positioning the object,
which are common in Mandarin as well. Since Mandarin is not in the scope of this paper, here
it would not be involved in the discussion.

2.2.3 Adjectives
As for adjectives, this paper will focus on an interesting lexical phenomenon in
Southern Min, that is, reduplication, which is a morphological process in which the root of an
adjective is wholly or partially copied, involving no change on segmental features and syllable
level as well. It has been a widely studied issue in Optimality Theory. Among the methods in
reduplication, repeating single syllable adjective with an optional particle ending is the unique
one meaning to reduce the degree, as seen in Example 9.
9. a. Lim tsi̍ t tshuì phû-tô-tsiú liáu-āu, i ê bīn tō âng-âng(-
ê).

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 drink one sip wine ASPECT, he/she POSS. face red-red(-
Particle).
“After one sip of wine, his/her face turns a little red.”
b. Tsit tsiah káu-á gōng-gōng(-á), i it-ti̍ t tui ka-tī ê bué tsáu.
this dog-suffix stupid-stupid(-Particle), it always chase own POSS. tail run
“This puppy is a little stupid. It keeps chasing its own tail.”
There are basically two types of adjective reduplication, one renders semantic emphasis, the
other one type contributes to semantic weakening, such as the optional particle -á/-ê mentioned
above, referring to lessening the intensify of the original adjective. To fulfil the progress of
reduplication, the two adjectives in Example 9, which were originally âng “red” and gong
“stupid”, changed to reduplicated form (AA) firstly, and then added a optional particle. As Lin
(2015) pointed out, not all adjectives are suitable for forming adjective reduplications, but a
few more do. Other ways of intensifying in reduplication are respectively split doubling method
(AABB) AND repeated doubling method (ABAB).
In conclusion, in this part, noun suffix -á, directional complement and reduplication in
adjectives are discussed through empirical examples from daily conversations of native
speakers. It does not mean unnecessary to other word classes that are not here, whereas the
author of this paper would like to highlight some remarkable features in syntactic categories in
Southern Min.
2.3 Clausal negation
According to Y. Li (1990)and Teng (1992), there are general consensuses on the existence
of a large number of negative markers in Min-nan, but the set may vary due to the different
criteria towards negation. As for Y. Li and Teng, there are at least seven or eight negative
particles in Southern Min, while Standard Mandarin has just two main forms, /pu51/, /meɪ35/.
But in this part, the author of this paper applies the categorizations from Lin (2015, pp. 297-
316), which defined the negation system of Southern Min as five common markers: they are
m̄, bô, bē, buē, bián. Moreover, there is no fixed order in negative NP, for instance, it is head-
final in the NP with negative marker m̄, while the head in the NP with buē precedes the negative
marker, as seen in the following example. Due to the length, this part will focus on the
discussion of negative marker m̄.
10. a. m̄ tsai-iánn
NEG know
don’t know
b. iáu-buē

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 yet-NEG
not yet
2.3.1Negative marker: /m̄/
According to P. J. Li (1971), there are two meanings in m̄: one as a pure negative ‘not’, the
other as a volitional negative for modal verbs of desire ‘not want’, although it is still
controversial, in this part, it would be treated as having two distinct meanings. Usually it
precedes the head of NP, like “NEG+NP”.
On the one hand, m̄ can function as a pure ‘not’ used to negate verbs. When used in this
way, m̄ (see 10a) can only appear before limited words without action verbs, which could only
be negated by m̄ in its volitional meaning. On the other hand, the use of volitional m̄ (see 10b),
is “much more common” (Lin, 2015, p. 300).
11. a. m̄ sī
NEG be
“not be”
b. m̄ khì
NEG go
“don’t(want to) go”
2.3.2 m̄ in questions
Both pure and volitional m̄ can be used to form questions, and there are basically two types
of questions formed by m̄: affirmative-negative question and tag question.
Affirmative-negative question is very common in Sinitic language, it can be concluded as
“(affirmative) V1 + (negative)V1”, that is firstly use a verb in the positive form, then repeat the
same verb in its negative form, which could be understand as "Do you … or not?" or "Have
you or have you not…?" in English. Only the pure negative marker m̄ is suitable for forming
affirmative-negative question, and the head must be restated with the negative marker m̄ when
answering negatively.
12. I sī-m̄-sī lí ê ha̍k-sing?
He/she be-NEG-be your student
“Is he/she your student?”
Negative Answer:
a. m̄-sī。
NEG-be.
“(He/she) is not (my student).”

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 *b. m̄。
NEG.
“Not.”
Tag question is a type of question formed by attaching a question tag, a short phrase for
seeking further confirmation, to the end of a declarative sentence. English speaker would be
unfamiliar with this structure, for example, in the sentence "You're Helen, aren't you?", the
statement "You're Helen" is followed by the tag "aren't you" for reconfirming. In Southern Min,
both the pure and volitional negative m̄ can be used to form tag questions, but the pure m̄ must
be bound with the adjectives or verbs in original sentence in questioning and negative
answering.
13. a. Tsit uánn mī sī guá--ê, sī m̄?
this MESUARE noodle be my, be NEG?
“This bowl of noodles is mine, isn’t it?
Negative answer:
m̄-sī
*b. Tsit uánn mī sī guá--ê, m̄?
In contrast, the volitional m̄ can appear independently without the optional support of the
adjectives or verbs in original sentence, and could be optionally answer in the negative marker
or with what preceded in the original sentence, as seen in Example 13.
14. Lí beh tsham-ka hun-lé (, beh) m̄ ?
you will attend wedding(, will) NEG?
“You will attend the wedding, wouldn’t you?”
Negative answer:
a. m̄-beh。
NEG-will
“No, I won’t.”
b. m̄。
“No.”
2.3.3 Derivations of m̄
It is noteworthy that the negative marker m̄ is also used in prohibition with three
derivations: mài, m̄-thang and m̄-hó, which are arranged in the degree of intensify as seen in
the following example.
15. a. Mài sái siunn kín lah!

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 NEG drive too fast INTERJ
“Don’t drive too fast!”
b. M̄-thang tsia̍h hun ah!
NEG eat cigarette INTERJ
“Don’t smoke (it’s better not to do so)!”
c. Tsit kiānn tāi-tsì m̄-hó kóng--tshut-khì!
this affair NEG-good say-out
“Don’t tell others!”
In sum, in Southern Min, the negative marker m̄ is one of the special cases as preceding
the head NP. There are two categories of m̄, pure m̄ and volitional m̄, both having different
formats in forming affirmative-negative questions and tag questions. Also, three derivations of
m̄ were briefly presented, intensifying contexts in different degrees.
2.4 Head-dependent Order
According to Chappell (2018b, p. 15), most Sinitic languages feature in head-final
characteristics for their NP structure but a mixture of head-initial and head-final ordering for
their VPs, and Southern Min obeys to this rule as well. In other words, as for NP, all the
constituents of the noun phrase, including relative clauses, precede the head noun; as for VP,
basically the object follow the head verb, while sometimes it could be OV order as this paper
discussed in 2.1.
In this part, this paper will briefly focus on the head-final in NP and the mixed head
dependency in VP. The heads of each phrase are in bold type in this section.
2.4.1 Head-final in NP
The following figure clearly describes the relations between head noun and its
attributive phrase, which was presented in Chappell (2018a). From both structure, it is clear
that the head noun is supposed to follow its attributive, that is, the NP obeys to the head-final
order, no matter how complex they are.
Figure 1：NP Component order for Southern Min(Chappell, 2018a)

i. Basic noun phrase structure

(DEM–NUM–CL)
(POSS. PRO– ê) – (DEM–(CL)) – (ADJECTIVECORE) – NOUN
(NUM–CL)
(QF–CL)
ii. Complex noun phrase structure

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 (DEM–NUM–CL)
(POSS. PRO– ê) – (NUM–CL) – (INTENSIFIER–) ADJECTIVE – ê – (NOUN)
(DEM–CL) – CLAUSE – ê -(NOUN)
(QF–(CL))
[ê = marker of linkage and dependency; nominalizer]
Many scholars, such as Rulong Li (1997), defined -ê as the equivalent of de, an
attributive marker, in Mandarin. Based on this understanding, Chappell (2018, p. 16)) further
refined -ê as “a marker of ligature for a variety of syntactic relationships involved in
modification”, which links modifying elements such as relative clauses and adjectives with the
head noun. And it is also proved by the figure above, on which shown that -ê precedes every
head noun. The following examples may provide better understanding for head-final order in
NP.
16）a. [NP tn̂g-thâu mn̂g-ê tsa-bóo-gín-á]
long-hair-ê girl(s)
“(the) long hair girl(s)”
b. [NP lí tuà-lâi -ê piān-tong]
you bring-come-ê bento(lunchbox)
“the bento that you brought”
In (16a) the head noun tsa-bóo-gín-á “girl(s)” is modified by the fronting attributive tn̂g-thâu
mn̂g-ê “long hair”, with the marker -ê. Likewise, lí tuà-lâi -ê “that you brought” precedes its
head, piān-tong “bento (lunchbox)”.
2.4.2 Head-final and head-initial in VP
Just as this paper discussed in 2.1, the neutral constituent order of Southern Min is
SV(O) with other alternative orders such as SOV or OSV, as a result of topicalization or
focalization. But it is merely limited to sentences with a transitive predicate, if the predicate is
an intransitive verb, complement can only follow its head verb. Thus, head-initial and head-
final are coexisted in VP in Southern Min, as seen in Example (2a-2c). Those sentences are
repeated here again with bold head verb in order to highlight the difference in head dependency.
17) a. Lí [VP sué sann] a bue?
S V O
You wash cloth or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
b. Lí [VP sann sué] a bue?

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 S O V
You cloth wash or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
c. [NP Sann] lí [VP sué] a bue?
O S V
Cloth you wash or not?
“Have you done the laundry?”
To sum up, the head dependency in Southern Min basically follows what most Sinitic
languages feature: the head in NP structure always follows its complement, but as for VP, it is
different with two orderings, head-initial or head-final, as a result of topicalization or
focalization in the context.
2.5 Valency changing
In linguistics, the term “valency” is “the number of core arguments that a verb has”, and
“valency changing” may involve the increase or decrease in the number of core arguments
(Tallerman, 2014, p. 256). In Southern Min, the process of valency changing is related to
passive construction.
Compared with active voice, passive voice is more commonly found when focusing on the
object or describing actions performed by unknown agent. However, in Southern Min, it is
generally used in negative contexts, even with neutral verbs. In contrast, topicalization may be
a better way in simply focusing on the object or action with a more positive semantic context,
as shown in Example18a-18c.
18) a. i kā si̍ t-bu̍t ak-tsúi ah. [Active voice]
He/she AUX plant(s) water ASP.
“He/she watered the plant(s).”
b. Si̍ t-bu̍t hōo i ak-tio̍h tsúi. [Passive voice]
Plant PASSIVE he/she water(V).
“The plant(s) was(were) watered by him/her (negative implication: it should not have
been watered).
c. Si̍ t-bu̍t, ū ak-tio̍h tsúi. [Topicalized object]
“The plant(s), ASP water(V).
(As for) the plant(s), they(it) were(was) watered (neutral meaning).
Both 18b and 18c changed the original constituent order for focalization, whereas there is
subtle difference: 18c sounds neutrally without any implication, while 18b sounds like a

14
complaint with its negative implication. Due to the limitation in negative referent, native
speakers seldom use passive construction.
2.6 Question formation
Clark (1985) pointed out that “Verb-NEG-Verb” and “Verb-NEG”, the special forms of
polar questions featuring many languages in Southeast Asia and Sinitic languages, while other
strategies “are the use of paradigm of interrogative pronouns in situ [the author: to
Mandarin]within the clause and disjunctive questions”(Chappell, 2018b, p. 29). In Yue (1991),
she observed that “Verb-NEG” construction are more common than “Verb-NEG-Verb”
pattern in the daily communications in Southern Min, while the latter one would be more
typical in standard Mandarin and Cantonese. Moreover, it was also pointed out by Luo (2016,
p. 55) that the pattern of “Verb-NEG” is not as “prevalent” even in Fuzhou Min, another variety
of Min.
It has been discussed in previous part of this paper (2.3.2 m̄ in questions) when talking
about the negative marker m̄, and different terminologies were adopted as “(affirmative) V1 +
(negative)V1” and “tag questions”.
Besides the two characteristic question pattern, Southern Min has its equivalence to wh-
question in English. For instance, siánn “what”, siánn-lâng “what people(who)”, tó-ūi “where”,
tī-sî “when” and ūi-sīm-mı̍ h “why”. Each one of them had various derivations with different
contexts and accents.
In a word, question formation in Southern Min mostly follows how it is in Mandarin,
while having two distinctive patterns: “Verb-NEG-Verb” and “Verb-NEG” constructions.

15
 3. Conclusion
In this paper, the author of this paper sketched out grammar of Southern Min from the
focus on constituent order and syntactic categories, through discussions on head-dependent
order as well as clausal negation, to the overviews of valency changing process and question
formation. Among them, the negative marker m̄ as well as the Verb-NEG-Verb or Verb-
NEG are distinct from the basic rules of Mandarin. In addition, from this paper, interesting
varieties in constituent order and head dependent as well as the discussion in choosing
different passive constructions highlights the diversity of Sinitic languages.

16
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