Topic > Syntax In Syntax - 753

As for direct yes/no questions, “你煮好飯未呀?” which lexically refers to “you cook particulate food not yet SPF” which means “have you finished cooking?” (Matthews and Yip, 2011, p. 364). They noted that “未” indicates the perfective of questions. Syntactically, according to Matthews and Yip (2011) and O'Melia (1941), the “A-not-A question” is highlighted in the formation of tag, copular and existential questions. It is formed by duplicating the verb or adjective by combining the negative marker of “唔” in the center and “啲” is optional to be placed before “呀”, such as “遲唔遲 (啲) 呀?” referring to "late-not-late (some) SFP", meaning "Don't you think it's (a little) late?" (Matthews and Yip, 2011, p. 361). Furthermore, including a conjunction “抑或” or “定” with an optional verb “係” among the choices in alternative questions is another grammatical rule (Matthews & Yip, 2011). For example, they showed “你要粥定(係)飯呀?” lexically referring to "do you want congee or (be) rice SFP", meaning "Would you like congee or rice?" (p. 373). Additionally, there are two types of wh-questions in motion with a wh-phrase that is an interrogative pronoun, such as “點解” represents “why” and “幾時” represents “When,” placing “either at the beginning of the sentence or between subject and verb” (Matthews & Yip, 2011, p.