OPTIONAL GAI IN HAKKA ADJECTIVAL MODIFICATION: ITS INTERPRETATION AND STRUCTURE

This paper investigates the associative marker gai in Hakka complex noun phrases, exploring its syntax and semantics. It is argued that gai constitutes the formal correlate of a [CLASS] feature that linguistically identifies a class, or a subkind, to a kind denoted by the modified noun. The gai marker hosts a functional projection ClassP in the nominal structure and is shown to encode the concept of partitivity, namely denoting a potentially specific subset of a larger set. The analysis of gai as a class marker is shown to fit with the cross-linguistic picture regarding classification, partitivity and nominal ellipsis.