Cantonese Versus Mandarin: A Comparative Study of Plurality

According to Iljic paper（2001）, there are properties of the plural suffix -men, such as obligatory versus optional, human reference, incompatibility with counting, non-genericity, definiteness. This paper aims to explore whether Cantonese plurality makers or classifiers have the same properties as Mandarin suffix men, and determine the properties and meaning of Cantonese plural markers and classifiers. This study uses questionnaires to check whether Cantonese makers bean, di, deih and muhn have the same properties as Mandarin men, the result shows that the usage of these markers are different. Di can be used with common nouns, baan is similar with di, but it cannot use with inanimate nouns, and it usually denote great quantities. Dei can only occur with personal pronouns, the properties of the suffix -dei in Cantonese is not identical to those of the suffix -men in Mandarin, muhn is influenced by Mandarin men, when muhn occurs with a noun, it has a function to address the listeners.