通過比較普通話和粵語的句末助詞,本文論證普通話的"法"應分析為事件類句末助詞,位處詞匯層次,因而普通話和粵語都具備事件類句末助詞。在制圖理論的框架下,本文認為,詞匯層次的右緣也應該有虛詞,也就是事件類句末助詞。通過本文的討論,我們可窺探漢語句法結構的復雜性,并繼續探討句子邊緣結構的句法性質。

By examining the distribution of sentence-final particles in Mandarin and Cantonese, it is argued in this paper that fa(法) in Mandarin should be analyzed as an event type sentence-final particle in the lexical layer, and hence both Mandarin and Cantonese should have the event type sentence-final particles, exhibiting the same hierarchy of the sentence-final particles in the clausal structure. Under the cartographic approach, it is proposed that in addition to the complementizer layer and the inflectional layer, there should be functional categories in the right periphery of the lexical layer, i.e. the event type sentence-final particles, in human languages. If the analysis presented in this paper is on the right track, we may have deeper understanding of the complexity of the syntactic structure in Chinese and further explore the interesting syntactic properties of the clausal periphery.