A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES
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Another peculiarity is the liking for a prefixed personal pronoun: MY THIS BOOK, YOUR THAT HOUSE, where English would have to turn it round into this "book of mine", or "my book here"; "that house of yours", or "your house there".
An exception to what I just said about "parts of speech" not being labelled by their form, should be mentioned here. The personal pointing-words in Cantonese all have the same tone low rising — and this tone, dictionary-wise the least favoured in the language, includes some of the most frequently used words: the verbs to exist43 and not to exist44, the number 5, the verbs sit45 & stand46, the adjectives heavy47 and near48 are examples which occur to me. There are nouns, too, of course, so that nothing like a "rule" emerges (like the rule about aspirates never having the "low level" tone and non-aspirates never having the "low falling" or "low rising"); nevertheless it is a circumstance worth mentioning.
The nouns, or thing-words, are very important and interesting. The first thing to note about them is that they do have genders, though these have nothing to do with masculine, feminine or neuter; but could be called congruence-classes. Some of the congruences are descriptive, but not all; some of the "classes" appear to be one-member clubs. A few nouns belong to more than one class, usually with a shade of meaning. I have often tried to make a comprehensive list of these, but the trouble with this list (as with the lists which others have made) is that it is literally unending. I'll explain why.
Take a word like BAAR49; a verb meaning "grasp, hold in the hand" and still so used in many expressions; a natural extension was to a measure-word “handful”; this became a "handy" congruence-class indicator (classifier) since the word for hand SAO50 was unavailable, being of identical pronunciation with another congruence-class indicator SAO51 used for poems. So this BAAR without losing any of its original uses, came into the key 20 as the indispensable classifier for nearly all tools and utensils, from the fan and foot-rule to the broom, spade, hammer and sickle52 but not the writing-brush nor chopsticks.
43 有
44 無 45坐 46站 47 重
48 將近 49 把 50手
51 首
52 Also the mouth when used for talking, i.e. as a weapon.