ABSTRACT
As discussed in chapter 3, prepositions do not form a clearly distinct class of words in Cantonese. The coverbs, which play a major role in expressing location, behave in most respects like a subclass of verbs: they may take aspect markers and verbal particles, and many may be used independently as the main verb in a sentence (see 3.1.3). Functionally, however, they play the role of prepositions and may usefully be viewed as such. Like English prepositions, they serve primarily to express spatial relations of location, direction, etc. (7.1), and additionally to indicate non-spatial relationships such as those of time and purpose (7.2). The coverbs/prepositions are used together with the localizers (3.1.4) to express more specific spatial relationships.
