ABSTRACT
Chinese grammar lacks distinctions of tense as such: that is, the notions past, present and future are not encoded grammatically by forms of the verb. There is, however, a relatively complex system of verbal aspect, distinguishing notions such as events, states and processes. The directional particles basically denote direction, although many of them have additional, figurative or metaphorical meanings which are not predictable. The verbal particle chan is peculiar to Cantonese. It has two distinct meanings: the adversative meaning 'to one's disadvantage/misfortune' and the habitual meaning 'whenever'. The syntax of adversative chan resembles that of saai and maaih in that it modifies either the subject of an intransitive or the object of a transitive verb. With intransitive verbs, the disadvantage is to the subject. With transitive verbs, the adversative meaning of chan applies to the object, which must be a person rather than a thing.
