The Subject Condition in Cantonese

This paper discusses the subject condition with data from Cantonese. We show that it is not possible to identify subjects in this language based on morphosyntactic criteria alone, and in order to maintain the subject condition in Cantonese, a pro-drop language, one has to determine other ways of identifying subjects. We propose some ways in which subjects can be identified using the lexical mapping theory, augmented by pragmatic discourse criteria.