On Domain minimization in Cantonese Sinitic languages such as Cantonese pose a challenge to the theories of word order typology due to their unusual combination of head-initial and head-final constituent structures. This paper examines the application of the principle Minimize Domains (MiD, Hawkins 2004) to Cantonese. The model predicts syntactic rearrangements from canonical orderings when the constituents are heavy: head-initial constituents should be displaced to the right and head-final constituents to the left, as shown by Yamashita and Chang (2001) for Japanese. Experimental evidence from Cantonese shows that displacement of heavy Noun Phrases to the left facilitates sentence processing, suggesting that topicalization and thus the ‘topic-prominent’ character of such languages may be motivated by processing efficiency. Verb-doubling and ba constructions have the effect of minimizing Verb Phrase domains, and may also be motivated by MiD.
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