This study discusses the origin and development of the question particle me1 in Cantonese. An examination of the materials written in Cantonese between 1828 and 1955 reveals two unexamined facts about me1. Firstly, besides marking a biased question, two centuries ago me1 was also used to mark unbiased questions, a usage that no long exists. Secondly, the pronunciation of me1 was rendered as mi1 in some texts. This study proposes that me1 was a fusion of the negative marker m4 and the particle ni1. The resulting form mi1 subsequently changed to me1 and from a high-falling to a high-level changed tone. Meanwhile, me1 has developed from a question marker to a discourse marker. Before the 1960s, statistics show that me1 was primarily a question marker and is now both a question marker and a discourse marker. Because of the frequent occurrence of a negative marker in me1-questions, they have become associated with negative presuppositions, a meaning that has remained, even in the absence of a negative marker. Phonological fusion is a major way of deriving particles in Cantonese and is closely related to word length, a characteristic which may explain the difference in richness of particles in Cantonese and Mandarin.

这项研究讨论了粤语中疑问词me1的起源和发展。1828 - 1955年间用粤语写材料的审查表明约两浑浑噩噩的事实ME1。首先，除了标记有偏见的问题之外，两个世纪前，me1还用于标记无偏见的问题，这种用法已不复存在。其次，在某些文本中，me1的发音被翻译为mi1。这项研究提出me1是阴性标记m4和粒子ni1的融合。结果形式mi1随后更改为me1从高音到高音的变化 同时，me1已从问题标记发展为话语标记。在1960年代之前，统计数据表明me1主要是一个问题标记，现在既是一个问题标记又是一个话语标记。由于负标志物在频繁发生的ME1 -questions，他们已经成为负前提，即一直保持，即使在没有负面标记的意义有关。语音融合是粤语中获取粒子的一种主要方式，并且与单词长度密切相关，这一特征可以解释粤语和普通话中粒子的丰富度差异。