Double Doubling In Disyllables-Reduplication In Mandarin

This thesis explores different reduplication patterns in Mandarin Chinese. The goal is to make a brief and clear summary of the Mandarin reduplication, especially that of the disyllables so that different patterns across word categories conform to one basic character - the OT (Optimality Theory) framework and to examine the wider implications of this account for both morphological and phonological theory. The analysis builds on generalizations from a comprehensive survey documenting reduplication variation in four word classes, namely, the nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. To capture cross-categorical variation in reduplication patterns, this analysis draws on a lexically-specific constraint hierarchy ranking segments according to the morpheme RED it takes. The newly proposed constraints are two well-formedness constraints: ALIGN (Verb, MRU) and Align (Adj. MRU), the LINEARITY constraint and constraints Realize-μand *σ_iσ_iσ_i. With these constraints, we successfully yield the optimal patterns for both AABB and ABAB reduplication. In order to account for the special patterns AliAB adjective reduplication, two natural constraints, *[_σLT and ALIGN-li-L are proposed. Extending our discussion to incorporate morphological structures into the analysis, we adopt the Ternary Model for Correspondence put forward by Walker and Feng (2004). Featured with three mapping types, this new model offers a more powerful and systematic way of the disyllabic reduplication in Mandarin.The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter One presents the theoretical background. In Chapter Two, I develop a unified description and analysis of cross-categorical patterns of reduplication in Mandarin. Chapter Three focuses on the AABB and ABAB reduplication and argues for a regrouping of the disyllabic verb and adjective reduplication patterns, namely, breaking the categorical restriction and grouping the special V_AABB pattern into the basic A_AABB pattern with a more general label AABB adjective reduplication and the same holds true for A_ABAB and V_AABB being grouped into ABAB verb reduplication, which builds a solid foundation for the OT analyses of reduplication in Mandarin. In the following Chapter Four, an OT account is provided to offer an explanation for the difference in verb and adjective reduplication, in which the ranking of alignment constraints and Linearity play a crucial role. It is further proposed that the AliAB pattern of adjective reduplication is due to the infixation of the 'li' during the adjective reduplication process and we offer an OT analysis of the formation with two new constraints proposed. Chapter Five introduces another model for the disyllabic reduplication in Mandarin - the Ternary Model. When the morphological structures are taken into account, the picture for the correspondence relationship in Mandarin reduplication becomes much clearer and more comprehensible. Chapter Six concludes the paper and points out areas for further research.