The Morphology And Phonology In The Reduplication Of Standard Chinese: An OT Account

Built within the framework of Optimality Theory this thesis investigates the phenomena of tone sandhi, the morphology involved and the interaction between the two in the reduplication of Standard Chinese. Under the assumption that reduplication is essentially a morphological process of suffixation, in which the reduplicant receives phononlogical specification through correspondences with other components, this thesis first examines disyllabic nominal, verbal and adjective reduplication, which reveals an intimate relationship between tone sandhi and the morphosyntactic categories of reduplication construction: the morphological category of the reduplicative morpheme determines the range of tonal contrasts that can be maintained by the reduplicant, if it is stem, the reduplicant is able to sustain a full array of tonal contrasts allowed in base, if it is suffix, the tonal properties of the reduplicant vary according to the syntactic category of the reduplication construction, in nominal and verbal reduplication, the reduplicant is toneless, in adjective reduplication the reduplicant bears a high level tone. The unmarked high register feature and the simplicity of contour node strcture distinguish high level tone as the unmarked tone in the tonal inventory of Standard Chinese. The morphological category of the reduplicative morpheme is specified in lexicon, and the syntactic category of the reduplication construction emerges from the proces of reduplication.Optimality Theory approaches these phenomema through distinct constraint hierarchies indexed to the morphosyntactic categories of reduplication construction. Three pairs of faithfulness correspondences are relevant for the reduplication of Standard Chinese in the reduplication model, which include that between stem and base (IB-F), that between the abstract reduplicative morpheme RED and reduplicant (RR-F), and that between stem and reduplicant (IR-F). In compounding reduplication, the dominance of IR-F ensures a full range of tonal contrasts in reduplicant, hence enables the normal application of third tone sandhi. Third tone sandhi is analyzed in this thesis as the conspiracy of OCP dissimilatory effects at register level and the preference of high tones at metrical prominent positions. In nominal and verbal reduplication, the dominance of RR-F leads to a neutral tone in reduplicant, and in verbal reduplication due to the overranking markedness constraint *Head/L, the low tone at metrical head position is optimized into a high tone. In suffixal adjective reduplication, an unmarked high level tone is inserted in reduplicant through the markedness constraint T/σand the constraint ranking of LEVEL>> CONTOUR. T/σrequires the syllable be associated with a tone, and the inherent structural complexity of a tone makes a level tone more favorable than a contour tone.Based on the analyses of disyllabic reduplication, this thesis simulates the mechanism of reduplication as follows: in the input are the underived lexical items of stem and the abstract reduplicative morpheme RED, stem is specified with all morphemic content, including syntactic, morphological, semantic and phonological features, but RED is devoid of phonological content. The process of reduplication attaches a suffixal or stem RED to the stem, and produces its output phonological representation through distinct constraint rankings that are indexed to the morphosyntactic categories of the reduplication construction. What needs to be noted is that the constraint hierarchies only vary among the sub-faithfulness between the components of reduplication and the markedness constraints. Overall, the constraint hierarchies in reduplication conform to the general phonology outside of reduplication. The interactions of morphology and prosody in polysyllabic reduplication give rise to diverse reduplicational patterns and tonal properties, but the underlying constraint hierarchies are consistent with the analyses of disyllabic compounding and suffixational reduplication, which provides additional support to this thesis'proposal of reduplicational mechanism in Standard Chinese.This thesis contributes in the following aspects: the reanalysis of tonal phenomena in SC reduplication within the framework of Optimality Theory reveals the involvement of morphosyntactic categories in determining the phonological representations during morpholgical processes; and the suffixation hypothesis of reduplication provides a new perspective to the understanding of morphology and phonology in reduplication. Since reduplication takes place in lexicon, its study helps to extend our knowledge about the internal structure of the lexicon of Standard Chinese. In accordance to the thesis'analyses SC lexicon is discretely organized instead of being level ordered. Moreover, the tonal phenomena in the reduplication of a language with underlying contour tones and complex tone sandhis will enrich the descriptive materials for the research of reduplication.