The Optimality Theoretic Analysis Of Mandarin Chinese Reduplication

The introduction to Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993) and its extension, Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince, 1995) has led to significant interest in the study of prosodic morphology and reduplication in particular. Also reduplication in Mandarin Chinese has long been an important area of investigation for many years and from different perspectives. But, as far as I know the Mandarin Chinese reduplication patterns and tone sandhi have not been systematically discussed in the Optimality Theoretic literature to date. So in this thesis, I will discuss the different patterns and tone sandhi in Chinese reduplication under the framework of Optimality Theory. In its formal analysis within the framework of the Optimality Theory, this study proposes a set of specific constraints which are correctly ranked to account for both the different patterns and tone sandhi of Mandarin Chinese reduplication and demonstrate how and why the OT treatment reflects the language typology and the dynamic situation with one particular language, Mandarin Chinese. An important finding emerging from study is that Chinese reduplication is connected with the morphological process.