The Optimality Theory Analysis Of The Disyllabic Verb And Adjective Reduplication In Mandarin

Reduplication is one of the most important vocabulary construction means of Mandarin Chinese. Word categry is usually used to be the criterion to classify the Mandarin reduplications. There are two kinds of verb reduplication forms V_ABAB and V_AABB accoding to the root's word categry, and the former is the basic one. Similarily, there are two kinds of adjective reduplication forms A_AABB and A_ABAB, and the former is the basic one. Adopting an Optimality Theory account, this paper addresses different patterns of reduplication in Mandarin disyllabic verbs and adjectives. After careful examination of the prosodic, semantic and grammatical functions of the special verb and adjective reduplication, we propose a new heading for the classification of the basic and special patterns of verb and adjective reduplication: the generalized Verb reduplication which includes both the V_ABAB and A_ABAB pattern, and the similar generalized Adjective reduplication consisting of the A_AaBB and V_AABB patterns. This new classification breaks the absolute limitation between the verb and adjctive reduplication and combine the two sorts to a whole.Optimality Theory is a development of Generative Grammar. At the heart of OT lies the idea that language is a system of conflicting forces. This conflict-regulating mechanism consists of a ranking of universal constraints. Languages basically differ in their ranking of constraints.In that case, the lexical category specific constraints adopted by Feng Guanjun (2003) can be extended to account for the generalized verb and adjective reduplication patterns. In addition to AAB pattern for V-O verbs, we further explore the possible constraint ranking for the AliAB pattern of adjective reduplication, claiming that the optimal output with the reduplication of [A] and the infixation of 'li' in AliAB is due to the domination of Linearity over the lower ranked constraint Align-li-L.