A Corpus-based Study Of Reduplicative Basic Color Words In Chinese:Their Word-forming Patterns,Syntactic Functions And Styles

Reduplicative basic color words(BCWs),defined as words with a reduplicative pattern containing at least one basic color morpheme,are commonly adopted in Chinese writing.However,few studies have ever been conducted on the subject.Therefore,it is necessary to reveal the reduplicative,syntactic,and stylistic features of reduplicative BCWs in Chinese,which should provide guidance in the actual use of such words.The present study is a corpus-based descriptive research.The self-built corpus consists of four sub-corpora: Adult Literature(AL),CL(Children's Literature),Translated CL(Translated Children's Literature),and Non-literature.The purpose of the study is first to describe different word-forming patterns of reduplicative BCWs,the rules underlying their morphological processes,and their syntactic features;second to find out how they are affected by the four different language styles.Through data analysis,eleven major reduplicative patterns and six major syntactic roles of reduplicative BCWs are summarized,morphological and syntactic rules governing the formation and use of reduplicative BCWs are presented.Stylistically,the study finds that,in descending order based on frequency,reduplicative BCWs appear most in CL,followed by AL,translated CL,and non-literature respectively;and that children's literature tends to use more basic patterns and syntactic functions.