<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This paper analyzes verb reduplication in Mandarin Chinese under a lexicalist framework. By adopting the Lexicalist Hypothesis proposed by Chomsky (1970), a distinction has been made between syntactic and morphological verb reduplications by means of five tests: productivity, <italic>le</italic> insertion, categorial stability, transitivity, and input/output constraints. It is found that the AA and ABAB patterns of verb reduplication have relatively high productivity and regular syntactic behaviors, whereas the AABB pattern of verb reduplication shows extremely low productivity and syntactic idiosyncrasy. Given these observations, this paper proposes that the AA and ABAB patterns should be syntactic verb reduplications derived at the syntactic level, whereas the AABB pattern should be morphological verb reduplication formed in the lexicon. The two types of verb reduplications have different generative mechanisms.</p></abstract>

This paper analyzes verb reduplication in Mandarin Chinese under a lexicalist framework. By adopting the Lexicalist Hypothesis proposed by Chomsky (1970), a distinction has been made between syntactic and morphological verb reduplications by means of five tests: productivity, le insertion, categorial stability, transitivity, and input/output constraints. It is found that the AA and ABAB patterns of verb reduplication have relatively high productivity and regular syntactic behaviors, whereas the AABB pattern of verb reduplication shows extremely low productivity and syntactic idiosyncrasy. Given these observations, this paper proposes that the AA and ABAB patterns should be syntactic verb reduplications derived at the syntactic level, whereas the AABB pattern should be morphological verb reduplication formed in the lexicon. The two types of verb reduplications have different generative mechanisms.

Two Types of Verb Reduplications in Mandarin Chinese

Studies in Chinese Linguistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"Two Types of Verb Reduplications in Mandarin Chinese"}

This paper analyzes verb reduplication in Mandarin Chinese under a lexicalist framework. By adopting the Lexicalist Hypothesis proposed by Chomsky (1970), a...

Two Types of Verb Reduplications in Mandarin Chinese

Publié en ligne: 30 juin 2020

Pages: 73 - 108

Reçu: 18 juil. 2019

Accepté: 25 nov. 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/scl-2020-0003

Mots clés
verb reduplication, Lexicalist Hypothesis, lexicon, productivity

© 2020 Zhu Xie, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Two Types of Verb Reduplications in Mandarin Chinese

Publié en ligne: 30 juin 2020

Pages: 73 - 108

Reçu: 18 juil. 2019

Accepté: 25 nov. 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/scl-2020-0003

Mots clésverb reduplication, Lexicalist Hypothesis, lexicon, productivity

© 2020 Zhu Xie, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Mots clés
verb reduplication, Lexicalist Hypothesis, lexicon, productivity