A syntactic derivation of the reduplication patterns and their interpretation in Mandarin

This paper aims to propose a syntactic approach to derive the three reduplication patterns for disyllabic words in Mandarin: the ABAB verbs, the AABB verbs, and the AABB adjectives. Based on Borer’s exo-skeletal model, I argue that there is no direct connection between the category and the form. The morphemes to be reduplicated enter syntax as roots which are unvalued both in categorial property and semantic content. The syntactic context determines both their category and the domain within which they must match with a reasonable content. I propose that there are three types of reduplication morpheme respectively involved in the derivations: ReASP, ReDER, ReDEG, and the relative order between reduplication and categorisation is the key factor affecting the availability of event structures and non-compositional interpretations. The study shows that some problems which are traditionally discussed in the morphological or semantic domain are in fact syntactic in nature.