Reduplication across boundaries: The case of Mandarin

In this chapter, we shed new light on the reduplicative processes of Mandarin Chinese and assess the structural and interpretive properties of the input/base and output of these word formation phenomena. In particular, we focus on the categorial status of the base and address the issue of whether reduplication applies to category-free roots or full-fledged lexemes. Empirically, the privileged domain of research is increasing reduplication of disyllabic bases, or, as we dub it in the chapter, the AABB pattern, which is compared with diminishing reduplication, expressed by the template ABAB. The comparison between the two phenomena allows us to show that increasing and diminishing reduplication differ in the nature of the input units involved. On the grounds of a wide-ranging class of data, we argue that Mandarin reduplication takes base units of different ‘size’: word/lexeme-like units provided with category, namely verbs in the case of diminishing reduplication, and categoryless roots in the case of increasing reduplication. Throughout the chapter, we explore some category neutral properties of increasing reduplication and propose a unitary semantic operation capable to derive the various interpretive nuances of this phenomenon across lexical categories.