Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T20:51:00.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Reduplication as Summation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

Hana Filip
Affiliation:
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Get access

Summary

Lam’s chapter analyses the phenomenon of reduplication, primarily in Cantonese, a language in which reduplication can occur in the nominal domain, usually on the classifier, to express plurality, in the verbal domain to express an iteration of eventualities or a prolongation of an eventuality, and in the adjectival domain to express property attenuation. Lam argues for a uniform treatment of reduplication in terms of summation and a sensitivity to whether the replicated elements are (strictly) quantized or cumulative. For example, entity-denoting nominal classifiers, and verbal predicates denoting quantized sets of eventualities (such as tiu3 ‘jump’) denote pluralities or iterations, respectively, based on the summing of entities/eventualities. For verbal expressions that denote cumulative predicates (such as fan3 ‘sleep’), summation adds up ‘portions’ of unbounded, overlapping eventualities forming one temporally extended eventuality. Lam proposes that Cantonese bare adjectives denote dimensions, e.g. tallness, but not degree or magnitude. This nullifies any semantic effect of summation, and the attenuation effect is derived via competition with other forms using hou2 (‘very’).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, Werner (2005). Intensity and diminution triggered by reduplicating morphology: Janus-faced iconicity. In Hurch, Bernhard (ed.), Studies on Reduplication, pp. 547568. Berlin and New York, NY: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bach, Emmon (1986). The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9.1: 516.Google Scholar
Chakraborty, Tanmoy, and Bandyopadhyay, Sivaji (2009). Identification of reduplication in Bengali corpus and their semantic analysis: A rule-based approach. In 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pp. 73–76.Google Scholar
Cheng, Lisa, and Sybesma, Rint (1999). Bare and not-so-bare nouns and the structure of NP. Linguistic Inquiry 30.4: 509542.Google Scholar
Cheung, Candice Chi-Hang (2016). Parts of Speech in Mandarin: The State of the Art. Singapore: Springer.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro (2010). Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese 174.1: 99149.Google Scholar
Dayal, Veneeta (2014). Bangla plural classifiers. Language and Linguistics 15.1: 4787.Google Scholar
Grano, Thomas (2011). Mandarin hen and universal markedness in gradable adjectives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30.2: 513565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, David (2000). Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of Tuvan. DPhil Dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray (1991). Parts and boundaries. Cognition 41.1: 945.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Christopher, and McNally, Louise (2005). Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language 2005: 345381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang, Li, Ping, and Hendriks, Hemriette (2000). Aspect and assertion in Mandarin Chinese. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 18.4: 723770.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia, and LaCharité, Darlene (2005). Less is more: Evidence from diminutive reduplication in Caribbean Creole languages. In Hurch, Bernhard (ed.), Studies on Reduplication, pp. 533545. Berlin and New York, NY: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krifka, Manfred (1989). Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Bartsch, Renate, van Benthem, Johan, and van Emde Boas, Peter (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expressions, pp. 75115. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred (1992). Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporal constitution. In Sag, Ivan and Szabolcsi, Anna (eds.), Lexical Matters, pp. 2953. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Lam, Charles (2013). Reduplication across categories in Cantonese. In Proceedings of the 27th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Computation, pp. 277286. Taipei: National Chengchi University.Google Scholar
Lam, Charles (2014). A unified semantic analysis of classifiers and reduplication across nominal and verbal domains. In Proceedings of the 9th Annual Symposium of the Purdue Linguistics Association, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/plas/2014/proceedings/2.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N., and Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (1993). Cantonese Romanization Scheme Jyutping.Google Scholar
Link, Godehard (1983). The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: a lattice theoretic approach. In Baüerle, Rainer, Schwarze, Christoph, and von Stechow, Arnim (eds.), Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, pp. 302323. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lu, Jianming (1987). On “year,” “month” and “day” (说「年、月、日」). Chinese Teaching in the World (世界汉语教学) 3: 3540.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carita (2001). Adjectives and boundedness. Cognitive Linguistics 12.1: 4765.Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland, and Steinbach, Markus (2005). Backwards and sidewards reduplication in German Sign Language. In Studies in Reduplication, ed. Hurch, B., 569594. Berlin and New York, NY: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Soh, Hooi-Ling (2014). Aspect. In James Huang, C.-T., Audrey Li, Y.-H., and Simpson, A. (eds.), The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, pp. 126155. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tang, Sze Wing (2012). Chinese temporal nominals “year”, “month”, and “day” and their syntactic properties (「年、月、日」等及其句法特點). In Shen, Yang (ed.), Studies in Modern Chinese Grammar (走向當代前沿科學的現代漢語語法研究), pp. 6169. Beijing: Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie (2009). Productive reduplication in ASL, a fundamentally monosyllabic languageLanguage Sciences 31.2–3: 325342.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×