Title

A Contrastive Analysis of Reduplication in Mandarin Chinese

Author

Li, Ching-ching

Genre

Article  

Pages

567-613   

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

verb reduplication, adjective reduplication, contrastive analysis

Abstract

      Mandarin word classes exhibit different kinds of reduplication. This paper contrasts the reduplicative forms of verbs and adjectives and demonstrates the relationships between them (AA, AABB, ABAB) and their original forms (A, AB). Fifty-nine native speakers of Taiwanese Mandarin judged the grammaticality of verbal and adjectival reduplicative forms. According to my results, adjectival reduplication increases the degree  of modification (e.g.,‘big' reduplicated means 'huge'), while the semantics of verbal reduplication is more complex. I also make some recommendations regarding the teaching of these forms to non-native speakers of Mandarin.