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- Title
Compositional and constructional reduplication in Kam-Tai languages.
- Authors
Gerner, Matthias
- Abstract
Direct compositionality is a property of empirical data (and of grammatical frameworks) where the meaning of an expression can be reliably computed from the meanings of its parts (Jacobson, Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 601-626, 2002). Using empirical data from Kam and Northern Zhuang, two Kam-Tai languages spoken in the P. R. of China, I define the notions of compositional and constructional reduplication rules. A rule is compositional if the host construction does not manifest selectional restrictions on the embedded output of the rule. By contrast, a reduplication rule is constructional if there are selectional restrictions. Based on the descriptive insights of this study and on Jacobson's two types of (direct) compositionality, I define four different degrees of compositionality that a morphosyntactic operation may exhibit: strong compositionality, weak compositionality, weak constructionality (non-compositionality) and strong constructionality.
- Subjects
CHINA; COMPOSITIONALITY (Linguistics); CONSTRUCTION grammar; REDUPLICATION (Linguistics); DONG language (China); ZHUANG language; MORPHOSYNTAX; NOUNS; VERBS
- Publication
Folia Linguistica, 2010, Vol 44, Issue 2, p267
- ISSN
0165-4004
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/FLIN.2010.012