#3752. Reduplication and the structure of nouns in Xining Chinese

October 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Language and Linguistics;
Linguistics and Language;
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Abstract:
In Xining Chinese, especially as used by older people, free nouns are always reduplicated, as a purely formal condition without any semantic effects. We argue that the reduplication takes place when an acategorial root is merged with a null nominal categorizer which copies the phonological matrix of the root, as an effect of a condition ruling out free monosyllabic nouns. In conjunction with a minimalist theory of word formation, this will be shown to predict the distribution of reduplication in various contexts. The phenomenon provides very strong evidence that simple content words are made up of an acategorial root and a categorizer which is often null, but can be overt in some languages, including Xining Chinese, where it is overt in nouns by virtue of reduplication.
Keywords:
Categorizer; Chinese; Compound; Merge; Reduplication; Root

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