Compositional and constructional reduplication in Kam-Tai languages

Matthias Gerner

doi:10.1515/flin.2010.012

Article

Compositional and constructional reduplication in Kam-Tai languages

Matthias Gerner

Published/Copyright: December 8, 2010

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From the journal Volume 44 Issue 2

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.

Keywords:: Compositionality; constructionality; reduplication; Kam-Tai; Kam; Northern Zhuang

Received: 2009-03-12

Revised: 2009-08-05

Accepted: 2009-10-19

Published Online: 2010-12-08

Published in Print: 2010-December

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2010.012

Keywords for this article

Compositionality; constructionality; reduplication; Kam-Tai; Kam; Northern Zhuang