Fission Reduplication in Chinese Dialects – Interaction between phonology and morphology

There is a common phenomenon in Chinese, from Old Chinese through modern dialects, where a monosyllabic word phonologically and semantically corresponds to a disyllabic word. This phenomenon is actually related to a type of reduplication that I called fission reduplication. I have done research on reduplication of this type in Old Chinese, and this paper will only focus on its modern form. Two aims have been set up to be achieved: one is to construct a description of fission reduplication in modern Chinese dialects, and the other one is to develop a generative theory of morpho-phonological interaction to account for the formation of this reduplication pattern. This paper will present plenty of firsthand materials, collected, mainly by myself, from more than ten dialectal spots, to show what fission reduplication looks like and how this pattern is phonologically modified and semantically motivated. Look at instances below.