A perceptual account for Cantonese vocative reduplication
نویسندگان
چکیده
Both phonological and morphological reasons have been suggested to account for mismatched elements in reduplicative outputs (e.g. gbóná is reduplicated as gbí-gbóná in Yoruba). However, the mismatched tonal sequences in Cantonese vocative reduplication are not amenable to either account (namely, the Emergence of the Unmarked account and the Morphological Doubling Theory account). This study proposes a third reason – maximizing perceptual similarity in the presence of other prosodic factors. We present the results of a perceptual experiment that support the crucial prediction of the perceptual similarity account that the two copies in the reduplicative complex have the greatest perceptual similarity among all relevant competitors.
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