Reduplication across Categories in Cantonese
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper investigates the formal semantics of reduplication in Cantonese, i.e. how the meaning of reduplicated forms are encoded and computed with the given meaning from the base forms. In particular, this paper argues that reduplication denotes a summation function that adds up arguments (be they object-, eventor degreearguments) and return a collection of the elements. The surface difference across categories is accounted for in terms of cumulativity and quantization (Krifka, 1998; Krifka, 2001; Rothstein, 2004). The present approach makes use of scalar structure and summation as formal tools to model the cross-categorial behaviour of reduplication. It provides the advantage of a unified theory for lexical composition across categories nouns, verbs and adjectives.
منابع مشابه
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