5 - Reduplication as Summation

Summary

Lam’s chapter analyses the phenomenon of reduplication, primarily in Cantonese, a language in which reduplication can occur in the nominal domain, usually on the classifier, to express plurality, in the verbal domain to express an iteration of eventualities or a prolongation of an eventuality, and in the adjectival domain to express property attenuation. Lam argues for a uniform treatment of reduplication in terms of summation and a sensitivity to whether the replicated elements are (strictly) quantized or cumulative. For example, entity-denoting nominal classifiers, and verbal predicates denoting quantized sets of eventualities (such as tiu3 ‘jump’) denote pluralities or iterations, respectively, based on the summing of entities/eventualities. For verbal expressions that denote cumulative predicates (such as fan3 ‘sleep’), summation adds up ‘portions’ of unbounded, overlapping eventualities forming one temporally extended eventuality. Lam proposes that Cantonese bare adjectives denote dimensions, e.g. tallness, but not degree or magnitude. This nullifies any semantic effect of summation, and the attenuation effect is derived via competition with other forms using hou2 (‘very’).