Two aspects of productivity in Taiwanese Double Reduplication

Abstract

Monosyllabic adjectives can undergo double reduplication in Taiwanese to mark intensification. We argue in this paper that the phonological analysis for the tonal patterns of Taiwanese double reduplication relies on three elements: a floating High tone that prefers to dock onto the left edge of the output, tonal correspondence between the two reduplicants, and the lexical listing of the sandhi tones as part of the non-XP-final allomorphs of existing syllables. We support the analysis with an acoustic experiment and a psycholinguistic "wug"-test experiment in Taiwanese, which showed that (a) the floating High tone appears as early as possible in real doubly reduplicated forms; (b) the tonal allomorphy is not productive in non-existing words; and (c) the floating High docking is productive in non-existing words. The analysis echoes the "allomorph selection" hypothesis of Taiwanese tone sandhi by Tsay and Myers (1996) and the "two-stage" hypothesis of Taiwanese double reduplication by Myers and Tsay (2001).