An Analysis of Taiwan Southern Min Tetrasyllabic Adjective Reduplication

Tetrasyllabic adjective reduplications in Taiwan Southern Min can be achieved by either partial reduplication or total reduplication. The partial reduplication may operate rightward or leftward, depending on the morpho-semantic structure of the stem. The shape of the total reduplication is determined by the semantic function, emphatic or weakening. This paper employs the theory of Cophonology, and posits four cophonologies to account for the partial and total reduplications. I argue that alignment and contiguity constraints interact differently in the cophonologies of reduplication, and the cophonologies are structurally related. The proposed approach offers a simpler and unmarked generalization, which effectively predicts the dialectal universality and variation.