The Expression of Quantity of Action through Verb Reduplication in Mandarin Chinese.

Verb reduplication in Mandarin has been widely suggested to function as diminutive, expressing “dong-liang xiao” (small in the quantity of action) as declared in Zhu Dexi (1982). The present article examines the phenomenon from an evaluative morphology perspective. I argue that the concept of “dong-liang” in Chinese linguistics bears the same identity as the cognitive category “quantity of action” proposed by Körtvélyessy (2015) as part of the comparative model of evaluative morphology. I note that while verb reduplication in Mandarin often exhibits extended pragmatic features of diminutive such as non-seriousness, it does not semantically possess the meaning of reduced quantity of action, the definitive semantic feature of diminutive, but rather expresses uncertain or uncountable quantity. I thus propose an alternate grammatical function of verb reduplication in Mandarin and conclude by referring to its implication to the “less is more” paradox (as in Audring et al., 2021).

Reference:

Audring, J., Leufkens, S., Van Lier, E.(2021). Small events. Verbal diminutives in the languages of the world. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads. 1-1: 223-256.

Körtvélyessy, L. (2015). Evaluative morphology from a cross-linguistic perspective: Introduction to the descriptive chapters. In N. Grandi & L. Körtvélyessy (Eds.), Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology (pp. 187–194).

Štekauer, P. (2015). Word-formation processes in evaluative morphology. In N. Grandi & L. Körtvélyessy (Eds.), Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology (pp. 43–60). Edinburgh University Press.

Zhu, D. (1982). Yufa Jiangyi. The Commercial Press.