Primary and Secondary Reduplications:Multiple Diachronic Sources of Reduplicative Forms

Reduplication as a morphological means is different in nature from syntactic structure and discourse repetition.This paper,however,argues that there are two types of reduplication in terms of the source:primary and secondary reduplications.The former exists as a natural-born device of reduplication while the latter diachronically results from syntactic structure or discourse repetition through reanalysis.Based on this taxonomy,the paper conducts several case studies to illustrate how other linguistic devices have become reduplication in Standard Chinese and its dialects. Finally,it points out that some secondary reduplicative forms do not observe the universal semantic iconicity of reduplication because of their inheritance from the non-reduplicative sources.