A semantic constraint on the variation in meanings of reduplicative constructions

Abstract This paper proposes a semantic constraint that can account for the meaning variation that the phenomenon of reduplication expresses across languages. The constraint adopts a unified meaning representation that integrates formal and conceptual-cognitive aspects of linguistic meaning and this helps in understanding the relationship between the meanings of reduplicated forms and those of non-reduplicated forms. This makes way for a neutral and yet integrated formulation of the constraint at the crossroads between formal and cognitive approaches with respect to meaning representation. In order to show the efficacy of the constraint, several kinds of reduplicative constructions that are crosslinguistically attested are analyzed. Before the semantic constraint is proposed, an operational characterization of reduplication and a classification of reduplicative meanings adopted by the present paper are provided so that the constraint is equipped to handle different kinds of form-meaning correspondences that reduplicative meanings exhibit.