The (post-)syntax of repeater classifiers: A case study in Thai

Abstract This paper analyzes the structure of Noun Phrases with repeater classifiers (i.e., numeral classifiers that are only used with the single noun they are form-identical with). I show that a previous attempt to account for repeaters in terms of syntactic head movement encounters both empirical and theoretical problems. I suggest that repeaters emerge in the post-syntactic component, via a melody copying operation, which I characterize as a type of syntactic reduplication.