Reduplication in Kua’nsi

Abstract

This paper investigates reduplication in Kua’nsi, a Central Ngwi language of the Sino-Tibetan family, spoken in Yunnan Province, China, by around 5000 speakers. Reduplication is a productive morphological device in Kua’nsi and has complex forms and functions. Although Kua’nsi reduplication shows some similarities with reduplication in other Ngwi languages, it also has reduplicative forms and functions that appear to be cross-linguistically rare. Formally, reduplication in Kua’nsi can be full, partial, or discontinuous. Functionally, it can be used with inflectional and derivational meanings as well as without any semantic or syntactic effect in certain constructions. Some functions of Kua’nsi reduplication appear to be not frequently found across languages. The forms and functions of Kua’nsi reduplication are complex and there is not a one-to-one relationship between the form and function of particular patterns of reduplication.

Keywords

• Kua’nsi
• Ngwi language
• reduplication
• morphology
• Sino-Tibetan