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This thesis investigates and compares reduplicated words in Taiwan Min and Hakka used by Yun Jiang in her essays from the perspective of language contact by corpus linguistics methods. Our statistical results initially indicate that among different types of reduplicated words, the form of AA reduplication is the highest in the frequency of occurrence, with 53 (30.81%) tokens and 99 (39.76%) tokens of reduplicated words in the AA form used respectively in her Taiwan Min and Hakka proses. Based on this observation, we first classify reduplicated words into AA and non-AA forms. Next, for each dialect we group the reduplicated words in each form into different subcategories depending on the different syntactical functions the words have. Then, we inquire into what might be the potential syntactic and semantic differences between the Taiwan Min and Hakka reduplicated words used by Yun Jian in her pieces of work. Our comparative results have shown several important findings. First of all, the addressing terms in the AA form used in Yun Jiang’s Taiwan Min and Hakka prose collections reflect different extents to which different generations are influenced by Mandarin Chinese. Secondly, adjectives in the AA form exhibit different trending in semantic connotations and syntactic position between Taiwan Min and Hakka. Our corpus has shown that adjectives in the AA form tend to be used to express reinforcement in Hakka, whereas they are more likely to denote diminishing meaning in Taiwan Min, as is the case in Mandarin Chinese. Besides, in Hakka adjectives in the AA form show more flexibility in the syntactic positions in a sentence. Thirdly, plenty of reduplications in the non-AA form in Yun Jiang’s proses are borrowed from Mandarin Chinese due to the small-sized non-AA vocabulary in both Taiwan Min and Hakka. Fourthly, it is found that Yun Jiang unconsciously used Taiwan Min expressions in her Hakka writings and vice versa, such as the Taiwan Min expression “cherish-life-life-diminutive” in the ABB form found in her Hakka writing. Finally, metaphorical usages of reduplication are prevalent in Yun Jiang’s works. For example, the Taiwan Min “oil-wash-wash” in the ABB form, literally meaning oily, was metaphorically used to express the brightness of glutinous rice grains, the expression “white-flower-flower” in the form of ABB, literally denoting whitely, was used to describe the effect of whiteness that the white powder on the clothes caused, and the phrase “hot-hot-cold-cold,” literally referring to the high and low temperatures, was employed to metaphorically represent high and low, or various costs in medication. Yun Jiang is skillful in using metaphoric meanings, and creates a unique writing style .
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