In Xining Chinese, especially as used by older people, free nouns are always reduplicated, as a purely formal condition without any semantic effects. We argue that the reduplication takes place when an acategorial root is merged with a null nominal categorizer which copies the phonological matrix of the root, as an effect of a condition ruling out free monosyllabic nouns. When the condition is not independently satisfied, as in a compound or derived noun, reduplication is how the condition is met. Reduplication also occurs optionally in compounds or derived nouns. In conjunction with a minimalist theory of word formation, this will be shown to predict the distribution of reduplication in various contexts. For instance, the head of a compound can be reduplicated, but not the modifier, some affixes but not others permit reduplication of the base, non-compositional compounds do not allow reduplication, and so-called ‘bound roots’ (really, bound words) are not reduplicated. The phenomenon provides very strong evidence that simple content words are made up of an acategorial root and a categorizer which is often null, but can be overt in some languages, including Xining Chinese, where it is overt in nouns by virtue of reduplication.

中文翻译：

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西宁汉语名词的重叠与结构

在西宁汉语中，特别是在老年人使用的时候，自由名词总是重复的，作为一种没有任何语义效果的纯粹形式条件。我们认为，作为排除自由单音节名词的条件的结果，当一个无范畴词根与一个复制词根音系矩阵的空名词分类器合并时，就会发生重复。当条件不独立满足时，如在复合名词或派生名词中，重复是条件满足的方式。重复也可选地出现在化合物或派生名词中。结合构词的极简理论，这将被证明可以预测各种上下文中重复的分布。例如，复合词的词首可以重复，但修饰语不能重复，有些词缀允许词尾重复，有些词缀不允许重复，非组合式化合物不允许重复，所谓的“绑定词根”（实际上，绑定词）不会重复。这种现象提供了非常有力的证据，表明简单的内容词由一个分类词根和一个通常为空的分类词组成，但在某些语言中可能是明显的，包括西宁汉语，由于重复，它在名词中是明显的。