Abstract
English Abstract This thesis aims to investigate on the interface between the prosody (stress assignment) and the morphology (reduplication). In terms of stress assignment of Tona Rukai, I adopt Optimality Theory and co-phonology approach to solve the problems to avoid the abstractness and technical/theoretical problems of rule-based framework. To account for reduplication data, non-templatic approach is favored in this thesis. However, conventional non-templatic approach cannot account for Tona Rukai data properly because of the blind operation of markedness constraints. Accordingly, this thesis proposes a modified account for the unsolved disyllabic reduplicant problem of Tona Rukai—a prosodic faithfulness constraint undominated in the tableaux, as stated below: (1) MAX-HEAD(B/R) The segment linked to the prosodic head in the base must have a correspondent linked to the prosodic head in the reduplicant. Among the constraints: MAX-IO, MAX-HEAD(B/R) » PHONO-CONSTRAINTS » MAX-BR, the undominated prosodic BR-faithfulness constraint can specifically determine the content and the crucial element of the reduplicant. Therefore, the dominated markedness constraints can properly control the size of the reduplicant. The prosodic BR-faithfulness constraint is extended from the observation and the operation of Kager (1999a, 1999b) and Beckman (1998), who consider the element in the stressed position unique in terms of preservation and contrasts. Analogously, Tona Rukai reduplicant must parse the elements of the stressed position of the reduplicative base. Therefore, the BR-faithfulness constraint is well-motivated in the language fact. In addition, the theoretical operation of MAX-HEAD(B/R) can follow the correspondence theoretical mechanism in McCarthy and Prince (1995).