Reduplication in Sao Tomense: Issues at the syntax-semantics interface Emmanuel Schang Université d’Orléans, LLL, EA-3850 Abstract This paper studies lexical reduplication in Sao Tomense, a Portuguese-based Creole language. Its central claim is that lexical reduplication in Sao Tomense results from the external merge of the same lexical item in two structural slots available in independently-motivated syntactic structures: the modification structure and the coordination structure. 1 Introduction In his book on Sao Tomense creole, Ferraz (1979: 49) analyses reduplication as a derivational compounding process: In Sao Tomense, compounding is primarily a morphological process whereby the repetition of a word yields a single lexical item, or one meaning. This lexical item is one word phonologically; in ST [Sao Tomense] each compounded element retains its stress pattern, the stress on the last element being the stronger. At first sight, this claim seems plausible. But since no study of stress in Sao Tomense is available, it is a priori questionable. Moreover, where there is a repetition of five identical entities, let alone entities larger than words, we should wonder if this is still a morphological process. As a starting point, I will take for granted that reduplication differs from accidental coocurrence of identical entities (stammer, etc.) in that the latter (called a disfluency) does not trigger any semantic effect. Contrastively, reduplication associates a meaning and a form. With these preliminaries in mind, this paper will address the nature of reduplication in Sao Tomense 1 . My central claim is that what may be called ’reduplication’ in Sao Tomense covers two different syntactic patterns that are not dedicated to the particular meanings that are usually associated with reduplication. The data in this paper come from documented sources (Ladhams et al. (2003) (from now on LHMP); Ferraz (1979)) as well as from fieldwork carried out by myself in Sao Tomé since 1995. Section 2 deals with the first syntactic reduplication pattern, i.e. the modification pattern, and section 3 deals with the coordination pattern.