Retroflex diminutives have been widely investigated among Mandarin dialects, but those associated with the Nanjing dialect have received scant descriptive or theoretical attention. Thus, in this study, the formation of retroflex diminutives in the Nanjing dialect is reviewed, and framed in terms of Optimality Theory (OT). The formation of retroflex diminutives in the Nanjing dialect can be captured by a set of ranked constraints (MAX[r], ANCHOR-SD(L), ANCHOR-r(R), *r/?, *r/N, *r/V^H/F >> CONTIGTY-Final^σ-IO, OK^Final, ONS^[palatal]V^[H,F] >> MAX-SD, DEP-SD, IDENT-SD[^r]). Further investigation into whether prevocalic glides [i], [u], and [y] are preserved or deleted in the formation of retroflex diminutives is undertaken, focusing on the related topics of phonetic enhancement and linguistic typology.

APA Format	Cheng, M.-C. (2014). An Optimality-Theoretical Exploration of Retroflex Diminutives in the Nanjing Dialect. Journal of National Taiwan Normal University: Linguistics & Literature, 59(2), 135-171. https://doi.org/10.6210/JNTNULL.2014.59(2).06