Basedependence in reduplication

Authors: Jason D Haugen Cathy Hicks Kennard

Publish Date: 2010/05/22

Volume: 21, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-29

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Abstract

Inkelas and Zoll Reduplication Doubling in morphology 2005 designed Morphological Doubling Theory MDT to offer an alternative theory of reduplication that does not involve phonological copying Contra theories of reduplication which assume that the morphophonological form of a reduplicative morpheme a “reduplicant” relies on the morphophonological form of some stem its “base” MDT disallows such “basedependence” Inkelas and Zoll account for many reduplication patterns without basedependence by positing that reduplication constructions involve semantic identity rather than phonological identity between two stems in a compounding construction However we argue that certain patterns of reduplication require basedependence These include cases where reduplication targets the output prosodic structure of the stem as in the “foot copy”’ reduplicants of Yidin y and “syllable copy” reduplicants of Hiaki Yaqui To account for these cases MDT must posit syllabic structure in the input contra the Richness of the Base Further MDT cannot account for emergence of the unmarked TETU effects in reduplication In Tawala vowellengthening occurs in lieu of reduplication only in a predictable phonological environment when a verb stem already contains two identical adjacent syllables at the left edge of the word We argue that while such a pattern is a problem for MDT’s proscription against basedependence it can be accounted for as a simple case of TETU within Correspondence Theory given a ranking of FaithIO Repeat σ FaithBR Thus some of the major premises of MDT which does not privilege a distinction between “reduplicant” and “base” are challenged by such data

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