published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis presents a primarily descriptive account of the structural and meaning properties of verb and numeral reduplication in Paraguayan Guaraní, a Tupí-Guaraní language spoken by about four million people mainly in Paraguay. Based on data collected through elicitation sessions with three consultants, I demonstrate that Guaraní exhibits both patterns of total (root) and partial (disyllabic) reduplication. I will also show that this disyllabic pattern of copying is in fact due to the presence of a prosodic constraint of disyllabicity which applies to the entire reduplication system of Guaraní. In terms of their meaning properties, Guaraní reduplicative forms are mostly associated with such iconic notions as iterativity, continuity, multiplicity and distributivity. Despite the semantic regularity of Guaraní reduplicated structures from a crosslinguistic perspective, there are aspects of their form which pose challenges to templatic accounts of reduplication. A brief discussion of some of these issues concludes this work.

This thesis is an acoustic analysis, grammatical description, and typological comparison of morphological reduplication in Hiligaynon, an Austronesian language spoken in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. This work has two main goals: first, to redescribe the formal and functional properties of full reduplication in Hiligaynon; and second, to offer a typological analysis as to how the system of reduplication in Hiligaynon compares to the known typological universals of human language, and within the genetically related languages of the Philippines. While reduplication in Hiligaynon has previously been described (Wolfenden 1971; Cameron 1985; Zack 1994; Spitz 2001; Santos 2012), the existing descriptions are contradictory regarding which features, if any, are used to formally distinguish the various functions of full reduplication. Specifically, the different sources vary in their descriptions of the prosodic patterns of full reduplication and in their analyses of whether prosody is a significant formal feature in distinguishing the various semantic functions of otherwise homophonous full reduplication morphemes. This work claims that there are three full reduplication morphemes in Hiligaynon--the augmentative degree, diminutive degree, and repetitive degree--that are formally distinguished by distinct morphemic patterns of prosody. After introducing Hiligaynon and its system of reduplication based on the current descriptions, I redescribe the formal and functional properties of full reduplication in Hiligaynon using original acoustic data collected through native speaker field recordings. Following the acoustic analysis and description, I use the novel Hiligaynon data combined with data from current descriptions to perform three typological comparisons based on the World Atlas of Language Structures Feature 27A, the Universals Archive, and an original survey of reduplication in 34 genetically related languages of the Philippines. These comparisons show the system of reduplication in Hiligaynon to be highly productive as well as typologically normal save for these unique morphemic patterns of prosody which are typologically unexpected. These forms suggest the need to revisit the putative language universal first observed by Moravcsik (1978: 315) which claims that "there is no reduplication pattern that would involve reference to phonological properties other than syllable number, consonantality-vowelhood, and absolute linear position".

The goal of this thesis is to explore alignment and adjacency of constituents in the framework of Optimality Theory. Under the notion of alignment, certain categories, prosodic and morphological, are required to correspond to certain other categories, prosodic or morphological. The alignment of categories is achieved through the operation of constraints which evaluate the wellformedness of outputs. The constraints on the alignment of categories and the ranking of these constraints are examined with emphasis on two Australian languages, Warlpiri and Arrernte. The aim is to provide an adequate account in the theory of Optimality of the processes of stress, reduplication and vowel harmony evident in the data. The thesis expands on the range of edges for the alignment of feet. Foot alignment is developed to account for the fact that the edges of intonational phrases, morphemes, and specific morphemes, as well as phonologically specific syllables, play an active role in determining the location of feet. An additional finding is that the location of feet can also be determined by adjacency, resolving conflict between morphological alignment, and ensuring rhythmic harmony. Requirements on adjacency are further supported to account for segmental harmony, where harmony provides evidence for the simultaneous action of segmental and prosodic processes. The analysis provides a unified account of binary and ternary rhythm recommending modifications to alignment of certain categories, thereby laying the groundwork to deal with variation. The account of variation involves relaxing certain constraints. In addition, the notion of rhythm is expanded to account for onset sensitivity to stress, with evidence of this sensitivity found in reduplication and allomorphy. The interaction of prosodic categories with each other and with morphological categories can be directly captured in OT, providing a unified and coherent account of phenomena, some of which were previously seen as exceptions and, therefore unrelated and arbitrary.

No description available.

The goal of this thesis is to explore alignment and adjacency of constituents in the framework of Optimality Theory. Under the notion of alignment, certain categories, prosodic and morphological, are required to correspond to certain other categories, prosodic or morphological. The alignment of categories is achieved through the operation of constraints which evaluate the wellformedness of outputs. The constraints on the alignment of categories and the ranking of these constraints are examined with emphasis on two Australian languages, Warlpiri and Arrernte. The aim is to provide an adequate account in the theory of Optimality of the processes of stress, reduplication and vowel harmony evident in the data. The thesis expands on the range of edges for the alignment of feet. Foot alignment is developed to account for the fact that the edges of intonational phrases, morphemes, and specific morphemes, as well as phonologically specific syllables, play an active role in determining the location of feet. An additional finding is that the location of feet can also be determined by adjacency, resolving conflict between morphological alignment, and ensuring rhythmic harmony. Requirements on adjacency are further supported to account for segmental harmony, where harmony provides evidence for the simultaneous action of segmental and prosodic processes. The analysis provides a unified account of binary and ternary rhythm recommending modifications to alignment of certain categories, thereby laying the groundwork to deal with variation. The account of variation involves relaxing certain constraints. In addition, the notion of rhythm is expanded to account for onset sensitivity to stress, with evidence of this sensitivity found in reduplication and allomorphy. The interaction of prosodic categories with each other and with morphological categories can be directly captured in OT, providing a unified and coherent account of phenomena, some of which were previously seen as exceptions and, therefore unrelated and arbitrary.

No description available.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Computer Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. Reduplication is used both inflectionally to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and derivationally to create new words. It is found in many languages, though its importance and productivity varies. Reduplication is often described phonologically in two different ways: (1) as reduplicated segments (i.e. sequences of consonants/vowels) or (2) as reduplicated prosodic units (i.e. syllables or morae). In addition to phonological description, reduplication often needs to be described morphologically as a reduplication of linguistic constituents (i.e. words, stems, roots). As a result, reduplication is interesting theoretically as it involves the interface between phonology and morphology. Reduplication often involves copying only once. However, in some languages, reduplication can happen more than once (and thus a duple is not created). Triplication is the term for copying three times (i.e. in Lithuanian language av av av; dū dū dū; bum bum bum; plest plest plest). Full reduplication involves a reduplication of the entire word (i.e. nunù, riri, rururù, ka-ka). In Lithuanian there are two types of fullreduplication: word reduplication (i.e. baubau, bė́bė; bobõ; būbū), syllable reduplication (i.e. girkšt girkšt, jo jo, kepu kepu). Partial reduplication involves a reduplication of only part of the word, eg. papákšt (veiksmažodis pakštelėti)... [to full text]

This study investigates the use of reduplication with predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), and also the related phenomena doubling and displacement. Reduplication in SSL typically expresses plurality of events and/or referents, but may also express intensification, ongoing event or generic activity. There is a distinction between external and internal events with reduplication: external reduplication expresses some event happening over and over at different points in time and/or with different referents, and is associated with a frequentative/habitual reading; internal reduplication expresses some event consisting of several e.g. movements/actions and is associated with an ongoing reading. Only external expression seems to be applicable to stative constructions, as one would expect. The study also found a phenomenon not previously described: oral reduplication without manual reduplication. This process is found to have the ongoing functions with telic predicates, such that it focuses on the telic predicate as a single event in progress, and thus replaces the function of manual reduplication, which, with telic predicates, would instead express several events. The reading of reduplicated signs is associated with the semantics of the sign reduplicated, and it is also associated with the phonological citation form of the sign—monosyllabic signs tend to get pluractional reading; bisyllabic signs tend to get an ongoing reading. Also, the reading expressed by reduplication is connected to the presence/absence of oral reduplication. Reduplication generally does not occur in negative constructions. This study shows that inherently negative signs may be reduplicated, but reduplicated predicates are negated according to other strategies than for non-reduplicated predicates, thus reduplication has the largest scope. Doubling and displacement are both associated mainly with plural referents, and it is in this respect that they are related to reduplication, and they both occur frequently with reduplication.