A DFG research grant (ZI 1717/1-1) allowed me to spend 9 months (03/2018-11/2018) as a visiting researcher at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, to work on `Multiple Reduplication: Typology and Theory'.
The Project
Although reduplication is the most well-studied instance of non-concatenative morphology and analyses for reduplication phenomena are major empirical arguments for influential proposals inside theoretical phonology like Prosodic Morphology (McCarthy and Prince, 1986/1996, and subsequent work) or Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince, 1995, and subsequent work), there is no agreement on the question whether reduplication involves morphological or phonological doubling. Multiple reduplication is an interesting but largely overlooked area that puts the predictions of these different accounts to the test. It is defined as coocurrence of at least two reduplicative morphemes in a word.
The two main goals of this project were 1) to establish a representative database of Multiple Reduplication and 2) to investigate the empirical adequacy of existing formal models of reduplication given the typology of Multiple Reduplication and, if necessary, argue for a new theoretical account of reduplication that is able to capture the Multiple Reduplication data.
The most important empirical finding of the study is the existence of different `Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication' where in the presence of two reduplicative morpheme, one of the reduplicants 1) is shorter than expected or 2) avoided altogether. The representative data collection of Multiple Reduplication patterns that was conducted can be found here.
Two main theoretical proposals were made based on this representative data collection:
References
Marantz, Alec (1982), ‘Re reduplication’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 483–545.
McCarthy, John and Alan Prince (1986/1996), ‘Prosodic morphology 1986’, Technical Report 32, Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, 1996.
McCarthy, John and Alan Prince (1995), Faithfulness and reduplicative identity, in J.Beckman, L.Dickey and S.Urbanczyk, eds, ‘UMOP’, GLSA, Amherst, MA, pp. 249–384.
Although reduplication is the most well-studied instance of non-concatenative morphology and analyses for reduplication phenomena are major empirical arguments for influential proposals inside theoretical phonology like Prosodic Morphology (McCarthy and Prince, 1986/1996, and subsequent work) or Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince, 1995, and subsequent work), there is no agreement on the question whether reduplication involves morphological or phonological doubling. Multiple reduplication is an interesting but largely overlooked area that puts the predictions of these different accounts to the test. It is defined as coocurrence of at least two reduplicative morphemes in a word.
The two main goals of this project were 1) to establish a representative database of Multiple Reduplication and 2) to investigate the empirical adequacy of existing formal models of reduplication given the typology of Multiple Reduplication and, if necessary, argue for a new theoretical account of reduplication that is able to capture the Multiple Reduplication data.
The most important empirical finding of the study is the existence of different `Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication' where in the presence of two reduplicative morpheme, one of the reduplicants 1) is shorter than expected or 2) avoided altogether. The representative data collection of Multiple Reduplication patterns that was conducted can be found here.
Two main theoretical proposals were made based on this representative data collection:
- An argument for a purely phonological account of reduplication based on prosodic affixation. It is argued that such a classical (e.g. Marantz (1982)) view about reduplication straightforwardly captures the existence of Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication patterns. Crucially, no new assumptions specific to reduplication or Multiple Reduplication are necessary in such an account; the phonological account predicts avoidance and subtraction from the general faithfulness mechanisms of an optimality-theoretic phonology.
- The proposal of a new theory of reduplication based on Gradient Symbolic Representations. It is based on the assumption that copying is sharing of activity: Copied elements are hence `weaker' and more prone to reduction effects. It is argued that this not only predicts Emergence of the Unmarked Effects in reduplication contexts that symmetrically affect either the base, the reduplicant, or both, but also Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication.
References
Marantz, Alec (1982), ‘Re reduplication’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 483–545.
McCarthy, John and Alan Prince (1986/1996), ‘Prosodic morphology 1986’, Technical Report 32, Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, 1996.
McCarthy, John and Alan Prince (1995), Faithfulness and reduplicative identity, in J.Beckman, L.Dickey and S.Urbanczyk, eds, ‘UMOP’, GLSA, Amherst, MA, pp. 249–384.
Output
> Database: Languages with Multiple Reduplication
> Reduplication and Gradient Symbolic Representation: Copying is Weakening
> Reduplication as Prosodic Affixation: Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication as Coalescence
> Reduplication as Prosodic Affixation: Determining the base for copying
> Database: Languages with Multiple Reduplication
> Reduplication and Gradient Symbolic Representation: Copying is Weakening
- Paper: Faded copies: Reduplication as distribution of activity (2021), Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1), p.58, doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1117.
- Talk: Faded Copies: Reduplication as Sharing of Activity, GLOW 42, Oslo, May 08, 2019. (colorful slides, printer-friendly slides)
- Talk: Copying as Weakening: Accounting for the Typology of Reduplication with Phonological Strength, invited talk at the 27th Conference of the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, February 22, 2019. (colorful slides, printer-friendly slides)
- Talk: Faded Copies: Reduplication as Sharing of Activity, OCP 16, Verona, January 17, 2019. (Slides)
> Reduplication as Prosodic Affixation: Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication as Coalescence
- Paper: Two is too much. . . in the phonology! A Phonological Account of Unfaithful Multiple Reduplication (2021), The Linguistic Review, https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2021-2075.
- Talk: The Typology of Multiple Reduplication: An Argument for a Phonological Account of Reduplication (Slides), invited talk at the linguistics colloquium, University of Washington, Seattle, November 09, 2018.
- Talk: Too much is too much... in the phonology! (Slides), mfm fringe meeting `Phonological solutions to morphological problems', Manchester, May 23, 2018.
- Talk: The typology of multiple reduplication – an argument for a prosodic affixation account (Slides), invited talk at the Linguistics Colloquium, University of Victoria, April 12, 2018.
> Reduplication as Prosodic Affixation: Determining the base for copying
- Talk: Reduplication without a base: An argument from the typology of multiple reduplication (Slides), talk at the Vancouver Phonology Group, SFU Vancouver, April 7, 2018.