LINGUIST List 2.852

Thu 12 Dec 1991

Disc: Reduplication

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Directory

1. Laurie Bauer, Dictionaries, reduplication
2. John E. Koontz, Re: 2.846 ... Reduplication; ...
3. Chu-Ren Huang, Re: Reduplication
4. Joe Stemberger, Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication

Although it certainly doesn't contain everything you ever want, my favourite
dictionary of linguistic terms is
 Crystal, David 1980. A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.
London: Andre Deutsch.
I think this is now in about its third edition.
Yes, languages can suffix reduplicative material as well as prefix it. Maori
has both types, see
 Bauer, Winifred 1981. 'Hae.re vs ha.e.re: a note', Te Reo 24, 31-6
or, for simple examples of final reduplication from Maori
 Bauer, Laurie 1988. Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: EUP,
p.25.
Surely any of the major references on reduplication cover more than a single
type?
Laurie Bauer

Message 2: Re: 2.846 ... Reduplication; ...

> Does reduplication always occur at the beginning of the stem? I.e., from a
> stem ABC, you can get AABC, ABABC, or ABCABC, but is there any language in
> which you could get ABCC or ABCBC?
> Michael Covington
ABCBC or at least ABB reduplication is found in various Siouan languages,
though not all. Also, though this is probably an unimportant point of
terminology, Siouan reduplication affects roots, not stems. That is, if A
is a derivational or inflectional prefix, then ABC is reduplicated ABBC or
ABCC, depending on the language.
Examples involving prefixes are quite rare, though I know of at least one -
Omaha-Ponca esheshe `you keep saying', from eshe `you say', where sh
(representing esh) is the second person active inflectional prefix. The
stem is something like e...(h)e (first and second persons) ~ e (third
person). The inclusive form is from another stem entirely, dha~. I don't
know any of the other person reduplications of this stem. I assume that the
inclusion of the inflectional prefix in the reduplication is due to the
extreme irregularity of this verb. That is, speakers weren't sure where the
root lay at the time this form was devised.
As far as I know, no Siouan language has both (A)BBC and (A)BCC
reduplication.

Two Chinese 'dialects' that I speak -- Mandarin and South-Min (i.e. Taiwanese,
Amoy, Hokkien) have ABB forms. The problem is to establish that they
do involve reduplication of the 'tail' rather than involving affixation
of a reduplicated form (which could be an inseparable morpheme by itself).
For instance, in Mandarin, the adjective 'young' can
have two forms:
nian-qing 'age-light' and nian-qing-qing
The reduplicated form indicates the speakers' emphasis and implies his/her own
personal judgement. However, for many ABB words, the corresponding AB form is
not a lexical item at all:
xi-yang-yang 'happy-ocean-ocean, very happy' *xi-yang
Similarly, there are more ABB words in South Min but most of the reduplicated
syllables are almost impossible to identify as a morpheme when
standing alone.
Chu-Ren Huang

Message 4: Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication

Michael Covington asks whether reduplication can occur as a suffix.
The answer is "YES". It can also occur as an infix. Some useful articles:
by Steriade, in PHONOLOGY, ca. 1987 or 1988
by Marantz, in LI, 1982
by Broselow and McCarthy, in LINGUISTIC REVIEW, ca. 1983
by Moravcsik, in that 4-volume book on linguistic universals, edited by
 Joseph Greenberg in the late 1970's