Assertive Verb Doubling in Sereer: Reduplication or Repetition?

Abstract

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2014) Assertive Verb Doubling in Sereer: Reduplication or Repetition? 1 Jevon Heath University of California, Berkeley Gil (2005) delineates a formal distinction between reduplication and repetition: reduplication is a process that occurs at a morphological level, whereas repetition is defined as a syntactic-level process. This paper argues against the drawing of such a distinction, using data from the assertive verb construction in Sereer (Atlantic, Niger- Congo) – a construction that may be analyzed a priori as either a single word or a multi- word phrase. Sereer, an Atlantic (Niger-Congo) language spoken in southern Senegal, has multiple processes in which all or part of a word is duplicated for systematic linguistic effect. These include both structures that are clearly reduplication and structures that are clearly repetition. Examples of some of these structures are seen in (1) – (5) 2 : jal 'work' jaajal 'workers' ɗaan 'sleep' ɗaanɗaanloox 'pretend to sleep' agar '3 SG comes' Agar agar agar boo meek. 'He comes, and comes, and comes up to here.' ayaanda Omaag ole ayaanda ayaand amaak. '3 SG waved' 'The ocean waved a big wave.' anafa '3 SG hit' Moodu anafanaf fambe le. / Moodu anafa naf fambe le. 'Moodu hit the goat.' 1 I would like especially to thank El-Haji Malick Loum, our Sereer consultant. Sereer is spelled in this paper according to conventional Sereer orthography, with the exception that the voiced palatal implosive is written as a j with a hook top. As such, j = IPA /dʒ/, c = IPA /tʃ/, y = IPA /j/, and the apostrophe ' = IPA /ʔ/. Long vowels are written as double vowels: aa = IPA /a:/.