Deriving Reduplicants in Prosodic-Morphology Typologies

Abstract

Prosodic factors affect morpheme form. Reduplicative morphemes often take the shape of the prosodic units syllable, foot, or prosodic word, regardless of the size of the base to which they attach. Some reduplicants also vary depending on the shape of the base. McCarthy & Prince's (1986, 1993, 1995) work in Prosodic Morphology argues that such effects follow from the interaction of prosodic and morphological constraints without direct reference to reduplicant size.In this study, I determine the assumptions that are required to produce uniform reduplicative paradigms with the three basic types, syllable, foot and total, from the interaction of constraints in a prosodic system. 'Uniform' refers to a reduplicant that is the same size across reduplicative bases of different lengths. I systematically analyze the ranking structure of three complete factorial typologies of reduplication built on a basic stress system with well-studied properties (nGX, Alber & Prince, in prep.). Each subsequent system adds a single constraint to CON. A uniform one-syllable reduplicant is obtainable from pure prosody along with the requirement in GEN that morphemes be overtly realized. Total reduplication requires a single constraint referring to the reduplicant and requiring that it be total (BR.Max). Uniform bisyllabic foot reduplication only arises when the system includes a constraint relating prosodic and morphological constituents through alignment of their edges. These reduplication patterns emerge in the typologies along with a variety of non-uniform, base-dependent patterns.