Die Indogermanische Perfektreduplikation

Abstract

Indo-European reduplication patterns have always been reconstructed by comparing reduplicated forms in attested languages. In this paper I will argue that what actually has to be compared are not individual forms but grammars. To demonstrate this approach I will develop reduplication grammars in an optimality theoretic framework for Gothic, Latin, Greek, and Old Indic. Based on these grammars a possible Indo-European reduplication grammar will be reconstructed. I will argue that the behaviour of consonants in reduplication is straightforward. The one exception are onset clusters with initial s, which are claimed to be monosegmental in the Germanic languages and in Latin, whereas s is treated as extrasyllabic in Greek, Old Indic and possibly Indo-European. Laryngeals pose no problem to reduplication grammar when they are taken to be fricatives. Only Attic reduplication remains as a crux. Of great interest from a theoretical point of view is the nucleus of the reduplicant, as I will show that in most of the cases discussed in this paper it is neither unmarked nor dependent on vocalic specifications of the base. This fact can only be accommodated by assuming a templatic reduplicative morpheme with a fully specified vowel. The Indo-European data are therefore a serious challenge to the often claimed universal validity of Base-Reduplicant Identity and The Emergence of The Unmarked in reduplication patterns. As a consequence the Indo-European evidence calls into question the concept of Correspondence in OT-phonology.