Morphosyntactic Correspondence in Bantu Reduplication

Abstract

Research on partial reduplication has primarily focused on developing a theory that takes into account all of the factors which speakers may invoke in trying to determine how a reduplicant will relate to its base. There have been attempts to characterize the reduplicant in prosodic terms and the role of morphological structure in determining the link between base and reduplicant. This chapter examines verb-stem reduplication in Ndebele, a Southern Bantu language spoken by the Nguni group, and shows how the reduplicant in Ndebele is conditioned by phonological and morphological factors that are “abstract” in nature. It argues that the reduplicant of an Ndebele verb stem must be analyzed as a verb stem itself and explains how its surface form is derived by direct spell-out of its own (identical) morphosyntactic structure, which, in turn, is a direct copy from the base. The chapter also discusses complications arising in the reduplication of stems containing subminimal or “consonantal” verb roots, along with fusion or “imbrication” of perfective -ile, the passive suffix -w-, and palatalization.