Reduplication and Verbal Number in Mẽbengokre

Abstract

Reduplication is often found cross-linguistically as a marker of plurality and emphasis. Also quite common are cases where reduplicative morphemes encode lexical aspectual distinctions such as repeated action. In several J^ e languages, though not very productively, reduplication is one among several morphemes indicating the plural of verbs, or inherently repetitive eventualities. In this paper we present data from M~ ebengokre, and show how reduplicative morphemes are treated in the language. Two separate processes are identied: one (relatively uninteresting) process associated to onomatopoeia, found in several names for plant and animal species, and another more grammatical one (though in somewhat of an archaeological sense), where reduplication is used with some verbs to indicate repeated action and possibly transitivity. This process may be related to a more productive process found in some other J^ e languages to indicate verbal plurality. We establish that all the aspectual meanings introduced by reduplicative morphology essentially boil down to simple pluralization of events, in a way that is consistent to what other pluralizing morphemes do.