Reduplication in Kodi: A Paradigm Function Account

Abstract

This paper investigates reduplication in Kodi, an under-documented and understudied language spoken in Sumba Island, Nusa Tenggara Timur Province, eastern Indonesia. Reduplication in Kodi shows various patterns that fall under two major types: full reduplication and partial reduplication. Full reduplication mostly involves reduplication of the entire disyllabic base. In partial reduplication, the salient patterns that are copied are initial parts (a syllable and a foot), an internal part (a syllable), or final parts (foot) of the base. Furthermore, the reduplication process serves to express salient semantic properties, such as verbal number or pluractionality, indirect noun pluralization, attenuation or numeral distributivity. It is argued that (i) stress determines the reduplication process in Kodi in that the syllable or foot which is reduplicated is predictable from the stress patterns, (ii) semantic context triggers reduplication processes, and (iii) the framework of the theory of (Generalized) Paradigm Function Morphology ((G)PFM) ( Stump 2001 , 2016 ; Stewart & Stump 2007 ; Spencer & Stump 2013 ; Spencer 2013 ; Nikolaeva & Spencer 2019 ) can satisfactorily capture how stress determines the reduplication of the base and how semantic context triggers the reduplication process. This study provides additional evidence in support of the (G)PFM theory, which can arguably be extended to handle complex reduplicative patterns beyond Kodi.