Discontinuous reduplication: A typological sketch

This is one of two talks (the other presented by Cheryl Zoll) which presents arguments for analyzing reduplication as involving morphological, rather than phonological doubling. While previous theories (e.g. have generally analyzed reduplication as involving the phonological copying of some portion (perhaps all) of a stem or word in order to flesh out a prosodic reduplicative template, the approach taken here, which shares insights with work by Downing (e.g. Downing 1999) as well as with the morphological blending approach of Nick Sherrard, argues that reduplication is a type of morphological construction that calls for two (or more) semantically identical morphological constituents, as shown below.

Liberal Journal of Language & Literature Review, 2025

This study examines the morphological characteristics of the Shina language, which is spoken in several northern regions of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. Shina is an Indo-Aryan language utilized in various regions of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan; nevertheless, it remains unrecorded and lacks recognition as an official or regional language by authorities. Reduplication in the Shina language, analyzed via the lens of morphological doubling theory, has been used to investigate the roles of Total reduplication, Partial or Echo Reduplication, and Non-Sensical Reduplication in Shina. The researcher purposefully collected data through random observation of vernacular speakers of the Shina language, noting examples such as /bal-bel/ for 'altogether' (Total Reduplication) and /Musha-Chey/ for 'husband-wife' (Partial Reduplication). The results indicated that Shina is still spoken in certain regions of Pakistan, which is characterized by a significant presence of reduplications in the daily discourse of the local speech communities.

Language and Linguistics Compass, 2015

Reduplication has played a central role in the development of phonological theories for 30 years. The introduction of Classical Optimality Theory (OT) in the 1990s sparked intensive research into the typology and analysis of reduplicative patterns, as reduplication was a key testing area both for OT and for theories critical of OT. Now, after some 20 years of research within the OT model, it is appropriate to assess the leading ideas on reduplication that have come out of this period of concentrated research. This pair of articles serves this purpose. The first article presents a typological survey of the function and form of reduplication, covering classic forms of reduplication as well as less well-studied forms, such as phrasal reduplication, morphologically-complex reduplicants, and reduplication without phonological identity. The second article surveys recent formal approaches, such as Base-Reduplicant Correspondence and Morphological Doubling, covering debates such as the morphological status of the reduplicant, exfixation, semantically empty, a-templatic, and compensatory reduplication.

Reduplication is found in almost every language (Inkelas, 2012, p. 378), and hence understanding it well is a priority for linguistic theory. Yet common to much of the literature is a stated need for more empirical data for making valid cross-linguistic comparisons, and developing and testing associated theories (Urbanczyk, 2007, p. 492; Raimy, 2011, p. 11; Hurch & Mattes, 2009, pp. 303, 318). This empirical gap is particularly salient for Australian Indigenous languages, with existing typologies displaying a lack of comprehensiveness in their coverage, and detail in their phonological analysis. This thesis makes significant progress towards filling this gap, by establishing an empirical and methodological framework for the first comprehensive phonological typology of reduplication in Australian languages. Specifically, the present study reports a detailed empirical survey of reduplication in 43 Australian languages, based on an initial survey of 276 sources, focusing on the phonological patterns and complex phenomena associated with the process in each language. The methodology employed sets the survey apart from similar typological studies, both through its exhaustive coverage of documented reduplicative forms within each language, and its finely grained, microvariate approach to documenting and describing the intricacies of each form. This ensures the full breadth of complexities and idiosyncrasies are captured in each language, and enables more informative and effective comparison and analysis, both at the language level, and cross-linguistically. The study makes two significant contributions to the study of reduplication. Firstly, it sets out a comprehensive and finely-detailed inventory of the reduplicative forms, patterns and complex phenomena which exist in the surveyed languages, and assesses the resulting corpus to evaluate prominent claims and questions in the study of reduplication. Secondly, it establishes a comprehensive and empirically meticulous methodological framework for surveying reduplication, based on highly detailed and consistently applied categorisations of the data. This opens up the findings to researchers of all theoretical backgrounds, and prepares the language sample to be expanded exhaustively in the future.

Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology, 2014

Several languages show phenomena of order-disrupting reduplication, in which the linear order expected on the basis of related forms does not surface faithfully in the reduplicated form, and the Reduplicant is minimal and atemplatic. Take, for instance, the basic pattern of plural reduplication in Pima (Uto-Aztecan: Arizona): in this pattern, the initial consonant of the non-reduplicated form occurs twice in the reduplicated form, once in the onset and once in the coda of the initial syllable . The second occurrence of the consonant interrupts the string of elements as that string occurs in the input; therefore, the output Base string is not faithful to its corresponding Input string. In , the input string /mavit/, as evinced by the non-reduplicated form [ma.vit], is not preserved faithfully in the reduplicated form [mam.vit]. * I thank Khalil Iskarous and Rachel Walker for their extensive comments on earlier versions of this project. I thank my Saisiyat consultant, 'Oemaw a 'Oebay Tawtawazay (Chao Shan-He), for sharing his vast knowledge of his mother tongue, and my fieldwork partner and Mandarin translator, Huilin Fang. I thank the Tsai Fund at USC for their generous funding of my research in Taiwan. I thank the audiences at USC Phonology Lunch and the Phonology 13 conference for their input. And most importantly, I thank my adviser, Karen Jesney, for her indispensable advice and support throughout this project.