Affiliation:
1. Department of Linguistics , Stony Brook University , Stony Brook , NY , USA
2. Department of Linguistics , 5755 Yale University , New Haven , NY , USA
Abstract
Abstract
In this typological study, we identify 31 languages that have reduplication with a changed vowel, as in English tick-tock, referred to as ablaut reduplication. Cross-linguistically, this type of reduplication typically manifests as total reduplication with a changed vowel whose quality may or may not be fixed, and when it is not fixed the vowel differs maximally from the corresponding vowel in the base. The order of the copy relative to the base can be fixed or variable, and when it is variable the order enforces a language-specific vowel contour across the two components, such as a low vowel in the first constituent and a high vowel in the second, regardless of which constituent is the base. Furthermore, all cases of ablaut have strikingly similar semantics (playfulness, onomatopoeia, movement, etc.). We review previous treatments of the topic and outline the necessary components of a unified analysis that accommodates the typological patterns.
Reference97 articles.
1. Abramson, Arthur S. 1962. The vowels and tones of Standard Thai: Acoustical measurements and experiments, vol. 28. Bloomington, Indiana: International Journal of American Linguistics no. 2, part 111.
2. Alderete, John. 2001. Morphologically-governed accent in optimal theory. New York & London: Routledge.
3. Alderete, John, Jill Beckman, Laura Benua, Amalia Gnanadesikan, John McCarthy & Suzanne Urbanczyk. 1999. Reduplication with fixed segmentism. Linguistic Inquiry 30. 327–364. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438999554101.
4. Alderete, John & Sara Finley. 2016. Gradient vowel harmony in oceanic. Language and Linguistics 17. 769–796. https://doi.org/10.1177/1606822x16660960.
5. Arleo, Andy. 2009. Pif paf poof: Ablaut reduplication in children’s counting-out rhymes. In Jena-Louis Aroui & Andy Arleo (eds.), Towards a typology of poetic forms: From language to metrics and beyond, 307–323. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.