Patterns of Reduplication in Lushootseed

Abstract

The thesis examines the phonological properties of three reduplicative morphemes in Lushootseed, a Central Coast Salish language. It is argued that both the shape and segmental content of these morphemes follow from their classification as either root or affix. Expanding on proposals by McCarthy and Prince (1994a), a model of reduplication is developed in which reduplicative morphemes are specified only for morphological category: Generalized Template Theory (GT). The central hypothesis is that root reduplicants are more marked phonologically than affix reduplicants. This is manifest in differences in size, shape, segmental content, and segmental copying. The segmental content of reduplicative morphemes (RED) is attained via a correspondence relation between reduplicant and base. Set within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), constraints which evaluate the identity of base and reduplicant are ranked and violable. The structural conditions on RED are the result of base-reduplicant identity constraints interacting with phono-constraints. There are no templates. Chapter 2 proposes that the fixed shape of reduplicative morphemes is best explained as a set of structural conditions, formally represented as constraint interaction. The same constraint interaction will derive a CV-prefix and a -VC suffix. Both are affixes and are less marked than the CVC root reduplicant. Moreover, -VC shape is not template spellable, but its structural conditions are typical of other suffixes in Lushootseed. In Chapter 4, a pattern of fixed segmentism is analyzed as an instance of unmarked structure emerging in reduplication. A default segment occurs with both affixal reduplicants, whenever the base would supply marked structure. In contrast, the root reduplicant permits the marked structure, as predicted by GT. Some of the conditioning environments for the default segment (stress and syllable structure) are examined in Chapter 3. An examination of doubly reduplicated stems in Chapter 5 shows that the base must be an adjacent string, present in the output only. The different patterns of copying are explained because the root allows the marked option of copying both root and affix material, while the affixes only copy root material.

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