Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: In this study I present a comparative and historical analysis of "frequentative" Bantu verb-stem reduplication, many of whose variants have been described for a number of Eastern and Southern Bantu languages.While some languages have full-stem compounding, where the stem consists of the verb root plus any and all suffixes, others restrict the reduplicant to two syllables.Two questions are addressed: (i) What was the original nature of reduplication in Proto-Bantu?(ii) What diachronic processes have led to the observed variation?I first consider evidence that the frequentative began as full-stem reduplication, which then became restricted either morphologically (by excluding inflectional and ultimately derivational suffixes) and/or phonologically (by imposing a bisyllabic maximum size constraint).I then turn to the opposite hypothesis and consider evidence and motivations for a conflicting tendency to rebuild full-stem reduplication from the partial reduplicant.I end by attempting to explain why the partial reduplicant is almost always preposed to the fuller base.
DOI: 10.5070/p79ws0p3sx
Author: Larry M Hyman
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2790916059