WORD MINIMALITY CONSTRAINT IN REDUPLICATION
HENRY SIMIYU NANDELENGA *
Department of English and Linguistics, Kenyatta University, P.O.Box 43844-00100, Nairobi, Kenya
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Across languages, the reduplicant tends to be bisyllabic although the language in question may have monosyllabic and polysyllabic stem bases. Traditional rule-based approach had ordering paradoxes that failed to account for the cross-linguistic word minimality while templatic approach equally failed to explain the minimal word restriction. Currently, it is explained in terms of the canonical word which cross-linguistically is assumed to be bisyllabic or bimoraic. This paper addresses the constraint on minimal word size in Lubukusu reduplication in which the stem base must be minimally bisyllabic for reduplication to take place. This is due to markedness demands that the unmarked prosodic word is bisyllabic and so the reduplicant (RED) should be unmarked or less marked than the base. In Lubukusu, sub-minimal stems cannot reduplicate unless they are augmented to meet the RED-size requirement. When the stem cannot be augmented for whatever reasons, the result is a null parse. There is a general constraint against prefix copying but the bisyllabicity requirement may induce prefix overcopying to meet RED- size constraint. If the base is bisyllabic and meets other markedness conditions, no prefix or suffix may be copied. The study identifies the universal constraints responsible and their language specific ranking. The findings are explained in terms of constraint interactions that enforce word minimality without positing of derivational rules or templatic specification.
Keywords: Word minimality, constraint, optimality, markedness, reduplicant, overcopying