REGARDING REDUPLICATION AND REPETITION:A SEPARATE TREATMENT IN A UNIFIED APPROACH

In this work the iteration of grammatical units is considered. Three main kinds are identified, depending on which unit is iterated. The classes of phenomena taken into consideration here are of three kinds. The first one I shall term phoneme reduplication, and it includes cases such as the following: 1. Italian ciao ciao ‘bye bye’ 2. English bye bye The second one is reduplication proper. Some examples are reported below. 3. Japanese hore ‘fall in love’ hore-bore ‘fondly’ 4. Turkish mavi ‘blue’ mavi mavi ‘in spreads of blue’ 5. Indonesian buku ‘book’ buku buku ‘books’ (G) The third class of phenomena is that of repetition, as I term it here. 6. Italian bello bello ‘nice nice’ 7. English nice nice 8. Finnish koti koti ‘house house’ (= real house) I briefly sketch the characteristics of these three phenomena, which is widely treated in the following chapters. Phoneme reduplication is the mere repetition of phonemes, where no morphological operation takes place but, also, basically no meaning is added. In this thesis I do not study the issue in full detail, remitting it to more specific studies. The main target of this work lies in the difference between the other two phenomena Reduplication proper is a strictly grammatical phenomenon. It changes the grammatical features to the aspects to which it is applied. The operations are of merely formal nature: aspectual modifications, formation of plural and categorical derivation. The inventory of the functions of reduplication does not however end here, as shown above. So, it is the iteration of a unit at the X-level or under. More specifically, it is the repetition of a word, or stem, or root, that is to say, of morphemes (full reduplication); furthermore, reduplication predicts the iteration of prosodic units (partial reduplication). Repetition has an exclusively iconic function, basically with a single meaning, emphasis. No formal aspects are involved here. Repetition is the iteration of units above the X-level. As I intend to insert the preceding generalization in the wider framework of the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 1997 and ff.), the organization of the processes is expected to be as follows. Phoneme reduplication is a merely phonological operation, confined in the phonological formation rule component and with no interface rule having any role whatsoever. Reduplication proper is a phenomenon that takes place as an actual derivation, as a syntactic formation rule. A syntactic structure-phonological structure interface (PS-SS) rule takes care of the phonological operations that are present in most cases, e.g., linking markers but also more unexpected phonological facts. Full and partial reduplications are differentiated at this point. The semantic formation rules, alternatively called conceptual structure (CS) formation rules, will be devoted to the rendering of the meaning of the derivation itself. Repetitions are, surprisingly, of more controversial nature. While mainstream generativists would claim that a derivation in syntax is needed, I maintain that a repetition is the result of a phonological structure- semantic structure interface rule, with an inactive syntactic side. The proposal, therefore, implies a series of differences between reduplication and repetition. The first series of distinctions are of phonological nature. In reduplicative processes, accents or tones are re-analyzed phonologically; in repetition this does not happen. The same holds for the possibility of insertion of epenthetic material between the two iterating units and the application of readjustment rules. Morpho-syntactically and semantically speaking, it is crucial to draw a series of differences. The possibility of inserting linking elements, to begin with, is available to reduplication and ruled out in repetition. Another point of distinction is represented by the presence of internal inflection: nouns are not found in the plural form, for example, and verbs are not inflected in reduplication, while such processes are allowed in repetition. Then, reduplication can undergo constraints of morpho-syntactic nature, and they can show limited productivity; this is not the case for repetition. Furthermore, there are cases of semantic drift and idiosyncratic phenomena that are found in reduplication and not in repetition. This discussion is linked to the claim in this thesis by which repetition represents an instance of proto-language in Jackendovian terms, i.e. as a subsystem of modern language and not a totally unrelated system, as it is conceived in mainstream Generativism. Proto-language allows a direct interface between phonology and semantics, which is exactly what repetitions are claimed to be here. Significantly, it has to be pointed out that, cross-linguistically speaking, while it is possible for units below X (reduplication) to be iterated to achieve non-formal effects, it is not possible for units above X (repetition) to be iterated for formal effects. The topic of iconicity is another crucial issue, since it explores the interaction mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, that is to say, between linguistic structures and non-linguistic structures. In this work I consider iconicity as useful to the purposes of the study of repetition, connecting the topic with the role of iconicity in sign languages (SLs). It has to be remarked that the patterns attested in spoken languages are found also in a remarkable sample of sign languages, suggesting a universal character of the generalization presented. Data for SLs are given in this work to support these claims. The fact that sign and spoken languages show similarities with respect to reduplication calls for a universal explanation. This work has indeed a universal application, as it is shown below. Notwithstanding, the parallel functioning of grammar, as well as the continuum between idiosyncrasy and regularity that is claimed here for repetitions and reduplications, is not incompatible with Cognitive Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and Construction Grammar. This work seems yet to fit comfortably in a Parallel schema; however, with this work I do not intend to provide data to justify any linguistic theory. On the contrary, reduplication and repetition are conceived as a perspective of study in the overwhelming field of language investigations, and they happen to be better explained, in my view, by that specific framework. The questions brought to the table can be exemplified by the following ones. How does the analysis of reduplication contribute to the areas of phonology and morphology? And then, what does the analysis of repetition tell us about the semantic component? These questions are formulated for the very same reason as the first above: what is linguistics all about? The reason is that the understanding, though partial, though patchy, though shadowy, of the human mind and its mechanisms has to start somewhere, has to adopt, in fact, a perspective. Reduplication is a perspective.