27.774, Diss: Indo-European, General Ling: Haritini Kallergi: 'Reduplication at the word levelQ the Greek facts in typological perspective'

Wed Feb 10 19:09:00 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-774. Wed Feb 10 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.774, Diss: Indo-European, General Ling: Haritini Kallergi: 'Reduplication at the word levelQ the Greek facts in typological perspective'

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Ashley Parker <ashley at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:08:51
From: Haritini Kallergi [harakallergi at yahoo.gr]
Subject: Reduplication at the word levelQ the Greek facts in typological perspective

Institution: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2013 

Author: Haritini Kallergi

Dissertation Title: Reduplication at the word levelQ the Greek facts in
typological perspective 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Language Family(ies): Indo-European

Dissertation Director(s):
Thomas Stolz
Anastasios Tsangalidis
Georgia Katsimali

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation deals with total reduplication (TR) of the type vima vima,
step step, ‘step by step’, aspros aspros, white white, ‘very white’, vivlio
vivlio, book book, ‘real/proper book’ and pes pes, say:2SG.IMP say:2SG.IMP,
‘by saying all the time’. The object of study concerns Modern Greek (MG), but
since it is approached from a typological point of view, it involves reference
to other languages and to theoretical or typological models of analysis. The
central aim of the dissertation is to describe the language-specific
regularities of a phenomenon that is largely attested among languages of
Southeastern Europe. Thus, focusing on MG, the thesis addresses the types of
TR, its phonological, semantic and pragmatic aspects and the constraints
and/or preferences of speakers concerning its use. The typology of TR in MG
focuses on four meanings/functions, identified as the intensive, the
contrastive, the distributive and the iterative. Part of the analysis of these
functional types is based on data that come from two experiments: a Sentence
Completion Task (SCT) referring to the relation of the above
meanings/functions with word classes and semantic features of words, and a
scripted speech (reading-aloud) task concerning the relation of intonation
with the interpretation of TR constructions. The SCT has confirmed or refined
earlier assumptions regarding the effects of word class, the [± concrete]
feature, number, person and mood on the interpretation of TR. It has also
pointed to correlations between these functions and other parameters, such as
discourse type. The phonological task addressed the notorious issue of single
stress of TR expressions, and resulted in clarifying the idea of prosodic
unity in TR (as a feature that distinguishes it from pragmatic repetition).
The phonological experiment has also provided a (formal) basis for making
distinctions between types of TR in terms of status (esp. grammatical vs.
pragmatic status). In general, the discussion of formal and lexical
constraints on the use of TR functions leads to the observation that TR is a
heterogeneous category that involves grammatical (e.g. the distributive),
pragmatic (e.g. the contrastive) and lexical (e.g. “indefiniteness”)
construction types, which nonetheless meet highly specific criteria for their
status as TR constructions. From a theoretical viewpoint, however, TR cannot
be unambiguously considered a grammatical or lexical class (in the sense of
Wälchli 2005). Overall, TR seems to have a special, borderline, character,
which is evident, first, in that it has both a lexical/idiomatic and a
grammatical aspect, and, second, it is best described as the result of a
copying process, not present in other types of construction. Independently of
its fuzzy status, the TR types discussed are productive and “vital” (in the
sense of Stolz et al. 2011), hence it is proposed that MG is a language that
exhibits reduplication, contrary to earlier approaches that either reject the
idea or consider reduplication a universal. As a productive, grammatical
mechanism (with the distributive type being its “best” representative), TR
should not be merely taken as a strategy for “emphasis”, but it should be
systematically represented in grammar textbooks.

References
Stolz, Thomas, Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze. 2011. Total reduplication: The
areal linguistics of a
potential universal. (Studia Typologica 8). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Wälchli, Bernhard. 2005. Co-compounds and natural coordination. Oxford, New
York: Oxford
University Press.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-774	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/