Reduplication

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, John P. Boyle wrote:
> I was wondering about reduplication and what everyone might be able to tell
> me about it. Does it exist in all the Siouan languages?  How about Catawba?

I think we had a past thread on this, so it might help to check the
archives at the LinguistList.  I think reduplication occurs in all the
Siouan languages, though I'm not positive about Southeastern or Catawban
without looking.  It certainly occurs throughout Mississippi Valley.  The
particular scheme of reduplication does differ somewhat from language to
language, however.  It might be worth looking at other languages in the
area(s) for this one.  I doubt this is a Siouan feature per se.

> Can both active and stative verbs undergo this process.

In MV, yes.

> What is it used for?

In Dakotan it forms the plural for inanimate subject verbs and has a
distributive sense 'here and there, repeated instances, etc.' In
Omaha-Ponca it isn't used for the plural, but it is more or less
distributive.  I seem to recall that it means 'by Xs' with numerals in
Dakotan.  It occurs with the motion verb stems in Dakotan - the starting
out stems?  I really should know that by heart!

In OP it occurs with s^aN 'completely', which I think of as an adverb.  It
also occurs with 'to say' as in es^es^e 'you keep saying' (vs. es^e 'you
say'), including the pronominal in the reduplication.  The positionals are
reduplicated in the iterative auxiliaries.

> In Crow reduplication generally adds the meaning of 'thoroughly,
> intensely, to a high degree' to the semantics of the unreduplicated stem.
> Is this the case for the other languages?

Intensives are indicated with enclitics in Omaha-Ponca, e.g., =xti 'very,
truely', =(s^)na 'exclusively, habitually, usually, only', =att(a)=s^aN
'right up to, extremely, very'.  See the 'suddenly' threads in the
archives of the list.

> Has anyone ever done anything on reduplication in any of the
> languages?

Carter and Shaw's Dakota dissertations.  Boas and Swanton have something
of a mini-survey for MV (without details) in their Dakota sketch.

> Anything comparative as to what stems undergo reduplication?

I'd say it was mostly pretty productive as a lexical process (grammatical
maybe in Dakotan), though less common in some of the languages.  There are
some interactions with stem shape and with ablaut.  It does occur with
numerals in some cases.

JEK