double inflection

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Pamela Munro wrote:
> This is actually interesting in terms of my question, since although
> there are two inflections in this compound, as you explain it, the two
> inflections both occur in the ya part, not the i part with which it is
> compounded. But normally we do not see double inflection in reduplicated
> verbs, even monosyllabic ones. (In Jason's and my data, the unexpected
> double marking is in fact reduplication, but I don't see any other
> immediate connections.)

David and Pam make a very good point here, and I am embarassed to have
overlooked it.  I do know one instance of reduplicated inflection in
Omaha-Ponca, which involves the verb 'to say often'.  Unfortunately, the
only available form is a second person, which is es^e's^e (cf. 'to say' A1
ehe', A2 es^e', A3 a=i, A12 aNdhaN=i).

Hypothetically, the first person might be *ehe'he.  I'm not sure how a
third person would be handled without suppletion.  In fact, most 'say
often' examples are based on the habitual enclitic =s^na ~ =hnaN ~ =na.

This is a complex verb, morphologically, with suppletive stems, but the
first and second persons seem to go back to *e=...he, so this is something
like e=s^-he-s^-he.  Since the h-stems are few and of limited productivity
(this being an exception) and involve complicating preverbs in cases like
this, it's hard to conceive that speakers handle inflection generatively.
I think this very complexity is what allows the inflection to be included
in the reduplication, so that we have es^e's^e rather than, perhaps
*es^ehe.