double inflection

[Pamela Munro]

I believe that John is suggesting that the order is

Inflection (person marking: stem-initial y of ya replaced by bl etc.: ya
 > bla)
Reduplication (bla > blabla)

Then my guess would be that ablaut (final a > e) follows this, applying
as usual to the final syllable of the ablauting stem (blabla > blable).

Certainly if ablaut came before reduplication, we'd get bleble. Perhaps
there are very short ablauting verbs that give such a result (I can't
think of any). But I bet such verbs do not start with y!

If ablaut is  inflectional, this example shows is that ablaut must a
later inflectional process than person marking. (This is thus another
case which in which the two reduplicated elements are less than
perfectly similar to each other.)

I hope this makes sense. I am after all only a closet Siouanist wannabe....

Thanks again to all of you for your incredibly thought-provoking help.

Pam

ROOD DAVID S wrote:

>I don't think I follow this for the Lak. case, at least for iblable.  It
>seems to me the derivation (reduplication) has to precede the inflection.
>How else would you get the non-ablauted initial syllable of the
>reduplication?
>
>David S. Rood
>Dept. of Linguistics
>Univ. of Colorado
>295 UCB
>Boulder, CO 80309-0295
>USA
>rood at colorado.edu
>
>On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Koontz John E wrote:
>
>
>
>>On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Pamela Munro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Agreed, absolutely. I should have said that. The same would be true of
>>>the Siouan forms. That's what makes these so interesting to me. If the
>>>morphology does not have a long enough base to do its thing it can look
>>>ahead to inflection and borrow something.
>>>
>>>
>>>>What interests me about this case is that it shows grade formation
>>>>operating in some sense, anyway) after (perosnal) inflection.  That's like
>>>>the way that dative formation operates after (personal) inflection in
>>>>Omaha-Ponca.  Theorists generally hold that inflection follows derivation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>I'm not sure if I worded this clearly.  Were you agreeing that it looked
>>like - in this case - the grade formation process would have to be said to
>>follow inflection in the process of creation of the form?  That was the
>>only way I could get the case of the Omaha-Ponca dative to make sense to
>>me.  In other words, while my instincts agree with my education here, and
>>I'd expect all derivation to precede all inflection, the grade formation
>>process you describe here, and at least the case of the OP reduplication of
>>'to say' look like they require one derivation to follow inflection.
>>
>>The Omaha-Ponca dative is actually a better example, because it's
>>pervasive, and not an isolated case, but it could be argued that dative is
>>an inflectional process, rather than a derivational one, though I think
>>the instincts of most Siouanists would be that it is derivational, or at
>>least "stem forming."  The problem in Omaha-Ponca is just that it's
>>difficult to explain the forms exhibited by applying inflection to the
>>dative "stem."  In some cases the merger of the locative or pronominal or
>>sequence of them with gi- seems to skip syllables that precede its
>>ostensible location.
>>
>>I haven't been able to come up with any arguments that OP dative is
>>derivational as opposed to inflectional.  It seems pretty productive, and,
>>though there are a couple of cases where the English verbs expressing the
>>base and the dative forms are different - e.g., gaNze/giaNze
>>'demonstrate/teach', I don't know that these are especially unpreditable
>>and idiomatic.
>>
>>JEK
>>
>>
>>
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