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The binarity effect in Kosraean reduplication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2005

Robert Kennedy
Robert Kennedy
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Abstract

This paper offers a formal analysis of prefixing and suffixing reduplication in Kosraean. The prosodic shape of each affix is sensitive to the form of the stem, giving rise to multiple prosodic variants. In particular, its prefix illustrates the binarity effect, in which the reduplicant is binary if and only if the base is binary. Curiously, the suffix is not subject to the same generalisation, but still follows from the same formal analysis. Both affixes also show additional curious effects of vowel-initial stems. Using an optimality-theoretic approach, I will show that the prosody of both affixes is a function of the prosodic structure of the whole word rather than of a requirement that the affix fill a specified prosodic template. The analysis makes the binarity effect an example of a contextually weight-sensitive language, in which closed syllables are bimoraic only under certain morphological circumstances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 2005 , pp. 145 - 168
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

For helpful discussion of earlier versions of this work, I would like to thank an audience at the LSA Annual Meeting (Atlanta, 2003), Diana Archangeli, Mike Hammond, Dan Siddiqi and Adam Ussishkin. I would also like to thank the editors, an anonymous associate editor and three anonymous reviewers for Phonology for their thorough and thoughtful feedback. Any remaining errors or omissions are my responsibility.