4 posts tagged “reduplication”

As all of the people reading have probably noticed, I tend to write a lot about Indo-European. I try to fit in some of my other interests every now and then, but since I study Indo-European linguistics in university, I'm far more informed on that subject than the others.

But today I will actually write about something completely different, namely Japanese, and its earlier forms. Much like Indo-European Japanese actually has a form of reduplication in the verb. In fact Japanese has multiple forms of reduplications, also in nouns. What is remarkable about these reduplication, is that the reduplicated element will gain voicing. Allow me to give several examples.

First of all the nominal reduplications.

人人　ひとびと hitobito  'people'  (note that earlier, /h/ was probably /p/ or /ɸ/).
島島　しまじま simajima ' islands'
所所　ところどころ　tokorodokoro ' here and there'  (tokoro on itself means 'place')
度度　たびたび　tabitabi ' often'  (tabi no itself means ' time' as in how many times something happened. Notice that the second element isn't voiced yet, due to there being a voiced element in the word tabi already. 2x voiced in one element is disallowed. Sometimes this even seems to extend to the whole compound).

While it's not uncommon to reduplicate to form plurals, for example see Indonesian, it is rather weird the second element is voiced. Intervocalic voicing might be something you'd have in mind, but the above example already show it's perfectly possible to have intervocalic voiceless consonants.

In fact originally these voiced consonants where prenasalised and due to this prenasalisation the following consonant became voiced. But why would you prenasalise the consonant of a plural formation? It's difficult to make sense out of. This prenasalised element which I'll call *N is there though, and also in a very different kind of reduplication, namely Verbal reduplication.

Verbal reduplication isn't a complete reduplication though, not even a complete reduplication of the stem, it is solely a reduplication of the first syllable.

So a verb like CVC-u would become CVNCVC-u.

One of the more, especially to anime watching crowd, famous reduplicated nouns is:
続く　つづく　tsuzuku ' to continue'  with archaic spelling of 'zu'  as ' du'. This verb is used to indicate 'to be continued.  This is a reduplication of 付く　つく　tsuku ' to adjoin, to be attached'.

There's countless of these kinds of verbs for example:
止まる　とどまる　todomaru ' to remain'
止まる　とまる　tomaru ' to stop'  (note that when written in kanji, there's no difference in how it is written).

Similar to Indo-european reduplication Japanese reduplication seems to give a sense of 'itterativity'  or 'perfectivity' . Though in neither Japanese or Indo-European this could be called a fixed semantic meaning of the construction. There's also countless Japanese words that still have their reduplicated counterpart with little to no semantic change, or sometimes only the reduplicated word is found. For example in

縮む　ちぢむ　 chijimu 'to become small' (once again archaic spelling of ' ji'  as 'di'), But there is no verb ' chimu'.

But my point of this article besides illustrating this interesting phenomenon is that there is a certain problem with this construction from a historical point of view. Lets take tsuzuku as an example.

In Proto-Japanese the phonemic form would have been */tuNtuku/ which is derrived from */tuku/ (I'm skipping the problem with the vowels 1. because I don't know the exact proto-japanese vowels of these word and 2. because it's not relevant here). What exactly possesed the Proto-Japanese speakers to reduplicated this word while inserting a prenasalisation phoneme? Why not just **/tutuku/ Seems perfectly normal and not ambiguous, the extra */N/ actually seems to be over doing it.

Language generally finds a most ideal solution whenever possible. And even when it would create ambiguities language generally doesn't care. This extra */N/ is not ideal but superfluous, unless it had some kind of function. Maybe the same kind of function as it has in plural-reduplication. It's somehow a marking that says ' Hello! I'm tying two elements together!'. Odd little thing.

I've written about it before, since it also shows up in other compounds, generally tatpuruṣa compounds, display the insertion of the */N/, for those forms it could be explained as a simplification of particles like no and ni (genitive, and locative, respectively).

But in dvandva compounds, this */N/ is absolutely prohibited to appear, resulting in lovely pairs like these:
山川　やまがわ　yamagawa 'Mountain stream'
山川　やまかわ　yamakawa 'mountains and streams'.

This prohibition in dvandva compounds feels slightly odd though, because, if anything reduplicated plurals are most like dvandva compounds, compounding with themselves.

And then there's the sometimes incredibly stubborn */N/ that doesn't show up when you really do expect him to, like in the word for Tokyo
東京　とうきょう　toukyou ' Eastern Captical'. This is a typical tatpuruṣa compound why isn't it **tougyou?

This phenomenon is far from being explained. And sometimes the distribution of prenasalised consonants actually does seem to work much like how Altaic languages distribute their voiced consonants. What happened here? Were there maybe prenasalised, voiced and voiceless consonants where voiced and prenasalised consonants merged historically into prenasalised? Is that even possible?

Many questions, few answers. Throw about your ideas, think about it, or just enjoy this post. :-)

A while ago I posited the idea that the paradigm for 'foot' in Indo-European might have a phonotactic schwa insertion. Glen Gordon spook out against this, saying it was paradigmatic levelling rather than a phonotactic constraint. I didn't want to believe him, simply because phonotactic constraits are so much nicer than paradigmatic levelling, but I found some examples which shows that he's probably right.

So let us look at the paradigm for 'foot'. We have the root *ped- With a paradigm like this:

Nom. *pṓd-s
Gen. *ped-ós

The ō in the nominative is due to mono-syllabicity of the word. The vocalism of this word is then perfectly acceptable.

The genitive though is slightly more problematic. From the idea of syncope, we'd rather see a word like **pd-ós, which we clearly don't. My idea was then that a *e was inserted (which was previously a schwa), due to phonotactic constraints, after all /pd/ is a rather difficult cluster to pronounce initially, even Greek, known for it's sometimes rather strange initial clusters doesn't allow such a cluster. Glen Gordon argued that this is not so much a phonotactic constraint, but rather the tendency of Indo-European to avoid asyllabic roots alternating with syllabic roots in one paradigm.

At first I did not see why one would assume this, and then I suddenly remembered the root *peth₁- 'to fly'. This root is well attested in many languages, including English (feather). But the Greek word πτερόν 'wing' is the one I'd like to talk about. As we can see, Greek has a perfect zero grade in the root for this word, a Indo-European reconstruction of this word would be:
*pth₁ró-m
By the phonotactic constraint I first proposed such a cluster would be forbidden. I would expect a form **peth₁ró-m, so I have to re-evaluate my theory. I'm not quite feeling into giving into Glen's theory yet, and would like to change my theory a bit;

When there's a initial cluster of two consonants of which one of the two elements is voiced, a schwa is insterted between the two.

I believe Greek agrees with me on this one, since there's no clusters like bd, gd, pd, bt etc. to be found in the Greek language initially. Nevertheless I'm going to have to search for words to disprove me again; If you're feeling in a particularly productive mood, I encourage my readers to do the work for me!

Just a little side not to finish this post of, it might be interesting to know that Sanskrit in fact does have the phonotactic constraint that I posited the first time, the word for 'wing' in Sanskrit is patram पत्रम्. Which is a problematic word as well since it brings up some of Sanskrit's sporadic laryngeal vocalisation, but we'll leave that for some other time.

Sanskrit does allow such clusters medially though. The third person plural perfect in Vedic Sanskrit of patati पतति 'to fall/fly' is paptuḥ पप्तुः While in Classical Sanskrit by a bizarre analogy from sad- 'to sit' it became petuḥ पेतुः. To sit in 3ppl perf. is seduḥ < *sazduḥ < *sasduḥ. This e-vocalism rather than a medial CC cluster was generalised to all reduplicating perfects that have identical initial reduplication (Labials, dentals and fricatives). Seems like Sanskrit wasn't particularly fond of the medial zero-grade roots after a while either.

Last post I started telling you about how the present seemed to be some kind of vowel heightening form the perfect; due to its type of suffixes. In retrospect I consider this to be very wrong. I sometimes have days I try to merge everything with everything; which turns out wrong.

I still think the reduplication was originally reduplicated with the same vowel. I just think that the *e found in the present stem somehow motivated this pretonic-epenthetic-like schwa to be heightened by this *e or maybe it's a form of dissimilation (continuing on the idea that the present *e was originally a schwa as well).

Then we have two types of verbal stems, those with *e as the root vowel and those with *o. I can't stop thinking about how this *i/*e alternation might somehow be the clue to proving Pre-Indo-European syncope. Because, despite it being fairly obvious to me, from a logical point of view it's very hard to prove that the Genitive of 'father' ph₂trós originally had an unaccented *ə in between the *t and the *r, quite simply because it's not there.

Now if indeed the reduplication reflex of *ə before another *ə was *i, and this can be proven; we have definite proof that a Ø-grade used to have a *ə there.

Let me explain:
the verb 'to give' *deh₃
In full grade, that is in the singular we find
*di-déh₃-mi
while in the plural we find
*di-dh₃-més

If the preceeding Pre-IE *ə (> PIE*e) does indeed influence the heightening of *ə to *i, then also in the plural the *ə must have been there to cause this heightening.

So my job right now is twofold: Either find convincing proof that this heightening is true by collecting a big collection of reduplicating verbs in Sanskrit/Greek and maybe Tocharian; Or proof that all pretonic *ə followed by a *ə are heightened to *i.

And this is what I've been doing lately, collecting examples to prove this; so far, not incredibly fruitful though.

On a completely different note:
Some sharp readers may notice my self-contradiction. I'm currently placing reduplication in a pre-Indo-European stage, while previously I held a big argumentation that reduplication was an exclusive feature of Greek/Indo-Aryan. You're absolutely right please forgive me. I'm currently only placing the reduplication in such an early stage because I think it might work; which would mean I'd have to review my previous theories.
 
I now believe that loss of reduplication is far easier than I considered it before though. We have to realise that due to Haplology ( Or Haplogy? ;-) ) things like reduplication have a tendency of disappearing. Even within Greek we find Haplology *αμφι-φωρα > αμφωρα 'amphora (litt. that which is carried on both sides)'.

Let's hope this isn't a dead end. Even if it is, it'll be interesting to research.

An interesting feature of the Indo-European verbal (and sometimes nominal) system is so called 'reduplication'.

Reduplication in Indo-European is the repetition of the first consonant plus an extra vowel before the action root.

A famous example is the Indo-European word for 'wheel' one of the few nominal roots with reduplication:
*kʷe-kʷlo-
Note that the reduplication is solely the first consonant, never the cluster. Well never is, of course, a big word. It does seem to happen sometimes.

Typically in Indo-European we reconstruct two types of reduplication, one with a vowel *e after the reduplicated consonant, one with the vowel *i. Obviously we like to reconstruct some kind of earlier **ə that gave both reflexes, but in the latest phase of PIE these two were definitely there.

Are these reconstructions really that natural though? Maybe not. Many languages seem to indicate a different system. For once Sanskrit was not authoritative in the opinions of the earlier Indo-Europeanists (typically, when there's doubt, the Sanskrit form is considered correct). No, this time it's Greek. Greek knows solely two types of reduplication. i-reduplication in presents (and very rare aorists), and e-reduplication in the perfect.

When we have a look at three other languages with attest reduplication, we get a very different view though. The languages I will discuss are Gothic, Sanskrit and Tocharian B. I've been told that Latin also displays some non-standard reduplication, but since my Latin isn't much better than 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori', I'll leave that languages for people with more expertise.

First, let's talk about Gothic. Gothic is a nice language, for it displays reduplication often, and consistently throughout it's full history (which is awefully short, but still), unlike any other Germanic language. There's some proof of reduplication in other languages (I believe an odd Old-English form for 'rowed' was 'roard' (though spelling is probably wrong)). The other for is what we see in the preterite of do  did < *deda. But the *deda discussion is a different one all together where no consensus has been found yet.

Gothic reduplication, occurs in the preterite. This is exactly the way we like it in Indo-European reconstructions. There is one main issue though. The vowel use for reduplication is <ai> which phonetically is [ɛ] (some people are pro diphthong, especially in the long variant, I disagree, it has to be a monophthong).

This is not the vowel we expect in reduplication. PIE *e consistently became Gothic i in all contexts. Later though i was changed to ai in several contexts (this all happened before our first Gothic textual attestation).
 *i > ai/_r,h,ƕ This is linguist speak for 'e became <ai>  before r,h and ƕ (Similarly als *u > au/_r,h,ƕ for you symmetry lovers).

Not all reduplication verbs start with r,h or ƕ though. In fact I can't think of any. So a verb like letan you'd expect to have a preterite **lilot. What we actually have is lailot. Some people have desperately tried to explain this to say that the vocalism is analogy from the reduplicating verbs that do start with r,h and ƕ. Personally I do not find this very convincing. Nevertheless, it's very hard to have any <ai>  in Gothic outside of the above mentioned  position. Ony if it were the long variant of <ai> (not visible in writing), we would be able to have that vowel outside of that position.

If <ai> in reduplicating verbs is not from earlier i, we would expect it to be from an earlier *ai < PIE *oi, which is not at all convincing either. Because of this (and several other reasons), I think there might be reason to assume that reduplication in Gothic is not a direct descendant of Indo-European reduplication (this assumption is going to academically kill me :P),

If it is old though, we have either a very odd Indo-European reduplication, or a very odd development in Gothic. You choose ;).

Now, let us discuss Sanskrit. Sanskrit uses reduplication in much the same contexts as Greek. It's used in some presents/aorists (which, I believe, use exclusively the i-vocalism). Besides that the i-vocalic reduplication is used in desideratives and intensives (some indication of this, is also, and solely available in Greek (even more proof for my pro-Graeco-Iranian theory :P)). In the perfect though, we see a different situation all together. We don't see the velar-palatalising a that we would expect as a reflex of PIE *e. No, it reduplicates the sonorant semi-vowel or vowel of the root in the zero grade.

What does that mean? Here let me show you:
Stem: puṣ- present: puṣyati perfect: pupoṣa (< Vedic pupauṣa). So it actually reduplications the u. This is odd in many ways, especially because the sound u is not actually immediately following the first consonant when the verb is in the perfect. In the perfect plural it is though, so likely it got it from there.
This reduplication is also seen when the semi-vocalic consonant is an i. Also the a is reduplicated when it's in the zero grade of the root, or if the second consonant is a vocalic r. But to be honest, this might be the Indo-European *e, especially since it palatalises the reduplicated velars.

Note that this semi-vocalic root vowel even crosses cluster boundaries. So the root śru- gives śuśro-.

Another distinctive feature of Sanskrit reduplication is the way the consonants are treated. When a voiceless non-aspirate is reduplicated, the same consonant remains. An example was given above.

If a voiced aspirate and h < *gh, is aspirated, a voiced non-aspirate. For example
dhāv- > dadhāv
This is not that different from Greek, it's Grassmann's law. Only Greek has voiceless aspirates, and they thus give the voiceless non-aspirate. (τιθημι).

But in some roots, and this is really weird, a voiceless consonant reduplicated sometimes gives the most bizarre reflexes. One that comes to mind right now is the verb pibati 'he drinks' with the root pā-. That's right, the root shortened it's ā to a, then the root consonant became b while the reduplicative consonant remains p. Absolutely insane, but very real nevertheless. This is but a minority though. Most voiced reduplicated consonant remain voiced.

This is, once again, a very different form of reduplication than the one we see in Greek. I've been told that something similar happens in the few Latin verbs that have reduplication. But someone else is going to have to give examples.

Now we get to the last, and really crazy part. That's right, Tocharian B. Tocharian B (and probably also Tocharian A :P) is always crazy. It fails to conform to any type of normal behaviour. I love it.

Tocharian B has reduplication in only one class. The Preterite Participle.

The most normal Preterite Participle is perfectly normal. CäCaw (a<accented ä). Example:lätaw from the root lät-
The second group is C1eC1aw (a from accented ä). Example śeśaw. Though this looks like a perfectly normal reduplication, this is already bizarre. Because TochB e does not come from IE *e, rather it comes from IE *o. This o is also nowhere to be found in the root. śä-
The third group is C1eC1aC2äw (a from accented ä), For example lyelyakäw from root läk-
Next group is C1eC1éC2äw Example:  teteku (u = äw) from täk-, At last here we find a decent reduplication of the root vowel.
(j)VCäw where V is accented. For example: yáku root: yäk-
C1aC1áC2äw for example: lalālu (ā = accented a) from root: la-. TochB. a comes from Indo-European *h2e.
The next class is rather normal (no reduplication!) CäCáu for example: krämpau root: krämp-
The before last class is C1aC1áC2au for example kakārpau root: korp-
The last class I don't have any example of, but luckily isn't reduplicating either. áCau.

So in Tocharian we have reduplication with o, or h2e. And not once with *e or *i. Nor is the root semi-vowel reduplicated as we'd hope to see considering Sanskrit.

So there we have it! Three completely different reduplication systems, which are opposed directly against the Greek and reconstructed Indo-European form. Why we are still reconstructing the reduplication the way we are is actually a bit mysterious. It's the easiest, that's for sure. All these systems might have also undergone some analogy, especially Sanskrit and Gothic.

This leaves us with Tocharian B though, which went about being it's own crazy self (he likes to do that). Now we might want to mention that Tocharian split of from the Indo-European family well before the rest of the languages started branching off (but well after Anatolian branched off). Maybe this was indeed the crazy reduplication system PIE used to have, but then all reduplication was reduced to a schwa.

One thing is sure, the last word has definitely not been spoken about Indo-European reduplication, it's no where near as straight forward as some people like to think (Though in all honesty, to keep your sanity, I can imagine you'd rather think it's that simple than look at Tocharian; What can I say? I'm a linguistic masochist :P).