The interaction of reduplication and segmental mutation: A phonological account
Ludger Paschen
May 2019
 

This dissertation explores the interaction of reduplication and segmental mutation. Previous studies have shown that both mutation and reduplication can be understood as purely phonological operations in response to defective segmental and prosodic material. Cases of over- and underapplication in reduplicated structures, however, pose a serious challenge to phonological accounts and are apparently better handled by non-modular approaches that invoke morpheme-specific constraints or construction-specific cophonologies. The main goal of this dissertation is to show that a phonological account of over- and underapplication of segmental mutation is not only feasible but that seemingly opaque interactions are in fact predicted by mixed representational-serial approaches. Following the broad research program of Generalized Non-Linear Affixation, and assuming a modular feed-forward architecture of grammar, I demonstrate how apparent cases of overapplication (including ``backcopying'') follow from the interplay of markedness conspiracies, copying of non-minimal prosodic domains, and phonological stratification. Underapplication, on the other hand, emerges from a shortage of mutation triggers, either due to excessive underspecification or as a direct consequence of minimal copying. In addition, I offer reanalyses of purported cases of suppletive allomorphy in reduplication in terms of complex, yet fully transparent segmental phonological alternations. The dissertation thus strengthens the general argument for item-based approaches to non-concatenative morphology and advocates a strictly modular architecture as an alternative to lexical indexation.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/004090
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: PhD thesis, Universität Leipzig
keywords: reduplication, mutation, optimality theory, stratal ot, opacity, overapplication, underapplication, cyclicity, non-linear affixation, morphology, phonology
previous versions: v1 [July 2018]
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