Types of Reduplication

Veronika Mattes

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9783110393125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

The book systematically discusses the formal and functional properties as well as the rules of the manifold productive reduplication types of Bikol, an Austronesian language of the Philippines. Based on the author's own fieldwork, this case study demonstrates the highly complex and grammaticized status of reduplication. In addition, the formal and semantic properties of unproductive reduplicative forms of the language are also investigated.

1 Introduction

Reduplication has always attracted the attention of linguists, perhaps especially because speakers of Indo-European languages are not familiar with the phenomenon, yet it can be found in almost every non-Indo-European language.³ Sapir noted that “Nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the repetition of all or part of the radical element” (Sapir 1921: 76). Among the many languages which make use of reduplication, certain Philippine languages are known to do so to an outstanding degree. Blake even argues that nowhere “perhaps is this linguistic principle more productive than in the Philippine languages […]” (Blake 1917: 425). Although numerous other languages with comparably productive reduplication can be found in other areas of the world (e.g. Papua New Guinea, the west coast of North America, cf. Rubino 2011), Blake’s statement reflects very well the first impression that one gets by looking at the morphology of certain Philippine languages. Reduplication appears in many different forms, can exercise a very wide array of functions and has few restrictions.

Although grammars of Austronesian languages do not usually provide any detailed analysis or explanation of the reduplication system, the extensive use of reduplication with its wide range of different forms and meanings is often cited to be a characteristic feature of Austronesian languages, and some compilations of reduplication types for some of these languages do exist (e.g. Blake 1917 and Naylor 1986 for Tagalog, Gonda 1950 for Indonesian languages, Finer 1986/87 for Palauan, Kiyomi 1995 for a sample of Malayo-Polynesian languages, and, more recently, Lee 2009 for Kavalan). What Sperlich (2001) notes on Niuean, an Eastern-Polynesian language, is true for Austronesian languages in general: Previous studies “have noted the importance of reduplication but have not analyzed the phenomenon in depth” (Sperlich 2001: 280). Grammars usually list the different reduplication forms and their respective meanings, but no further information on morphology, syntax or semantics of the reduplication types is provided. The current case study of Bikol aims to study one specific reduplication system of one language in detail. To this end it makes use of insights already gained from cross-linguistic research, and also contributes to this field, since detailed insights into a specific system undoubtedly enrich the typological results and structural knowledge of reduplication in general. This is expressed by the Adolf Trendelenburg citation which Pott (1862) chose as a motto for his work: “Wo das Einzelne scharf beobachtet wird, offenbart es an sich die Züge des Allgemeinen” [An individual object reveals universal traits if investigated accurately, translation VM] (Trendelenburg 1840: 2).

Due to its high iconicity and its association with child (directed) speech, reduplication has often been considered to be a “primitive” means of word formation, not belonging to the grammar of educated adult languages in advanced societies (cf. Stolz et al. 2011: 98–99). Wundt (1900) for example, who reflected intensively on reduplication (“Lautwiederholung”) in the first volume of his influential Völkerpsychologie, described the phenomenon to be one of the most primitive possibilities of creating words: “[…] eine Form, die eben erst an der Grenze liegt, wo der articulierte Laut in das Wort übergeht, und die mit den einfachsten Mitteln zu Stande kommt.” [a form which is just located on the border where the articulated sound becomes a word, and which is composed in the simplest way, translation VM] (Wundt 1900: 578–579). Even half a century later, in Gonda’s (1950) article on reduplication in Indonesian languages we still find the following evaluation:

In more “advanced stages of civilization”, among groups and classes which have, generally speaking, lost contact with “primitiveness”, although it is always apt to come to the surface, in circles where the so-called intellectual or modern mental structure is dominating, reduplicating and iterative devices are a rather unimportant part of language (Gonda 1950: 170).

This common view is obviously due to the fact that reduplication rarely exists as a morphological procedure in standard Indo-European languages.⁴ But it is long since antiquated, not least due to many new or newly perceived studies and systematic descriptions and analyses of reduplication in languages all over the world including Indo-European languages as well (among many others for example Botha 1988, Huttar & Huttar 1997, Kouwenberg 2003, van der Voort 2003 and the volume edited by Hurch 2005, additionally to the above mentioned titles).

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The following description of the complex system of reduplication types in Bikol is hopefully a further contribution to show that reduplication can be a full-fledged part of the grammar, and is neither simple nor primitive.

The book is organized as follows: chapter 2 provides an introduction to Bikol, i.e., information on the linguistic placement of the language, the database for the subsequent analysis of reduplication, and above all, a grammar sketch, which provides the reader with the basic grammatical understanding of the language necessary to follow the argumentation and the examples in the following sections. In chapter 3, reduplication is discussed in general and the topic is defined with respect to the scope of analysis in the following chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 present the results of my study. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the productive reduplication system of Bikol and provides a comprehensive analysis of the various reduplication types, with respect to their formal and functional properties. The emphasis is on full reduplication, which turns out to be the most complex reduplication type of the language. Chapter 5 is an approach to lexical, i.e., non-productive, reduplication, which can be found abundantly in Bikol. It is argued that lexical reduplication forms a lexical subgroup which is formally and semantically structured. Chapter 6 is a synopsis of the major issues. The focus returns to the topics iconicity and plurality, which are repeatedly touched upon in the text, both explicitly and implicitly. The appendices comprise a short summary of the texts from which I took most of the example sentences, and, for the main part, my collection of reduplications in Bikol. It mainly lists lexical reduplications, but it also contains a sample of productive ones. I compiled the lists drawing on the entries of a Bikol dictionary which I then verified with the help of several consultants, also enriching it with additional items collected during my field work.

2 Bikol

2.1 The language and the data

Bikol is a Central-Philippine language and, as such, belongs to the Western-Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family and is closely related to other Central Philippine languages, such as Tagalog, Cebuano and Hiligaynon. It is spoken in the south of Luzon Island of the Philippines, in the provinces Albay, Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, and Sorsogon. Historical linguists have reconstructed different sub-branches of Proto-Austronesian (PAN) as hypothetical antecedents of the Philippine languages, e.g. Proto-Extra Formosan (PEF), Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP), etc. (cf., for example, Blust 2003, Dahl 1976).⁵ Although the relatedness of these Central languages is undoubted, the precise genetic affiliations are not clear, i.e., Austronesian linguists differ considerably in their evaluation of whether Bikol or Tagalog is closer to the Bisayan group than to each other or if the two languages are closer to each other than to any other Bisayan language, etc. However, for this study it is sufficient to rely on the Central Philippine group, consisting of the four languages, as opposed to the Northern Luzon languages such as Ilokano and Agta which separated earlier from the other PEF languages. Figure 1, based on Fincke (2002: 31), summarizes the sub-groups of some major Philippine languages and is referred to in the following sections.

The oldest available document of the Bikol language is an impressive dictionary composed by Marcos de Lisboa, a Spanish Franciscan missionary who resided in the Philippines in the early seventeenth century.⁶ During his stay, he collected an enormous amount of language material, but the dictionary was not published until 1754 in Manila. The first grammar notes on Bikol as well as an updated dictionary were compiled by Mintz (1971), and Mintz & Del Rosario Britanico (1985). The first study of the di...

Table of contents

• Studia Typologica
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations and map
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Bikol
• 3 Reduplication
• 4 Productive reduplication in Bikol
• 5 Lexical reduplication in Bikol
• 6 Summary of the main topics and concluding remarks
• Appendix 1: Content of the dialogues, poems and stories of the corpus
• Appendix 2: Bisyllabic reduplicated roots
• Appendix 3: Lexical partial reduplication
• Appendix 4: Lexical full reduplication
• Appendix 5: Echo-words
• Appendix 6: Productive partial reduplication
• Appendix 7: Productive full (and Curu-)reduplication
• References
• Index of authors
• Index of languages
• Index of subjects