Discontinuous reduplication: a typological sketch

Abstract

The paper investigates discontinuous reduplication (DR), a pattern where reduplicant and base are separated by other material, by annotating a 214-example dataset collected from a 99-language sample. Several items turned out to serve as interposing elements, although their nature does not seem to correlate with function, unlike the category of the base. DR’s functions are a subset of those associated with reduplication cross-linguistically. All languages displaying DR also present contiguous reduplication, suggesting a contiguous reduplication > discontinuous reduplication hierarchy. Finally, a corpus-based analysis of Italian (lacking DR according to grammars) unveiled a wealth of DR patterns, suggesting that corpora are essential for the typological enterprise.

Reduplication in Kua’nsi

“…However, it is not always the case that the reduplicant has to occur next to its base. The reduplicant and the base can be interrupted by other morphological material, and this type of reduplication is termed discontinuous reduplication, which is a non-canonical type of reduplication (Stolz 2018;Mattiola and Masini 2022).…”

“…For example, the adjective wa 21 can occur in this form of reduplication, as in ( 19), and it can also be used as an independent word, as in (20). It is often impossible to know the nature of the interposing elements in discontinuous reduplication in many languages, but there are cases where the interposing elements also have other functions in the languages (Mattiola and Masini 2022). In Kua'nsi, the segment tsʰi 33 in the discontinuous reduplication of colour words cannot be interpreted, as it is not used anywhere else in Kua'nsi.…”