The natural history of verb-stem reduplication in Bantu

Abstract

In this study I present a comparative and historical analysis of ''frequentative'' Bantu verb-stem reduplication, many of whose variants have been described for a number of Eastern and Southern Bantu languages. While some languages have full-stem compounding, where the stem consists of the verb root plus any and all suffixes, others restrict the reduplicant to two syllables. Two questions are addressed: (i) What was the original nature of reduplication in ProtoBantu? (ii) What diachronic processes have led to the observed variation? I first consider evidence that the frequentative began as full-stem reduplication, which then became restricted either morphologically (by excluding inflectional and ultimately derivational suffixes) and/or phonologically (by imposing a bisyllabic maximum size constraint). I then turn to the opposite hypothesis and consider evidence and motivations for a conflicting tendency to rebuild full-stem reduplication from the partial reduplicant. I end by attempting to explain why the partial reduplicant is almost always preposed to the fuller base.

Stress Restricts Reduplication

“…When reduplicant size is determined by the interaction of the size restrictor with prosodic constraints, we derive M&P's (1986 [1996]) generalization that reduplicative "templates" must take the shape of prosodic categories, without any mention of templates. While further investigation will be needed to determine how non-minimal templates emerge in non-stress languages (e.g., the disyllabic pattern commonly found in Bantu languages -see Hyman, 2009), the S » R hypothesis coupled with the size restrictor approach provides a restrictive account of the crosslinguistic typology of reduplicant size in partial reduplication.…”

Morphological Doubling theory to two Bantu Languages Reduplication: A comparative perspective of Kinyarwanda and Swahili

“…In Bantu languages, the common word formation processes are affixation (the agglutinative natures of the languages), borrowing (due to contact between Bantu and beyond), compounding (specifically of nouns) and reduplication (Contini-Morava 2007 qtd in Amani, n.d). Hyman (2009) believes that traditional Bantu grammars thus often include sections showing that verbs, nouns, adjectives, numerals and even pronouns and demonstratives can be reduplicated with specific semantic effects. To some extent, Kinyarwanda and Swahili fall in this category.…”

What is Reduplication? Typology and Analysis Part 2/2: The Analysis of Reduplication

“…The TETU scenario also provides an elegant way of formalizing Hyman's () and Niepokuj's (1991) proposal that fixed reduplicative size like that in Nupe develops historically from total reduplication and represents a form of reduplicative reduction. We can illustrate with Nupe (Benue‐Congo).…”