Re: Re : Reduplication (was: Re: Re : Re: Conculturish question)

Nik Taylor asked:

>Matt Pearson wrote:
>>         latabatra               "table"
>>         latabatabatra   "a table which is falling apart"
>
>Question, is lata- a prefix, or is the reduplication limited to the last
>two syllables?  That is, why isn't it *latabatralatabatra?
Malagasy reduplication is quite wonderfully complicated.  It's one
of the few examples I know of genuine metrically-based
reduplication.  The basic rule is as follows:

   "Reduplicate the foot that receives word-level stress"

Or, more explicitly:

   "If main stress in the word falls on a heavy syllable,
   reduplicate that syllable.  If main stress falls on a light
   syllable, reduplicate the two-syllable sequence consisting
   of that syllable and the following syllable"

So, take a word like "trano".  This is a two-syllable word with
main stress on the first syllable:

   TRA-no

Since the first syllable is light, you reduplicate that syllable
plus the following one.  Since there are no more syllables in the
word, that amounts to total reduplication in this case:

   TRA-no-TRA-no

In other cases, however, only part of the word will reduplicate.
Consider a word like "divay", meaning "wine" (from French "du vin").
This is a two-syllable word with stress on the final syllable:

   di-VAY

Since the final syllable is heavy, you reduplicate just that
syllable, giving "divaivay":

   di-VAI-VAY

(Note that orthographic "i" and "y" represent the same sound /i/:
"y" is used word-finally and "i" elsewhere.)

The word "latabatra" (from French "la table") is a four-syllable
word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable:

   la-TA-ba-tra

Since the stressed syllable is light, you reduplicate that syllable
plus the following one, giving:

   la-TA-ba-TA-ba-tra

Things get kind of complicated when you consider examples with
syllable-final consonants, but that's the basic pattern.  Neat, eh?

Matt.