Reduplication and Phonological Copying in Lukisa Dialect

Abstract

Reduplication is a grammatical process that occurs in human languages in which a whole linguistic constituent or part of it is repeated to form a new constituent. Reduplication can be both a morphological and phonological process of forming a new compound word by repeating all or part of a word. The reduplication involves a double selection and insertion of morphological constituents that agree in their semantic and syntactic specification such as root or stem. Phonological duplication is where the copying picks the closest phonological input restricted to cases of phonological necessity such as a vowel or consonantal sound and copies it without calling for semantic change of the reduplicant. Lukisa, a Luhya dialect is expected to exhibit a wide range of patterns in reduplication which varies from one element being copied to an entire phrase. Although linguistic forms of reduplication have been explored at lexical and functional levels, there is need to validate phonological copying as a limitless linguistic resource and an integrated facility in language. Therefore, the objective of this study was to describe the manifestation of phonological copying in reduplication in Lukisa dialect through phonological processes such as: vowel lengthening, vowel change and change in syllable weight. Inkellas and Zoll (2005) Morphological Doubling Theory, MDT was adopted for this study where the aspect of phonological copying whose scope is limited to narrow sets of contexts restricted to cases motivated by phonological necessity as what is copied is either a single vowel, consonant or syllable with a possible phonological modification of either or both the constituents. This phonological copying occurs as a side effect of sematic identity which postulates that reduplication results when morphology calls twice for a constituent of a given sematic description with a possible phonological modification of either or both constituents.