Reduplication in Rotuman by Amber Ives Blenkiron B.Sc., University of Victoria, 2007 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Linguistics Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences ! Amber Ives Blenkiron 2013 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2013 Approval Name: Amber Ives Blenkiron Degree: Master of Arts (Linguistics) Title of Thesis: Reduplication in Rotuman Examining Committee: Chair: Maite Taboada Associate Professor John Alderete Senior Supervisor Associate Professor Panayiotis Pappas Supervisor Associate Professor Paul McFetridge Supervisor Associate Professor Suzanne Urbanczyk External Examiner Associate Professor Department of Linguistics University of Victoria Date Defended/Approved: August 15, 2013 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Ethics Statement The author, whose name appears on the title page of this work, has obtained, for the research described in this work, either: a. human research ethics approval from the Simon Fraser University Office of Research Ethics, or b. advance approval of the animal care protocol from the University Animal Care Committee of Simon Fraser University; or has conducted the research c. as a co-investigator, collaborator or research assistant in a research project approved in advance, or d. as a member of a course approved in advance for minimal risk human research, by the Office of Research Ethics. A copy of the approval letter has been filed at the Theses Office of the University Library at the time of submission of this thesis or project. The original application for approval and letter of approval are filed with the relevant offices. Inquiries may be directed to those authorities. Simon Fraser University Library Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada update Spring 2010 Abstract This thesis is the first comprehensive investigation of reduplication in Rotuman, an Oceanic language. It includes a rigorous description of Rotuman reduplication based on a corpus of 2600 stems extracted from Churchward’s (1940) Dictionary and a thorough analysis within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) of all reduplicant shapes. This analysis draws on generalized templates and minimal word phonology to demonstrate that the productive form of foot reduplication is shaped by well-formedness constraints associated with the minimal word in Rotuman. By building an analysis around the prosodic structure of phase, a morphological process particular to Rotuman, this thesis captures the intuitions of previous scholars on the relationship between these two processes. All divergences from the minimal word phonology of the reduplicant and incomplete phase prosody are accounted for using standard constraint- based accounts of anti-gemination, under-application, and prosodic faithfulness. Keywords: Rotuman; reduplication; minimal word; phonology; Oceanic; Optimality Theory iv Dedication To Dad, for sharing your love of language and of life. I miss you everyday. v Acknowledgements I wish to thank my thesis supervisor and teacher John Alderete, from whom I have learned a great deal in terms of phonology and linguistics in general. He has guided me in my journey as both a linguist and a writer and I couldn’t have completed this thesis without his comments, questions and advice. It has been a privilege to learn from him. I have also learned a great deal from the other members of my committee Paul McFetridge, who gave me my first paper to read on reduplication in 2006 during the Linguistic Field School in Fiji, and Panayiotis Pappas, who taught my first course at Grad School and helped to ignite my excitement about scholarly investigation. For sharing her perspective on phonology and helping with the formalities of working with Optimality Theory, I thank Dr. Marion Caldecott. I would also like to thank past and present colleagues over these two years for sharing in the ups and downs of Grad School and for the many stimulating conversations and general good times on and off campus. A huge “Thank you” goes to my friends and family whose love and faith in me helped me to push on through when things were tough. They did an excellent job of distracting me…almost too good! Last but not least, I would like to thank Matt for putting up with my rants and raves even when he had no idea what I was talking about. His calmness and support helped to keep me things in perspective. Thank you for loving me through it all. My studies over the last two years have been supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Masters’ Scholarship and a Graduate Fellowship from Simon Fraser University. vi Table of Contents Approval ............................................................................................................................. ii! Partial Copyright Licence .................................................................................................. iii! Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv! Dedication .......................................................................................................................... v! Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vi! Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. vii! List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix! List of Figures ................................................................................................................... ix! List of Optimality Theoretic Tableaux ................................................................................. x! List of Acronyms and Abbreviations .................................................................................. xi! 1.! Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1! 1.1.! Themes .................................................................................................................... 1! 1.2.! Motivation ................................................................................................................. 2! 1.3.! Synopsis .................................................................................................................. 4! 2.! Background .............................................................................................................. 5! 2.1.! Phonology ................................................................................................................ 5! 2.1.1.! Phonological Rules ....................................................................................... 8! 2.1.2.! Phonotactics ............................................................................................... 11! 2.1.3.! Stress ......................................................................................................... 11! 2.2.! Morphology ............................................................................................................ 12! 2.2.1.! Morphology Basics ..................................................................................... 12! 2.2.2.! Morphological Processes ........................................................................... 13! 2.3.! Methods ................................................................................................................. 14! 3.! Phase Alternation ................................................................................................... 16! 3.1.! Describing Phase ................................................................................................... 16! 3.2.! Two Approaches to Phase Alternation ................................................................... 24! 3.2.1.! Syntactico-semantic Approach ................................................................... 24! 3.2.2.! Phonology-based Approach ....................................................................... 27! 4.! Facts of Reduplication ........................................................................................... 35! 4.1.! Reduplicative Patterns ........................................................................................... 36! 4.2.! Reduplication and Phase ....................................................................................... 42! 5.! Reduplication as MinWd Phonology .................................................................... 48! 5.1.! Foot Reduplication ................................................................................................. 49! 5.2.! Partial CV Reduplication ........................................................................................ 58! 6.! Problems for MinWd Analysis .............................................................................. 62! 6.1.! Antigemination Effects ........................................................................................... 62! 6.2.! Umlaut in Reduplication: All-or-Nothing ................................................................. 66! 6.3.! The Effect of Base Size on Metathesis .................................................................. 69! vii 7.! Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 72! References ....................................................................................................................