Reduplication in Kodi: A paradigm
function account
Yustinus Ghanggo Ate
STKIP Weetebula, Sumba Island-Indonesia
Abstract
This paper investigates reduplication in Kodi, an under-documented and understudied
language spoken in Sumba Island, Nusa Tenggara Timur Province, eastern Indonesia.
Reduplication in Kodi shows various patterns that fall under two major types: full
reduplication and partial reduplication. Full reduplication mostly involves reduplication
of the entire disyllabic base. In partial reduplication, the salient patterns that are
copied are initial parts (a syllable and a foot), an internal part (a syllable), or final
parts (foot) of the base. Furthermore, the reduplication process serves to express
salient semantic properties, such as verbal number or pluractionality, indirect noun
pluralization, attenuation or numeral distributivity. It is argued that (i) stress determines
the reduplication process in Kodi in that the syllable or foot which is reduplicated is
predictable from the stress patterns, (ii) semantic context triggers reduplication
processes, and (iii) the framework of the theory of (Generalized) Paradigm Function
Morphology ((G)PFM) (Stump 2001, 2015; Stewart & Stump 2007; Spencer & Stump
2013; Spencer 2013; Nikolaeva & Spencer 2019) can satisfactorily capture how stress
determines the reduplication of the base and how semantic context triggers the
reduplication process. This study provides additional evidence in support of the (G)
PFM theory, which can arguably be extended to handle complex reduplicative patterns
beyond Kodi.
Keywords: Kodi language, reduplication, stress, semantic triggering, (Generalized)
Paradigm Function Morphology, form-meaning pairing
Introduction
Kodi is an underdocumented eastern Indonesian language which is actively spoken by
roughly 100,000 speakers (Ghanggo Ate forthcoming) in four sub-districts: Kodi, Kodi
Mbangedho, North Kodi, and Kodi Mbalanghar of Southwestern Sumba regency,
Word Structure 14.3 (2021): 312–353
DOI: 10.3366/word.2021.0193
© Edinburgh University Press
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