Reduplication in Lusoga

Abstract

This paper provides an in‑depth description of reduplication of verbs, nouns, and other word categories in Lusoga, drawing on introspected and elicited data, along with data from dictionaries and corpus texts, as well as material presented in the literature in research by Larry Hyman. Our description focuses on phonological details like vowel length, as both shortening and lengthening processes are found, as well as similarities and differences across the categories. Reduplication is generally total in that the entire stem is copied. CVCV verb stems show lengthening of the final vowel of the first half of the reduplicated stem, though this lengthening is generally not found with nominal reduplication. Across categories, V‑initial stems appear with an initial y, except before an i‑initial stem. Verb reduplication does not copy prefixes, but nominal reduplication finds cases of nasal overcopy, the overcopying of CV prefixes with V‑initial stems. In addition, nominal reduplication includes some examples of tripling of CV stems, which is not found with verbs. The reduplication of quantifiers, numerals, and adverbs differ from verbs and nouns in generally involving whole‑word doubling which copies prefixes in addition to the stem.