A unified analysis of two reduplication processes in Saraiki

Abstract

We analyse two reduplication processes in Saraiki, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Pakistan. The two processes are only minimally different: the first type involves total reduplication and the second type involves overwriting with an initial consonant (“fixed segment reduplication”). The goal of the paper is to expose the difficulties of analysing both processes in a single grammar, i.e. with a single constraint hierarchy in Optimality Theory: we finally opt for an analysis based on allomorphy for the second type, to capture the morpheme-specific nature of the processes involved.