hide
Free keywords:
reduplication, repetition, German
Abstract:
This chapter offers a synopsis of repetitive and reduplicative constructions in German, a set of diverse morphophonological types mostly found in substandard registers of the language. A phonological examination of these structures suggests that German strictly prohibits exact adjacent repetition of phonological material within lexical representations. I suggest this generalisation to be a grammatical requirement in the lexicon that holds across all levels of the phonological hierarchy, with only a few well-defined exceptions (abbreviations, loans, onomatopoeias, and ideophones). Reduplicative constructions are situated between the poles of marginal, sub-standard language use, apparent deviance from the concatenative ideal that otherwise pervades German morphology, and strict adherence to the lexical-phonological requirement regarding identity avoidance. In this respect, they are, as I argue, characteristic instances of extravagant morphology.
