Vowel Hiatus and Faithfulness in Tohono O'odham Reduplication

1 Introduction

The relationship between the base and the reduplicant holds a special place in the current theory of Prosodic Morphology. Within Optimality Theory, correspondence theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995, 1999) uses faithfulness constraints to regulate the relationship between base and reduplicant. Faithfulness relations hold between input-base (IB), base-reduplicant (BR), and input-reduplicant (IR). McCarthy and Prince (1999:232) claim a universal metacondition on ranking "which ensures that faithfulness constraints on the stem domain always dominate those on the affixal domains." This means that IR faithfulness constraints are always ranked below the other two types. The low ranking of IR faithfulness makes it essentially irrelevant to the model in (1). This Basic Model of reduplication characterizes input-output (IO) faithfulness as IB faithfulness.

(1) Basic Model (McCarthy and Prince 1999:232)

Fieldwork was supported by a PDQWL grant awarded under the auspices of SUNY at Buffalo. Thanks to Michael Hammond, Karin Michelson, Alissa Melinger, Yongeun Lee, Julie Olenn, members of LING 201 at San José State University in the spring semester 1997, two anonymous reviewers, and Elan Dresher for helpful comments. Special thanks to Del Ortiz for sharing his knowledge of Tohono O'odham. I take credit for any errors.

Given this claim, there should be no language that provides evidence to the contrary. However, evidence from Tohono O'odham¹ shows that IO faithfulness is not equivalent to IB faithfulness.² IO faithfulness constraints must be evaluated globally over the entire output string. If an input element is present in some part of the output, whether base or reduplicant, then MAX_IO is satisfied. In addition, To-hono O'odham provides evidence in favor of a fuller model of reduplication, which allows all possible rankings of the three types of faithfulness, especially a higher ranking of IR faithfulness. The evidence comes from Tohono O'odham reduplication, which tolerates a certain type of vowel hiatus in unreduplicated words, but not in reduplicated words. I show that hiatus resolution requires the high ranking of an IR faithfulness constraint. The analysis of Tohono O'odham reduplication favors the Full Model, pictured in (2), over the Basic Model in (1), as the Full Model allows the free ranking of the three types of faithfulness relations.

(2) Full Model (McCarthny and Prince 1999:232)

The analysis advocated here supports the fully symmetric model of correspondence relations in (2), rather than the asymmetric model in (1). Tohono O'odham hiatus resolution has two consequences for the correspondence model of reduplication. First, this analysis argues that IO faithfulness is not equivalent to IB faithfulness. This differs from McCarthy and Prince 1995, where the Basic Model of (1) characterizes the two as equivalent. Second, this analysis disputes the claim that there is a metacondition on ranking, such that stem faithfulness constraints universally outrank affixal faithfulness constraints. The hiatus facts favor a ranking of IR over IB faithfulness constraints.

The squib is organized as follows. In section 2 I introduce the facts of reduplication and vowel hiatus in Tohono O'odham. In section 3 I analyze these facts to motivate the distinction between IO and IB faithfulness, to favor the reduplicative model in (2) rather than the one in (1). In this section I also show that IB and BR faithfulness constraints must rank below IR faithfulness. As a result, affix faithfulness constraints must be allowed to be ranked freely with regard to stem faithfulness constraints.

2 Vowel Hiatus and Syncope in Tohono O'odham

Before looking specifically at cases with vowel sequences, we will examine the pattern of reduplication in words where the initial syllable consists of a short vowel and an optional coda. As illustrated in (3), Tohono O'odham reduplication consists of the prefixation of a light syllable template. The resulting reduplicated word has the shape C₁V₂-C₁V₂X (where X represents the rest of the word).³

(3) The general pattern of reduplication in Tohono O'odham⁴

Reduplicated	Unreduplicated	Gloss
gó-gogs	gógs	'dog'
hí-him	hím	'walking'
ú-uw	úw	'woman'
čá-čaŋgò	čáŋgo...