The Reduplicative System of Ancient Greek and a New Analysis of Attic Reduplication
Sam Zukoff
November 2015 

Abstract: The Ancient Greek perfect tense poses an interesting empirical puzzle involving reduplication. While consonant-initial roots display a phonologically regular alternation based on cluster type, vowel-initial roots display two distinct patterns whose distribution is not phonologically predictable. The reduplicative grammar that generates the consonant-initial patterns is directly compatible with the productive vowel-initial pattern, vowel-lengthening. The minority vowel-initial pattern, “Attic Reduplication,” both its shape and its distribution, can be explained as a phonotactic repair which operated at a prior stage of the language. This pattern was later reanalyzed, such that Attic Reduplication is retained not as a phonotactic repair but rather through lexical indexation.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/002825 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Linguistic Inquiry (to appear)
keywords:	attic reduplication, ancient greek, indo-european, optimality theory, constraint indexation, language change, phonology, diachrony
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