Gestural Timing and Contiguity in Bella Coola Reduplication

Reduplication is of interest to phonologists because it identifies a string of segments that is not identical to a preexisting morpheme. Bagemihl (1991) attempts to derive syllable structure in Bella Coola from reduplication, assuming that the reduplicant always constitutes a syllable. Using articulatory gestures as the fundamental unit of representation, I show that the reduplicant is better described as a contiguous sequence of overlapping gestures. While previous analyses have described Bella Coola reduplication as highly irregular, I show that several generalizations emerge on the gestural level, as the reduplicant invariably contains a vocalic gesture, which may be followed by no more than one subsequent consonantal gesture. As a result, multiply articulated segments whose component gestures are not simultaneous reduplicate only partially. For example, reduplicated ejectives lose their glottal gesture post-vocalically, but their oral gesture pre-vocalically. Given a coordination pattern in which the onset of the oral gesture precedes that of the glottal one, reduplication can be said to copy that gesture which is closer to the gesture of the vowel, i.e. it copies a contiguous sequence of gestures. Reduplication in Bella Coola thus cannot be explained without reference to gestural coordination, a fact that provides further evidence for the relevance of gestural coordination in phonological representation.

References:

Bagemihl, Bruce. 1991. Syllable Structure in Bella Coola. Linguistic Inquiry 22, 589-646.
Hoard, James E. 1978. Syllabification in Northwest Indian Languages, with remarks on the nature of syllabic stops and affricates. In: Bell, Alan and Joan B. Hooper (eds.) Syllables and Segments. North-Holland Linguistic Series 40. Amsterdam: North Holland, pp. 59-72.
Newman, Stanley. 1947. Bella Coola I: Phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics13, 129-34.