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Extravagant Morphology: Studies in rule-bending, pattern-extending and theory-challenging morphology
Edited by Matthias Eitelmann and Dagmar Haumann
[Studies in Language Companion Series 223] 2022
► pp. 181–206

do not repeat

Repetition and reduplication in German revisited

| Goethe-University Frankfurt | Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

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.

Keywords: reduplication, repetition, German
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Repetition in language
    • 1.2Extravagant repetition in German
    • 1.3do not repeat: A generalisation regarding reduplicative structures
  • 2.Repetition and repetition avoidance at the sub-lexical level
    • 2.1The segmental level
    • 2.2The syllable level
      • 2.2.1Syllable repetition in the non-native stratum
  • 3.Repetition at the lexical level and above
    • 3.1The foot level
      • 3.1.1Exceptions to (1)
    • 3.2Repetition at the p-word level
      • 3.2.1“Self-compounding”
      • 3.2.2Identical constituent compounds (ICC)
      • 3.2.3Unbounded repetition
    • 3.3Repetition at the phrase level
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
    • 4.1Summary
    • 4.2Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.223.08ken
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