The Analysis of Reduplication Process in Delfan Laki Dialect: Optimality Theory

Abstract

The present research seeks to study the reduplication processes in Delfan Laki dialect. To fulfill this objective, the dialectal data has been collected via recording ten hours of native's speeches (five males & five females aged between 20 and 60 years old). The theoretical framework of the research is on the basis of the Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky, 1993). This theory had been also applied in morphology. Accordingly, the types of reduplication are full and partial in this dialect. The full reduplications are pure full reduplications and superadded full reduplications in Delfan Laki dialect. Superadded full reduplication includes middle and final ones. One of the most frequent reduplication processes is done by changing the vowel in this dialect. The Partial reduplication in Laki is made by prefix and suffix reduplication. The most frequent one is reduplication by the use of vowel change and the less frequent is suffix reduplication. Each of these types of reduplication has been analyzed in tableaus by the use of constraint rankings in OT. Considering these results, OT is able to analyze the different types of reduplication in Delfan Laki dialect.

Keywords

• reduplication process
• delfan laki dialect
• optimality theory
• total reduplication
• partial reduplication