• phonology: • long vowels and vowel-glide sequences are not treated as bisyllabic • vowel reduction: the nucleus of the 2nd of two open syllables in a word of more than two syllables is deleted (exception: vowel of the 1st syllable is high) • final vowel/consonant deletion in derived verbs • morphology: two word classes: substantive and verb (active, stative, transitive, intransitive) • in Micronesian languages grammatical and semantic (in-)transitivity often differ from each other
Typological Information
• Western Micronesian language • rightwards derivational reduplication seems to be a feature of all nuclear Micronesian languages (Harrison 1973: 438)
• triplication: leftwards duplication (progressive) and triplication (continuative) are usually neutralized, i.e. for most verbs there exists only the duplicated or the triplicated form respectively; triplication occurs mainly if duplication would be ambiguous (with regard to the distinction between derivation and inflection) - triplication is always inflectional • leftwards (inflectional) reduplication: always a heavy (bimoraic) syllable (CVC- or CV:- or VCC-) • total assimilation applies in reduplication, but not across other morpheme boundaries • rightwards reduplication: derives intransitive or neutral verbs from transitives • a lot of lexicalized reduplication, denoting animals, plants, diseases, colours, etc.
Diachrony
The origin of leftwards reduplication might be CV-, which developed to CVC- or CV:- respectively. (Some unproductive CV-reduplications exist.) Today some younger speakers generally use (C)V:- reduplication for inflection (instead of CVC-/VCC-).
Productivity
Leftwards triplication (continuative) is fully productive. Rightwards (derivational) reduplication is restricted to certain roots.
Repetitive Operations
Onomatopoetic expressions, e.g. koak~koak~koak "to cluck (hen)"; duk~duk~duk "chicken calling"; kuk~kuk~kuk "to nibble on bait" etc.
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Terminology