A Study of Total Reduplication in Ghayeni Dialect based on Parallel and Stratal Optimality Theory

The process of Reduplication, due to its importance, has attracted very much attention from linguists in recent decades The present research aims at describing and analyzing total reduplication processes including added medial and final total reduplication and echo reduplication (changing the initial consonant or vowel of reduplicant) in Ghayeni dialect based on Parallel Optimality Theory (POT), in particular Stratal Optimality Theory (SOT). To this end, the considered reduplicative data were gathered based on Shaghaghi reduplication model (2000, 2018). To analyze some data, we need to predict the correct output through some levels to consider the morphological derivation correctly. Since POT has a one-level (input and output) nature, it is unable to explain some reduplicative data. So, SOT, with no limit on the number and kinds of levels, is used to analyze the medial and final added total reduplication. In the present study, the final added total reduplication is considered in two stem levels in which ONSET is on the top of constraint ranking. Since the final consonant of the base undergoes germination, in the medial added total reduplication using enclitic /o/, two levels of stem and word are required. In the medial added total reduplication, the constraint ranking is only different in stem level (a) because the type of reduplicant (echo or non-echo) is determined in this level. But in the next levels, stem level (b) and word level, which undergoes germination and resyllabification, constraints have the same ranking. The results show that SOT presents a more obvious analysis of the mid-levels in the medial and final added total reduplication.