Relatives, and the effect of fused prefixes on the availability of

Relatives are permitted to reduplicate like adjectives, but the process appears to be restricted to a smaller proportion of relatives, compared to the proportion of adjectives that reduplicate. An interesting feature of relatives is that many of them have fossilized prefixes that co-occur with the variable agreement displayed based on the head noun of the construction, and this seems to be a factor in preventing reduplication from being more productive.

Many of the forms that are not allowed to reduplicate have a fused class 1 prefix that is present along with the concord (Lanham 1971). The prefixal m- in the relative stems given below behaves as part of the root itself, and not like a separable prefix or independent morpheme.79

awareness, and speaker recognition that -zin- is a morpheme and should not be “broken up” under reduplication.

79_{As discussed in section (2) the class prefix for “relatives” (rather than “true” adjectives) is identical for}

all the noun classes except those containing a nasal, and for the nasal noun classes, the nasal deletes in the relative prefix, along with any prefixal vowels that follow it: adjectival o-m(u)- is relative o-, adjectival e- zin- is relative e-zi-, adjectival e-n- is relative e-, etc.

(17) -mpófu ‘poor’ → umuntu ó-mpófu (Cl.1) ‘poor person’

intombazane é-mpófu (Cl. 9) ‘poor girl’

abantu ába-mpófu (Cl 2) ‘poor people’ * abantu ába-pófu

In the last example, if we exclude the initial m- from the adjectival stem, the resulting form is ungrammatical, which just shows that the m- is genuinely part of the stem, and is (synchronically) unrelated to any class agreement. The adjectival stem -mpofu cannot reduplicate, and this is the general pattern for relatives showing a fossilized -m- prefix. The unavailability of reduplication is unrelated to the class of the head noun the relative is agreeing with:

(18) a. -mpofu ‘poor’ → * o-[mpofu+mpofu] (cl.1) * o-m-[pofu+pofu] (cl.1) * aba-[mpofu+mpofu] (cl.2) * aba-m-[pofu+pofu] (cl.2) * e-[mpofu+mpofu] (cl.9) * e-m-[pofu+pofu] (cl.9) b. o-mhlope ‘white (cl.1)’ → * o-[mhlope+mhlope]

* o-m-[hlope+hlope] c. o-mtoti ‘sweet (cl.1)’ → * o-[mtoti+mtoti]

* o-m-[toti+toti] d. o-mnene ‘kind (cl.1) → * o-[mnene+mnene]

* o-m-[nene+nene]

language. Interestingly, the -m, behaves as part of the root like the examples of other relatives in (18), but it is dispreferred to include it in what gets reduplicated:

(19) a. umoba ó-mnandi → umoba óm[nandi+nandi] ‘good-tasting sugar cane (cl.1a)’ ??_{umoba o[mnandi+mnandi]} b. inyama é-mnandi → inyama ém[nandi+nandi] ‘good-tasting meat (cl.9) ??inyama e[mnandi+mnandi] 80 This pattern is surprising given that there is robust evidence that the m- is part of the relative, rather than an agreement morpheme. Forms like those shown below are encountered very frequently:

(20)a. u-bisi ó-lú-mnandi ‘good-tasting milk (cl.11)’ * u-bisi o-lu-nandi

b. imithi é-mi-mnandi ‘good-tasting medicine (cl.4)’ * imithi e-mi-nandi

c. ukudla o-ku-mnandi ‘good tasting food (cl.15)’ * ukudla o-ku-nandi

What (20) tells us is that there is no ambiguity about the status of the initial m- vis á vis the relative stem– it is the initial segment, and is unrelated to the agreement morphology that is exerted on the relative by the head noun of the construction. However, this is difficult to reconcile with the reduplication judgments given in (15), in which the m- is treated like a separable prefix, and dispreferred in the reduplicant.

The data in (19) show that there is “something” about the fossilized m- prefix that

80_{The absence of data in (19) of forms showing agreement with a head noun belonging to a noun class}

which has a fully syllabic relative agreement prefix (such as class 7 esi-, etc.) is regrettable. Unfortunately, the judgments presented in this chapter were collected from a single speaker in Berkeley who has returned to South Africa, although the phenomena introduced here certainly warrant more extensive study.

indicates to speakers that it can be separated from the relative stem, even though they clearly treat it as though it is part of the stem in non-reduplicated contexts, like those in (20). For one thing, the sequence of -mn- is not phonotactically licit, and could only have developed diachronically through an alternation involving the -m(u)- morpheme, an alternation which is still synchronically active (shown with the class agreement prefixes in “true” adjectives, cf. o-mu-hle vs. o-m-khulu).

In light of this aspect of Zulu’s synchronic grammar, it is reasonable for speakers to interpret the initial m- of the relative stem as a morpheme distinct from the -nandi that follows. Additionally, without data from other noun classes, it is possible that for classes 1 and 9 the m- has been re-analyzed as a prefix, on analogy with the nasal prefix that is part of the agreement paradigm for “true” adjectives but not relatives (though this hypothesis is admittedly somewhat far-fetched since there is robust evidence from other noun classes that the m- is in fact part of the relative stem).

Although many relatives contain a fossilized m- prefix whose erstwhile prefixal status seems to be marginally accessible to speakers , there are a small number of relatives with fused prefixes that are more “easily identifiable” as such. Preliminarily, it appears to be the case that speakers are more comfortable lopping off this prefix and reduplicating the root, and there is none of the ambiguity we saw in (19) with -mnandi. In the examples below, the -lu- in lu(-)hlaza ‘blue’ is a vestige of class 11 agreement (the

ulu- class), and the -ma- in -ma(-)khaza is a vestige of class 6 agreement (the ama-

(21) a. inja é-lú(-)hláza → inja é-lú-[hláza+hlaza]

‘ blue dog (Cl.9,Cl.11) * inja e-[lu-hla+lu-hlaza] b. kú-má(-)kháza82

‘ it’s cold out (Cl. 17, Cl.6) → kú-má-[kháza+khaza] * ku-[ma-kha+ma-khaza]

The contrast between (19) and (21) is noteworthy; it appears that the lack of ambiguity in the fused prefixes in -lu(-)hlaza and -ma(-)khaza helps make these forms available for reduplication. Of the numerous relatives with a fossilized m- prefix, I only encountered one that could reduplicate (-mnandi), but both of the relatives with the easily separable prefixes were acceptable as reduplications. Especially in the case of relatives, the

relationship between the “morphological analyzability” and reduplication is a promising area for future work.