Doubled up all over again: borrowing, sound change and reduplication in Iwaidja

Abstract

This article examines the interactions between reduplication, sound change, and borrowing, as played out in the Iwaidja language of Cobourg Peninsula, Arnhem Land, in Northern Australia, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Iwaidjan family. While Iwaidja traditionally makes use of (various types of) right-reduplication, contact with two other left-reduplicating languages-one Australian (Bininj Gun-wok) and one Austronesian (Makassarese)-has led to the introduction of several (non-productive) left-reduplicating patterns. At the same time as these new patterns have been entering the language, the cumulative effect of sweeping sound changes within Iwaidja has complicated the transparency of reduplicative outputs. This has left the language with an extremely varied and complicated set of reduplication types, for some of which the analysis is no longer synchronically recoverable by children. Show more