A Unified Morphosyntactic Analysis of Reduplication as Inclusion

This paper proposes a unified analysis of reduplication as the lexical spell-out of a relational part–whole/inclusion predicate (⊆) in morphosyntax. Adopting the framework of Manzini and colleagues, we argue that reduplicative morphology—across diverse languages and domains—encodes a subset relation, whereby an event, individual, or property is interpreted as included in a larger set or continuum of similar instances. We bring evidence from a range of typologically diverse languages (Tagalog, Bikol, Malay, Fulfulde, Italian, and sign languages) to show that reduplication correlates with non-maximality: plural number (members of a set), distributivity (individuals/events taken one by one), iterative aspect (sub-events in a larger event), and evaluative attenuation or intensification (a degree as part of a scale). The analysis is developed in a formal syntactic representation where reduplication is triggered by an elementary inclusion operator (⊆) at the X or XP level. We show that a single semantic primitive (⊆) can account for the varied meanings of reduplication in nominal, verbal, and adjectival domains. We discuss the implications of this unified approach, suggesting that reduplication is not a mere iconic or phonological process, but rather the surface reflex of a fundamental grammatical operation of inclusion.