On fusion and multiple copy spell-out: The case of verbal repetition

Focusing on the case of verbal repetition in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language spoken in central Nigeria, this chapter shows that verbal repetition constructions are mono-clausal syntactic objects in which the participating verbs are neither independently base-merged, as in the case of verb serialization for instance, nor are they related through reduplicative copying in the morphology/phonology. Rather, it is argued that these constructions involve chain formation and postsyntactic morphological reanalysis, which allows phonetic realization of multiple links/copies at PF. The chapter also adds some refi nements to Nunes’s (1999 , 2004 ) proposal on the interaction of the syntactic component with the PF wing of grammar as far as phonetic realization of multiple copies is concerned.

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