Stress-sensitive consonant gemination through plural noun reduplication in Tohono O’odham Free

This study examines how plural noun reduplication in Tohono O’odham (TO) language is phonetically realized. To make a noun plural, the first CV sequence (i.e., base; e.g., goks “a dog” → gogoks “dogs”) or the first consonant of the base (e.g., pado “a pig” → papdo “pigs”) are reduplicated after the base (Hill & Zepeda, 1998). Base and reduplicant have been regarded phonologically equivalent (i.e., consonant gemination; Fitzgerald, 2003). In a sense that TO has the strong-weak stress pattern across syllables (e.g., tówa “turkey”), stress may influence reduplicants' duration. The CV reduplicant at the second syllable with the weak stress may not be phonologically same as the base and the C reduplicant at the coda of the base with the strong stress. If CV and C reduplicants are equivalent even with stress, an additional prosodic unit (i.e., mora) may exist. The analysis of TO speech supports that the base (CV₁) is longer than the reduplicant (CV₂ or C₂) even with other contextual variables. Reduplication process may be stress-timed, but it is unknown whether speakers equally treat base and reduplicants. This paper will also discuss a need to examine how TO speakers control the timing with rhythm between base and reduplicant.