Minimizing RED: Nasal Copy in Mbe

In this paper, I argue that a nasal agreement phenomenon in Mbe (BenueCongo, Nigeria; Bamgbose 1971) is a case of reduplication in which material is copied as a nasal coda to a CV prefix with place features linked to the following onset; if place-linking fails, no copy occurs. I demonstrate that this account has important analytical implications for Mbe and more generally, for the theory of reduplication in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993). First, the place-linked nasal status of the copied segment is independently-motivated by conditions on Mbe syllable structure. Second, the size restriction on the reduplicant can be obtained through an atemplatic alignment constraint, AllSyllableLeft, utilized in a ranking producing The Emergence of the Unmarked (acronymically TETU; McCarthy & Prince 1994b; size-restrictor ranking after Spaelti 1997 building on McCarthy & Prince 1994a; Prince 1996). Further, I show that alternative templatic approaches to the size restriction are insufficient. Also addressed is the issue of prespecification in reduplication. Analyzing prefixes exhibiting nasal agreement in Mbe as reduplicative would seem to require admitting prespecified segments in reduplication; however, evidence from Mbe morphology is adduced to show that what appears to be prespecified material in fact belongs to a separate prefix. The analysis thus supports the claim that fixed segmentism in reduplication is not prespecified but is either phonologically-determined (i.e. default) or morphologically-determined (termed Ômelodic overwritingÕ by McCarthy & Prince 1986) (McCarthy & Prince 1986, 1990; Urbanczyk 1996a, b; Alderete et al. 1996; Spaelti 1997). A proposal is introduced to eliminate the emergence of prespecified material in reduplicative affixes from an extension of the Root-Affix Faith metaconstraint (McCarthy & Prince 1994a, 1995).