The Structure of Evaluative Formations in Yoruba

Abstract

The issue of the processes involved in the derivation of the following sets of Yoruba words:
(a) beẹrẹrẹ/bẹẹrẹbẹ ‘very many’, tààràrà/tààràtà ‘straight on’, etc.; and (b) kóńkóló
‘minutely small’, tínńtínní ‘very small portion’, etc.; is far from being rested. Are they
products of partial reduplication or unique examples of suffixation in the language? Added
to the puzzle is the fact that though natural languages tend to be economical by disallowing
redundancy, the two sets, with their different forms, appear to target the same semantic
niche, which is intensification. This study investigates the structure and semantic
interpretations of these sets of words with insights from evaluative morphology (Stump,
1993; Å tekauer, 2015; Aronoff, 2016, 2019; etc.). It argues that the two sets are evaluative
formations in which the language subtly divides its intensification features into diminution
and augmentation. Therefore, the two sets and their subs co-exist without redundancy as
each targets separate linguistic niches within the intensification grading in the language.
The paper argues in favour of a combination of progressive reduplication and
morphophonemic assimilation of features of the root/base as the processes employed in
the evaluative formations.