Finite-state Model of Shupamem Reduplication

Abstract

Shupamem, a language of Western Cameroon, is a tonal language which also exhibits the morpho-phonological process of full reduplication. This creates two challenges for a finitestate model of its morpho-syntax and morphophonology: how to manage the full reduplication, as well as the autosegmental nature of lexical tone. Dolatian and Heinz (2020) explain how 2-way finite-state transducers can model full reduplication without an exponential increase in states, and finite-state transducers with multiple tapes have been used to model autosegmental tiers, including tone (Wiebe, 1992;Dolatian and Rawski, 2020a;Rawski and Dolatian, 2020). Here we synthesize 2-way finite-state transducers and multitape transducers, resulting in a finite-state formalism that subsumes both, to account for the full reduplicative processes in Shupamem which also affect tone.