Siuslaw final-consonant reduplication and the anti-mirative domain

Abstract

This paper argues that the function of final consonant reduplication (FCR) in Siuslaw ([sis]; Oregon-Coast Penutian/Isolate) is to construe the information in a proposition as unsurprising and expected, as information that should already be known to listeners or at least well anticipated by them. This function is more or less the opposite of mirativity, where information is construed as surprising or unexpected, and is related to a functional domain that was recently labeled “enimitive”: the construal of information as “uncontroversial”. This paper shows that the discourse profile of the Siuslaw FCR includes uses that belong to the domain of the enimitive, e.g., when deployed in quoted speech or monologues, but that it also includes functionally related uses that do not belong to the enimitive domain, e.g., on the main event line of narratives and in procedural texts. The functional range of the Siuslaw FCR, then, is wider than the enimitive domain. We use this range of uses, together with the uses of similar constructions in some other languages, to argue for a functional domain of anti-mirativity that includes the enimitive as a sub-domain. We conclude by proposing a preliminary sketch of the anti-mirativity functional domain.