On Base-Reduplicant Identity

In reduplication the segmental material of an affix resembles or is identical to that of the stem. To account for this, derivational theories hold that the reduplicant copies some or all of the features of the stem (Wilbur, 1973, and subsequent work). This contrasts with optimality theoretic Correspondence Theory where it is argued that the relationship between a reduplicant and its base should instead be characterized as a symmetric relation of correspondence where reduplicative identity reflects Faithfulness between the two corresponding strings of segments (McCarthy and Prince, 1995, henceforth M&P). Let us call any theory that takes reduplicative identity to be a copyrelation a “copy-theory” and the proposal that this relation is symmetric the “Full Symmetry Hypothesis”. Copy-theories and the Full Symmetry Hypothesis make crucially different predictions about the identity-preserving interactions that can take place between a reduplicant and its base. In a copy-theory, a phonological change can never take place in the base simply for the sake of reduplicative identity. This is because copying can only take place from the base to the reduplicant and not vice versa. Thus, in a copy-theory, a phonological rule