The A'ingae Co-Occurrence Constraint

Abstract

Many OT frameworks have been proposed to account for co-occurrence phenomena, including agreement as correspondence (Rose & Walker, 2004) and total and partial identity (Gallagher & Coon, 2009). However, aggressive reduplication (Zuraw, 2002) is best able to account for new data from A'ingae, as it accounts for agreement between whole syllables rather than individual segments. In this paper, I put forward novel co-occurrence data from A'ingae, a language isolate spoken by approximately 1,500 people in Ecuador and Colombia. I then describe how the data can be accounted for using Zuraw's (2002) aggressive reduplication, with only minor modifications. Finally, I consider historical motivations for the existence of this type of co-occurrence pattern.