Reduplicating Verbs in Gothic and Old English

The goal of this study is to analyze the reduplication patterns in Gothic and Old English (OE) within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1993ab, 1995) and to explicate how these patterns are related to each other. The analysis proposed in this study demonstrates that the relation between Gothic and OE can be easily captured through the interaction of the universal constraints that participate in reduplication. In aid of the ranked constraints, the proposed analysis also easily incorporates the segmental changes that the OE reduplicants undergo. Unlike the previous analysis by Kim (1986), no stipulation for the size and location of the reduplicants is necessary in this analysis. The optimal size and location of the reduplicant fall out from the basic tenets of OT such as the permutation of violable universal constraints.