[This is part of a series of defectivity case studies.]

Rose (2000) describes a circumscribed form of defectivity in Chaha, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. Throughout Ethio-Semitic, many verbs have a frequentative formed using a quadriliteral verbal template. Since few verb roots are quadriconsonantal—most are triconsonantal, some are biconsonantal—a sort of reduplication and/or spreading is used to fill in the template. In Tigryina, for instance (p. 318), the frequentative template is of the form CɘCaCɘC. Then, frequentative of the triconsonantal verb root √/grf/ ‘collect’ is [gɘrarɘf], with the root /r/ repeated, and for a biconsonantal verb root like √/ħt/ ‘ask’, the frequentative is [ħatatɘt], with three root /t/s.

Rose contrasts this state of affairs with Chaha. In this language, the frequentative template CɨCɘCɘC cannot be satisfied by a biconsonantal root like √/tʼm/ ‘bend’ or √/Rd/ ‘burn’, and all such verbs lack a frequentative.¹ The expected *[tʼɨmɘmɘm] and *[nɨdɘdɘd] are ill-formed, as are all other alternatives. Furthermore, no frequentatives of any sort can be formed with quadriconsonantal roots.

Rose notes that there are often semantic reasons for a verb to lack a frequentative (e.g., stative and resultative verbs are generally not compatible with it), this does not seem applicable here.

Endnotes

1. As Rose explains: “R represents a coronal sonorant which may be realized as [n] or [r] depending on context…” (p. 317).

References

Rose, S. 2000. Multiple correspondence in reduplication. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, pages 315-326.