Gouskova, Maria. 2004. Minimal reduplication as a paradigm uniformity effect.. In B. Schmeiser, V. Chand, A. Kelleher, and A. Rodriguez, eds. The Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. pp. 265-278.
Reduplicative affixes are often limited in size to a single syllable or even a smaller unit. I argue that this restriction follows from disparate sources and is not homogeneous. In one type of pattern, RED constitutes the largest syllable possible, i.e., a single heavy syllable. This restriction follows from the interaction of constraints on foot form and parsing. In another type of pattern, whcih I term minimal reduplication, RED is limited to the smallest size possible, e.g., a single consonant. I attribute this restriction to paradigm uniformity: the smaller the affix, the more similar the reduplicated form is to its paradigmatic base, the non-reduplicated form.