Event number is typically marked on verbs and hence “may reasonably be taken as a type of verbal aspect” (Corbett 2000: 247). But there is no reason why it could not be marked on a word class other than verbs expressing events, such as ideo- phones. Unlike participant number, event number does not specify the number of subjects or objects or other noun phrases, but the number of events, most com- monly the opposition between single event and multiple events (Corbett 2000:
246, Mithun 1988: 217, cf. also Newman’s notion of pluractionality 2006).
In Lithuanian, full reduplication (iteration) of ideophones expresses event number, and its absence, the lack of pluractionality at least in Palangos Juzė and probably also in other varieties of Lithuanian (see the many examples in Jašinskaitė 1975 conforming to the distinction). This has been observed already by Senn (1966), who expresses it succinctly but somewhat cryptically as follows:
“Durch wiederholte oder andauernde Handlung erzeugter wiederholter oder andauernder Naturlaut wird durch Wiederholung des Schallwortes nachgeahmt”
[Repeated or persisting natural sound, produced by repeated or persisting events, is imitated by a repetition of the sound word.] (Senn 1966: 308). Senn’s statement implicitly contains a diachronic explanation – the development starts with repea- ted sound being expressed by repeated ideophones – and a synchronic motiva- tion for the opposition: iconicity. Reduplication in ištiktukai is also extensively discussed by Andersen (2009: 130), who distinguishes different degrees of iconi- city: “the single iteration is not to be understood as representing a single repeti- tion, but as a common metaphor for multiple events or event parts”.10
The opposition is illustrated in examples (6) and (7) from the Ninth Evening in Palangos Juzė, where the story becomes highly ethnographical, describing the process of courtship and the subsequent wedding. Courtship follows strict rules.
The suitor does not speak himself, his companion speaks for him, and as soon as the request is made to the father of the bride, the daughter immediately disap-
10 Andersen (2009) argues that the reduplication in ištiktukai in Lithuanian is one of several areas in Baltic morphology where reduplication is renewed after Baltic and Slavic have lost the productive devices of reduplication of Indo-European. This is an interesting approach, but I find it too difficult to reconstruct the use of ideophones in Indo-European to be sure whether there is really an innovation in Lithuanian.
pears, which is stated in (6). Her act of slipping out is momentary, which is why it is expressed in (6) with a non-reduplicated ideophone.
(6) Single event>simplex (Valančius 1996: 69)
…dukt-ė šmurkš spruk-o oran ir kaip daughter-nom.sg ideo slip-pst.3 out and like pel-el-ė po šluot-a pa-si-slėp-ė mouse-dim-nom.sg under broom-ins.sg pv-refl-hide-pst.3
‘[Having heard those words] the daughter šmurkš slipped out and hid like a mouse under the broom.’
The beating of the heart, however, when the daughter reappears consists of multiple events, which is why it is expressed by a reduplicated ideophone in (7).
(7) Multiple event>full reduplication (Valančius 1996: 69)
At-rad-us į-ėj-o raudon-a, kaip vėž-ys pv-find-cnv:ds:ant pv-go-pst.3 red-nom.sg,f like crab-nom.sg
iš-vir-t-as, šird-is j-os timpt timpt
pv-cook-ptc:pst:pass-nom:sg:m heart-nom.sg she-gen ideo ideo greit-ai muš-ė kaip gaid-ys sparn-us,
quick-adv beat-pst.3 like rooster-nom.sg wing-acc:pl giedo-ti norė-dam-as
sing-inf want-cnv:ss:sim-sg:m
‘After they found her she entered with a face red like a cooked crab, her heart beat quickly timpt timpt like a rooster “beats” with his wings when it wants to sing.’
Note again the comparison with animals in (6) and (7) – mouse, crab, and rooster. It is important to point out that the aspectual distinction in ideophones is rather different from the well-known perfective-imperfective aspect opposition in Slavic languages.
Example (8a,b) is used to illustrate the close relationship between aspect and number, with predicates meaning ‘sit down’. If several persons sit down, they do so at various places and usually not exactly simultaneously (8b, multiple event);
with a single subject, however, sitting down is a single event (8a):
(8) Single and multiple event (Valančius 1996: 80, 51)
a. motyn-a plekš at-si-sėd-o ant vien-a woman-nom.sg ideo pv-refl-sit-pst.3 on one-ins.sg.f skryni-a
box-ins.sg
‘the woman plekš sat down on a box’
b. vis-i plekš plekš su-sėd-o ant pamat-u all-nom.pl.m ideo ideo pv-sit-pst.3 on ground-ins.sg ‘all plekš plekš sat down on the ground’
It is well known that repeated ideophones tend to express plurality. Kilian- Hatz (2001: 158) notes for Kxoe: “Reduplication always denotes, when used with ideophones, a kind of plurality, i.e. an increase of intensity concerning states or e.g. colors”. In Palangos Juzė, full reduplication of ideophones is arguably fully grammaticalized as an expression of event number. Reduplicated ideophones are slightly more frequent (54.2%, 115 tokens) than their non-reduplicated counter- parts (45.8%, 97 tokens). It is therefore not clear whether reduplicated ideopho- nes should be considered the marked or the unmarked member of the opposition.
Lithuanian verbs also have derivational means to express iterativity lexically, but these are more idiosyncratic than with ideophones. Interestingly, iterativity is more grammaticalized in ideophones than in verbs.
It is not difficult to find other examples beyond Palangos Juzė, where Lithua- nian ideophones express event number. Example (9) is from a modern newspaper interview with an expert on pollution who explains that pollution is not caused only by big multinational companies, but also by ordinary people who are negli- gent and simply do not care. The example given is a stereotypical neighbor who throws garbage on the street. It starts with the already familiar comparison with an animal: The woman has the double chin of a mouse. (It is as unusual in Lithuanian as in English to imagine double chins of mice. For our purposes, it suffices to note that there is a comparison with an animal, not so much what is means exactly.) The first ideophone dirst – which is repeated – stands for repeated side glancing. Then čiupt ‘grasping’ and šliūkšt ‘pouring’ are momentary events. Note that the ideopho- nes are used here without concomitant verbs; they take the valency of verbs they
“replace”: šliūkšt ‘pouring’ takes a direct object in the accusative case and a goal complement, dirst ‘glancing’ comes with several dependent directional adverbs.
(9) From a newspaper interview with an expert about pollution štai ji, guv-i moterišk-ė,
voilà she:nom swift-nom.sg.f woman-nom.sg
pel-yt-ės pasmakr-e, žvitri-u žvilgsni-u mouse-dim-gen.sg under.chin-ins.sg brisk-ins.sg.m glance-ins.sg tik dirst-dirst kairėn dešinėn, viršun apačion aha, only ideo-ideo to.left to.right up down aha niekas ne-mat-o, tai staiga čiupt ir šliūkšt nobody neg-see-prs.3 so quickly ideo and ideo
piln-ą kibir-iok-ą šiukšli-ų į
full-acc.sg bucket-augm-acc.sg sweeping-gen.pl in
gatv-ę, ant šaligatvi-o, vos ne street-acc.sg on sidewalk-gen.sg hardly not praeivi-ams ant galv-ų…
passersby-dat.pl on head-gen.pl
‘[From details not worth of any attention, pecadillo, the most common non- educatedness, for example, when even from the opposite house of my neigh- bor:] Voilà she, the swift woman, with the double-chin of a mouse, with a brisk glance only dirst dirst (side-glancing) to the left to the right, down, up, aha, nobody sees it, then quickly čiupt (grasping) and šliūkšt (pouring) a full bucketone sweepings on the street, on the sidewalk, almost on the heads of passers-by. [The motive for justification of all dirtmakers and litterers is the same, from oil and coal barons until untidy builders – oh, it is a peca- dillo, nothing happens, I am not the only one who litters.]’
It is not always clear what reduplication in ideophones means, which is illustrated in the anecdote in (10) given here in full length without glossing. The anecdote plays with the fact that it is difficult to point to the exact meaning of the reduplication, but the addressee’s response can be taken as evidence that reduplication usually means something, especially when used contrastively.11 The addressee is suspicious that the difference means something and must be reassured that it does not.
(10) Anekdotas
Sėdi Chaimas su geriausiu draugu kalėjimo kameroje ir garsiai svajoja:
– Kai mus išleis iš kalėjimo, kaip mums bus gera. Nueisim į mano krautuvę, tu nupirksi didelį batoną ir butelį limonado. Paskui nueisim į parką, atsisėsim ant suoliuko ir taip skaniai valgysim. Tu krimst, aš krimst, krimst. Tu gurkšt, aš gurkšt, gurkšt.
– Palauk-palauk, o kodėl tu du kartus krimst-krimst ir gurkšt-gurkšt?
– Taigi mes su tavim geriausi draugai!
‘Chaimas sits with his best friend in a prison cell and dreams aloud:
– If they’ll let us out of the prison, we will live so well. We’ll go to my shop, you will buy a big loaf of bread and a bottle of soda. Then we’ll go to the park, sit on a bank and eat. You krimst, I krimst krimst. You gurkšt, I gurkšt gurkšt.
– Wait a moment, and why you twice krimst-krimst and gurkšt-gurkšt?
– How can you doubt that we are the very best of friends?’
11 I am grateful to Mark Dingemanse for this remark.
Based on the material in Jašinskaitė (1971), Andersen (2009) argues that there is only a weak correlation between eventive (=ideophone) iteration and aspect: Ite- rated eventives represent either an activity or a process (imperfective equivalent) or a composite event (perfective equivalent). Partial reduplication (e.g., buburgt), however, tends to go together with perfectivity as well as infixed stem extensions, apophony, or prefixation. I agree with Andersen (2009: 132) that “[e]ventives with the prefix pa- are perfective; but also without the prefix, simple eventives are mostly equivalent to a perfective verb” while there is no strict (im)perfectivity opposition in ideophones. However, it seems to me that Senn’s approach in its modern interpre- tation of event number captures a more general principle at least for Palangos Juzė.
The material of Jašinskaitė (1971) is more difficult to interpret because it comes from most different sources. It cannot be taken for granted that full reduplication has the same function in all varieties of Lithuanian. A further analysis of the function of reduplication in Lithuanian is a promising task for Lithuanian corpus linguistics.