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1. πίμπλημι and πίμπρημι:
An Instance of Aggressive Reduplication in Greek
Julia Sturm
Harvard University
sturm@fas.harvard.edu
§1 Introduction and Background
The Greek forms πίμπλημι 'I fill' and πίμπρημι 'I burn' have always been somewhat of a
mystery: on the one hand, it is fairly clear that they are reduplicated; on the other, the nasal
in the reduplicant is bizarre and unexplained. I aim to give an overview of the facts
concerning these verbs, including some previously-overlooked information, and to put to
rest the mystery surrounding these two forms.
§1.1 The Roots *pleH1 and *preH1: A Brief Survey
§1.1.1 *pleH1 'fill'
Gk. is almost alone in having a reduplicated present for this verb. Skt. has imperfect
ápiprata.
Other present formations typically nasal-infix: Ved. p(ṇ*ti 'fills' (Mayrhofer 1963), Arm.
lnowm 'I fill', etc. (LIV2
)
§1.1.2 *preH1 'blow; kindle'
Not popular. Hittite has parāi, pariyanzi 'burn, kindle' < *prh1-+é-; however, the form which is
most often discussed in connection to the Greek form is the fully-reduplicated form written
pa-ri-pa-ra-a-i, pa-ri-pa-ra-an-zi. This is typically cited as parip(pa)rai- 'blow [on a trumpet,
etc.]', but this is probably not the correct pronunciation (Oettinger 1979, most recently on
such reduplicated forms Dempsey 2015): this should be priprāi/pripriyanzi.
§1.2 The Greek Facts
The two verbs are reduplicated in the present stem:
πίμπλημι ‘I fill’ πίμπρημι ‘I burn’
ἐπίμπλην ‘I was filling’ ἐπίμπρην ‘I was burning’ (trans.)
In the aorist, the verbs take their forms from πλήθω and πρήθω (< *preh1/pleh1 + -dh
e-):
πλήσω ‘I will fill' πρήσω 'I will burn'
ἐπλήσα ‘I filled' ἔπρήσα 'I burned'
πέπληκα ‘I have filled’ πέπρηκα 'I have burned'
etc.

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With respect to the non-present stems, these verbs appear to have influenced one another.
The most likely direction of influence is πίμπλημι to πίμπρημι, given the relative frequencies
of each verb. πίμπρημι is used in a limited context, and can often be translated as 'raze'
rather than the more neutral 'burn':
πιμπράντες ἅμα τὸν σῖτον τῶν τε Ἰνησσαίων καὶ τῶν Ὑβλαίων.
"...while burning the crops of the Inesseans and the Hybleans."
Thucydides, Pel. War 1.17.2
ἐμοὶ δὲ δώσειν φησὶ πῦρ κεραύνιον, βάλλειν Ἀχαιοὺς ναῦς τε πιμπράναι πυρί.
"...and he promises to give me thunderbolts, to throw at the Achaeans and burn their
ships with fire." Euripides, Troj. Women 80-81
πίμπλημι, on the other hand, is the unmarked word for 'fill':
...μένεος δὲ μέγα φρένες ἀμφιμέλαιναι / πίμπλαντ᾽...
"...his black heart was exceedingly filled with rage..."
Homer, Il. 1.103-4
διφθέρας ἃς εἶχον στεγάσματα ἐπίμπλασαν χόρτου κούφου...
"They filled hides, which they had for coverings, with hay..."
Xenophon, Ana. 1.5.10
πίμπλημι is thus likely to be (and is) more frequently attested/used than πίμπρημι, and can
plausibly be thought to serve as its model. This agrees with Beekes & van Beek 2012 (1392):
"The verb πίμπρημι... forms a sub-class with πίμπλημι... It seems to have been heavily
influenced by it".
§1.3 Previous Explanations
§1.3.1 Nasal-infix?
Meiser (1993) suggests that the nasal in the reduplicant of these verbs can be explained by
the nasal-infix present formation, with subsequent remodeling to avoid homophony:
"Es hätte wohl πάλλω < *pT-ne- < *pT-nU1- gelautet und wäre homonym mit πάλλω "ich
schwinge" gewesen...' (1993: 285 f.29)
The homophony would have been undesirable, and therefore speakers would have therefore
remodeled the verb following the reduplicated present pattern.
Implausible for two reasons:

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1) Double characterization (although not unheard-of) is unlikely. If speakers wanted to
remodel this form, why not doubly characterize as (e.g.) *παλλάνω?
2) This explanation does not account for the unusual behavior of these verbs with nasal-final
preverbs (see below).
§1.3.2 "Intensive" Reduplication + Dissimilation?
This idea (put forth in, e.g., Praust 1996) would connect these forms to the (already
discussed) Hittite form pari-p(pa)rai- 'blows on a trumpet'. The development of the Greek
would then be *pir-pre-mi → πίμ-πρη-μι. This again is implausible:
1) This would require spread from πίμπρημι to πίμπλημ- but the direction of influence is
more likely to have been the other way (based on frequency).
2) This requires the Hittite form to be pari-p(pa)rai-, rather than pri-parai-, as was shown above
to be the correct form.
3) This explanation also does not account for the unusual behavior of these verbs with nasal-
final preverbs.
§2 A New Proposal
§2.1 Unexplained Facts: Nasal-Final Preverbs
As has been noted in several lexicons and grammars (LSJ, Smyth, etc.), but never adequately
explained, πίμπρημι and πίμπλημι have a tendency to lose their reduplicant-nasals when
paired with nasal-final preverbs:
καὶ ἐμπίπληθι ῥέεθρα ὕδατος ἐκ πηγέων
"...and fill the rivers with water from the springs" Homer, Il. 21.311
δεῖν δὲ τοὺς ὀρθῶς πολιτευομένους οὐ τὰς στοὰς ἐμπιπλάναι γραμμάτων
“But it is not necessary for those who are correctly governed to fill their stoae with
written statutes” Isocrates, Or. 7.41.2
τῷ δὲ δυωδεκάτῳ ἔτεϊ ληίου ἐμπιπραμένου ὑπὸ τῆς στρατιῆς
“In the twelfth year, while the crop was being burned by the army…”1
Herodotus, Histories 1.19.1
ἐμπιπρᾶσι τὰς οἰκίας τὰς ἐν κύκλῳ τῆς ἀγορᾶς καὶ τὰς ξυνοικίας
“They burned the houses and the apartments around the agora…”
1
Note that there is no augment here.

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Thucydides, Pel. War 3.74.2
§2.1.2 Nasal-final Preverbs + Augment
A crucial fact is this: When an augment separates a nasal-final preverb and the verb, the nasal
in the reduplicant is restored:
οἰκήματα μὲν τὰ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγρῶν οὔτε κατέβαλλε οὔτε ἐνεπίμπρη οὔτε θύρας ἀπέσπα
"He neither knocked down nor burned nor tore the doors off of country houses..."
Herodotus, Hist. 1.17.9
αἰδοῦς δ᾽ ἐνεπίμπλατο ὥστε καὶ ἐρυθραίνεσθαι ὁπότε συντυγχάνοι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις
"He became so full of modesty that he even blushed whenever he met his elders..."
Xenophon, Cyrop. 1.4.4
This strongly suggests that the nasal is the result of a phonological process.
§2.2 Aggressive Reduplication: Background
Aggressive reduplication is a process which can adequately explain this phenomenon. The
essence of this process is that "already similar syllables are made more similar" (Zuraw 2002,
396). Speakers perceive similar syllables to be imperfectly reduplicated, and then 'correct' the
reduplication, with the end result that the syllables become more similar in some respect.
Crucial facts about aggressive reduplication are: 1) it is sporadic- a common speech error-
and need not be a widespread change; 2) the 'reduplication' in aggressive reduplication is
NOT a morphological process. There is no meaning attached to making these similar
syllables more similar- it is simply misanalysis/speaker error.
Zuraw gives several English examples of AR:
sherbet → sherbert
pompon → pompom
orangutan → orangutang
persevere → perservere
asterisk → askerisk/asterist
In each case, there is no motivation behind the change other than the similarity of one
syllable to another.
Zuraw analyzes these forms as having a 'pseudo-reduplicant' and a 'pseudo-base' in order to
distinguish them from legitimately reduplicated forms. In the case of sherbet → sherbert,
'sher' is the pseudo-base and 'bet' is the pseudo-reduplicant: the pseudo-base is whichever
syllable originally possessed whichever segment is duplicated, and the pseudo-reduplicant is
the syllable that acquires it.
§2.3 Greek Situation as AR
Because of their semantics, πίμπλημι and πίμπρημι appear extremely often with nasal-final
preverbs, especially ἐν-. πίμπλημι and πίμπρημι appear as ἐν+πίμπλημι and ἐν+πίμπρημι

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(ἐν-prefixed forms constitute ~%46 and ~%75 of citations of these verbs in TLG,
respectively). ἐν+πίμπλημι 'fill [up]2
'; ἐν+πίμπρημι 'burn [up]'.
Speakers then were hearing these prefixed forms almost as often or more often than non-
prefixed forms.
§2.3.1 Step 1: Reduplication
In AR terms: speakers heard ἐμπίπλημι and ἐμπίπρημι very often. Eventually the nasal in
the preverb began to 'infect' the proper reduplicant of the verb (πί-). The forms then became
ἐμπίμπλημι and ἐμπίμπρημι. The 'pseudobase', in this case, is the preverb ἐμ- (after
assimilation), and after AR has applied, the 'pseudoreduplicant' is the syllable πίμ-
(coincidentally also the 'proper' reduplicant of this present formation).
§2.3.2 Step 2: Dissimilation
The final fact to explain is the tendency of the nasal in the reduplicant to disappear when the
nasal-final preverb is adjacent to the verb. This can best be explained as a dissimilation
process, which began as a tendency before becoming a rule.
§2.3.2.1 Dissimilation: Development of a Pattern
General idea: πίπλημι > ἐμπίπλημι > ἐμπίμπλημι > ἐμπίπλημι BUT ἐνεπίμπλην.
§2.3.2.1.1 Early Years
Authors from the beginning of the attestation of these verbs (Homer) to about the 2nd or
3rd centuries BCE vary with regard to whether or not they dissimilate in the situation
described in §2.3.2. Some retain the nasal in all situations (e.g., Plato), while others
dissimilate (e.g. Xenophon, Herodotus). There are no authors who consistently show no
nasal in the reduplicant in all forms.
§2.3.2.1.2 Later Situation
After this period (c. 2nd century BCE), the usage of this verb coalesces into a pattern: nasal
in the reduplicant disappears when there is no augment, and reappears when there is. The
later the writer, the more likely he is to observe this new 'rule'.
§3 Motivating AR
Why should the aggressively reduplicated forms have become, ultimately, grammatical? Is
there something inherently phonetically undesirable about the correctly formed
reduplicated-present forms *piplēmi and *piprēmi?
§3.1 Repetition Avoidance
A plausible motivation for the retention of the AR form is repetition avoidance. Perceptual
studies (Kanwisher 1987, Walter 2007, e.g.) show that speakers tend not to be able to
perceive repeated entities as separate entities. This motivates dissimilation, haplology, and
other strategies to break up too-similar sequences.
2
In many cases it is difficult/impossible to tell what nuance, exactly, ἐν brings to these forms, since
they very often are translatable identically to the simplex. A 'completive' or 'intensifying' function
seems to be the consensus.

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§3.2 Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP)
This in turn can be explained/motivated by the Obligatory Contour Principle. The idea here
is that the initial sequence *pip is dispreferred, since the two stops are identical. Grassmann's
Law and other processes have created a situation in Greek such that reduplicated presents
do not often have the form C1iC1 (of course, there are notable exceptions). The exceptional
thing about *piplēmi and *piprēmi is that, due to the frequency with which they appear with
nasal-final preverbs, a solution is available: AR.
*piplēmi (too similar) is assisted by nasal: pim-plēmi now has a nasal before the second stop,
dissimilating it enough. Why em-pim-plēmi → em-pi-plēmi? em-pim-plēmi now has nasals
before both stops (too similar again!).
§4 Conclusion
This solution (Aggressive Reduplication) explains the presence of the nasal in the reduplicant
of πίμπλημι and πίμπρημι, without claiming any morphological significance for the nasal or
any connection to other forms in IE. AR is hypothesized to have been motivated by
repetition avoidance, itself motivated by the OCP. The 'aggressively reduplicated' forms of
these verbs were employed by speakers/writers in various ways until c. 2nd century BCE,
after which a rule began to develop: when a nasal final preverb is adjacent to the verb, there
is no nasal in the reduplicant; however, if an augment separates the preverb and the verb, the
nasal resurfaces.
§5 Selected References
Beekes, Robert S.P, and Lucien van Beek. 2012. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill.
Dempsey, Timothy. 2015. Verbal Reduplication in Anatolian. PhD Dissertation, UCLA.
Mayrhofer, Manfred. 1963. Kurzgefaßtes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen. Band II: D-M.
Heidelberg: Winter.
Kanwisher, Nancy. 1987. ‘Repetition Blindness: Type Recognition Without Token Individuation’.
Cognition 27: 117-43.
LIV2
= Rix, Helmut. 2001. Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben. 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Reichert.
LSJ = Liddell, Henry G., Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Meiser, Gerhard. 1993. ‘Zur Funktion des Nasalpräsens im Urindogermanischen'. In Gerhard
Meiser (ed.), Indogermanica et Italica. Festschrift für Helmut Rix zum 65. Geburtstag. Innsbrucker
Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 72. 280-313.
Oettinger, Norbert. 1979. Die Stammbildung des hethitischen Verbums. Nürnberg: Carl.
Praust, Karl. 1996. ‘Armenisch əmpem ‘trinke’’. Die Sprache 38/2: 184-200.
Smyth, Herbert W. 1920. A Greek Grammar for Colleges. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
TLG = Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Digital Library. Ed. Maria C. Pantella. University of California,
Irvine. http://www.tlg.uci.edu.
Walter, Mary Ann. 2007. Repetition Avoidance in Human Language. PhD Dissertation, MIT.
Zuraw, Kie. 2002. "Aggressive Reduplication." Phonology 19. 395-439.