It is well known that though reduplicative morphemes generally fill their content through copy from a base stem, some also display a portion of fixed material. Understanding the source of such fixed segmentism in reduplication has been a matter of controversy and the subject of ongoing research in phonological theory. A long-standing theoretical approach has attributed any fixed content to prespecified material (Marantz 1982, Yip 1982 and subsequent developments; see Alderete et al. 1999 for an overview). However, more recent work has presented an alternative. A fruitful line of inquiry has stemmed from the notion that fixed content in reduplicative affixation can be explained without prespecification, through the activity of phonological constraints that are well integrated into the phonotactics and segmental-featural system of the language (McCarthy & Prince 1994b, 1995, Urbanczyk 1996a, b, Spaelti 1997, Alderete et al. 1999). Alongside the issue of fixed segmentism stands the question whether templatic structures are required to determine the size and shape of reduplicative affixes or whether such properties can be made to follow from general constraints on prosodic structure (see work cited above; also McCarthy & Prince 1994a, Prince 1997, Gafos 1998a, b, Urbanczyk 1998; with foundation from McCarthy & Prince 1986, 1990).

This paper brings a study of Mbe affixation to bear on these issues.