Reduplication
Encyclopedia
Reduplication in linguistics
is a morphological
process in which the root
or stem of a word
(or part of it) is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
Reduplication is used in inflection
s to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation
to create new words. It is often used when a speaker adopts a tone more "expressive" or figurative than ordinary speech and is also often, but not exclusively, iconic
in meaning. Reduplication is found in a wide range of languages and language groups, though its level of linguistic productivity
varies.
Reduplication is the standard term for this phenomenon in the linguistics literature. Other terms that are occasionally used include cloning, doubling, duplication, and repetition.
in one of two different ways: either (1) as reduplicated segments (sequences of consonants/vowels) or (2) as reduplicated prosodic
units (syllable
s or mora
s). In addition to phonological description, reduplication often needs to be described morphologically
as a reduplication of linguistic constituents
(i.e. words, stems, roots
). As a result, reduplication is interesting theoretically as it involves the interface between phonology and morphology.
The base is the word (or part of the word) that is to be copied. The reduplicated element is called the reduplicant, often abbreviated as RED or sometimes just R.
In reduplication, the reduplicant is most often repeated only once. However, in some languages, reduplication can occur more than once, resulting in a tripled form, and not a duple as in most reduplication. Triplication is the term for this phenomenon of copying three times. Pingelapese has both reduplication and triplication.
(Rehg 1981)
Triplication occurs in other languages, e.g. Ewe
, Shipibo
, Twi, Mokilese
, Min Nan
.
Sometimes gemination
(i.e. the doubling of consonants or vowels) is considered to be a form of reduplication. The term dupleme has been used (after morpheme) to refer to different types of reduplication that have the same meaning.
derives reciprocal forms from reflexive
forms by total reduplication:
Another example is from Musqueam Halkomelem "dispositional" aspect
formation:
Partial reduplication involves a reduplication of only part of the word. For example, Marshallese
forms words meaning 'to wear X' by reduplicating the last consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) sequence of a base, i.e. base+CVC:
Many languages often use both full and partial reduplication, as in the Motu
example below:
al), or internal (i.e. infix
al), e.g.
Initial reduplication in Agta
(CV- prefix):
Final reduplication in Dakota
(-CCV suffix):
Internal reduplication in Samoan
(-CV- infix):
Internal reduplication is much less common than the initial and final types.
Initial L → R copying in Oykangand Kunjen (a Pama–Nyungan language of Australia
):
Final R → L copying in Sirionó:
Copying from the other direction is possible although less common:
Initial R → L copying in Tillamook
:
Final L → R copying in Chukchi
:
Internal reduplication can also involve copying the beginning or end of the base. In Quileute, the first consonant of the base is copied and inserted after the first vowel of the base.
Internal L → R copying in Quileute
:
In Temiar, the last consonant of the root is copied and inserted before the medial consonant of the root.
Internal R → L copying in Temiar (an Austro-Asiatic language of Malaysia):
A rare type of reduplication is found in Semai
(an Austro-Asiatic language of Malaysia). "Expressive minor reduplication" is formed with an initial reduplicant that copies the first and last segment of the base:
, affixation of non-reduplicating material, etc.
For instance, in Tz'utujil
a new '-ish' adjective form is derived from other words by suffixing the reduplicated first consonant of the base followed by the segment [oχ]. This can be written succinctly as -Coχ. Below are some examples:
Somali
has a similar suffix that is used in forming the plural of some nouns: -aC (where C is the last consonant of the base):
This combination of reduplication and affixation is commonly referred to as fixed-segment reduplication.
In Tohono O'odham
initial reduplication also involves gemination
of the first consonant in the distributive plural and in repetitive verbs:
Sometimes gemination can be analyzed as a type of reduplication.
In pre-1972 Indonesian
and Malay
orthography, 2 was shorthand for the reduplication that forms plurals: orang "person", orang-orang or orang2 "people". This orthography has resurfaced widely in text messaging and other forms of electronic communication.
The Nama language
uses reduplication to increase the force of a verb
: go, "look;", go-go "examine with attention".
Chinese
also uses reduplication: 人 rén for "person", 人人 rénrén for "everybody". Japanese
does it too: 時 toki "time", tokidoki 時々 "sometimes, from time to time". Both languages can use a special written iteration mark
々 to indicate reduplication, although in Chinese the iteration mark is no longer used in standard writing and is often found only in calligraphy
.
Indo-European languages
formerly used reduplication to form a number of verb
forms, especially in the preterite
or perfect. In the older Indo-European languages, many such verbs survive:
None of these sorts of forms survive in modern English, although they existed in its parent Germanic languages
. A number of verbs in the Indo-European languages exhibit reduplication in the present
stem rather than the perfect stem, often with a different vowel from that used for the perfect: Latin gigno, genui ("I beget, I begat") and Greek τίθημι, ἔθηκα, τέθηκα (I place, I placed, I have placed). Other Indo-European verbs used reduplication as a derivational process; compare Latin sto ("I stand") and sisto ("I remain"). All of these Indo-European inherited reduplicating forms are subject to reduction by other phonological laws.
Contemporary spoken Finnish
uses reduplicated nouns to indicate genuinity, completeness, originality and being uncomplicated as opposed to being fake, incomplete, complicated or fussy. It can be thought as compound word formation. For example, Söin viisi jäätelöä, pullapitkon ja karkkia, sekä tietysti ruokaruokaa. "I ate five choc-ices, a long loaf of coffee bread and candy, and of course food-food". Here, the "food-food" is contrasted to the "junk-food" -- the principal role of food is nutrition, and "junkfood" isn't nutritious, so "food-food" is nutritious food, exclusively. One may say "En ollut eilen koulussa, koska olin kipeä. Siis kipeäkipeä" ("I wasn't at school yesterday because I was sick. Sick-sick, that is"), meaning one was actually suffering from an illness and is not making up excuses as usual.
These sorts of reduplicative forms, such as "food-food," are not merely literal translations of the Finnish but in fact have some frequency in contemporary English for emphasising, as in Finnish, an "authentic" form of a certain thing. "Food-food" is one of the most common, along with such a possibilities for "car-car" to describe a vehicle which is actually a car (small automobile
) and not something else such as a truck
, or "house-house," for a stand-alone house
structure as opposed to an apartment
, for instance.
Reduplication comes after inflection in Finnish. Young adults may ask one another Menetkö kotiin vai kotiinkotiin? "Are you going home or home-home?" The reduplicated home refers to the old home that used to be their home before they moved out to their new home.
In Swiss German
, the verbs gah or goh "go", cho "come", la or lo "let" and aafa or aafo "begin" reduplicate when combined with other verbs.
In some Salishan languages
, reduplication is used to mark both diminution and plurality, one process applying to each end of the word, as in the following example from Shuswap
. Note that the data was transcribed in a way that is not comparable to the IPA, but the reduplication of both initial and final portions of the root is clear: ṣōk!Emē'’n 'knife' reduplicated as ṣuk!ṣuk!Emen'’me’n (Haeberlin 1918:159).
(Stark 198, Oller, 1980). Canonical babbling is characterized by repetition of identical or nearly identical consonant vowel combinations, such as 'nanana' or 'didididi'. It appears as a progression of language development as infants experiment with their vocal apparatus and home in on the sounds used in their native language. Canonical/reduplicated babbling also appears at a time when general rhythmic behavior, such as rhythmic hand movements and rhythmic kicking, appear. Canonical babbling is distinguished from earlier syllabic and vocal play, which has less structure.
used partial reduplication of a consonant and e in many stative aspect verb forms. The perfect or preterite (past) tense of some Ancient Greek, Latin
, and Gothic verbs preserves this reduplication:
lúō 'I free' vs. léluka "I have freed"
Proto-Indo-European also used reduplication for imperfective aspect. Ancient Greek preserves this reduplication in the present tense of some verbs. Usually, but not always, this is reduplication of a consonant and i, and contrasts with e-reduplication in the perfect:
dídōmi "I give" (present) dédōka "I have given" (perfect)
The Proto-Indo-European word = "wheel
" (Greek kuklos "circle
") also has reduplication, likely for onomatopoeia.
Although at first glance "Abracadabra
" appears to be an English rhyming reduplication it in fact is not; instead, it is derived from the Aramaic
formula "Abəra kaDavəra" meaning "I would create as I spoke")
Couscous is not an English example for reduplication, since it is taken from a French word which has a Maghrebi origin.
In the ablaut reduplications, the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated ablaut variant of the vowel is a low vowel.
None of the above types are particularly productive, meaning that the sets are fairly fixed and new forms are not easily accepted, but there is another form of reduplication that is used as a deprecative called shm-reduplication
that can be used with most any word; e.g. baby-shmaby, cancer-schmancer and fancy-schmancy. This process is a feature of American English
from Yiddish
, starting among the American Jews
of New York City
, then the New York dialect and then the whole country.
When the slang -ma- infix
is used on a two-syllable word with an initial open syllable, the second syllable is reduplicated and the infix appears in between, though often the first instance of the reduplicated syllable is reduced to consonant-schwa. Thus from oboe we get oboe-ma-boe or oba-ma-boe, and from purple we get purple-ma-ple or purpa-ma-ple (Yu 2004).
Contrastive focus reduplication. Exact reduplication can be used with contrastive focus (generally where the first noun is stressed
) to indicate a literal, as opposed to figurative, example of a noun, or perhaps a sort of Platonic ideal
of the noun, as in "Is that carrot cheesecake or carrot CAKE-cake?". This is similar to the Finnish use mentioned above. An extensive list of such examples is found in http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/redup-corpus.html.
More can be learned about English reduplication in Thun (1963), Cooper and Ross (1975), and Nevins and Vaux (2003).
s (e.g., koeskoes, bonbon, (ik hoorde het) via via) or imitative (e.g., tamtam, tomtom). Another example is a former safe sex campaign slogan in Flanders: Eerst bla-bla, dan boem-boem (First talk, then have sex). In Dutch the verb "gaan" (to go) can be used as an auxiliary verb, which can lead to a triplication: we gaan (eens) gaan gaan (we are going to get going). The use of gaan as an auxiliary verb with itself is considered incorrect, but is commonly used in Flanders. Numerous examples of reduplication in Dutch (and other languages) are discussed by Daniëls (2000).
regularly utilizes reduplication to emphasize the meaning of the word repeated. For example, krap means "to scratch one's self," while krap-krap-krap means "to scratch one's self vigorously." http://www.mta.ca/faculty/arts/mll/linguistics/exercises/morpho.html Reduplication in Afrikaans has been described extensively in the literature - see for example Botha (1988), Van Huyssteen (2004) and Van Huyssteen & Wissing (2007).
reduplication was used both to create new words or words associations (tran-tran, via via, leccalecca) and to intensify the meaning (corri!, corri! = run!, run!).
Common in Lingua Franca
, particularly but not exclusively for onomatopoeic action descriptions:
"Spagnoli venir...boum boum...andar; Inglis venir...boum boum bezef...andar; Francés venir...tru tru tru...chapar." ("The Spaniards came, cannonaded, and left. The English came, cannonaded heavily, and left. The French came, trumpeted on bugles, and captured it.")
Common uses for reduplication in French
are the creation of hypocoristic
s for names
, whereby Louise becomes Loulou, and Zinedine Zidane
becomes Zizou; and in many infantile words, like dada, 'horse' (standard cheval), tati, 'aunt' (standard tante), or tonton, 'uncle' (standard oncle).
In Romanian
, reduplication is not uncommon and it has been used for both the creation of new words (including many from onomatopoeia), for example, mormăi, ţurţur, dârdâi, and for expressions, like talmeş-balmeş, harcea-parcea, terchea-berchea, ţac-pac, calea-valea, hodoronc-tronc, or in more recent slang, trendy-flendy.
serves for various kinds of intensifying of the meaning and exists in several forms: a hyphenated or repeated word
(either exact or inflected reduplication), and forms similar to shm-reduplication
.
, to the extent that there are jokes about it. Mainly due to the mixed nature of the Persian language, most of the reduplication comes in the form of a phrase consisting of a Persian word -va- (and) and an Arabic word, like "Taghdir-Maghdir". Reduplication is particularly common in the city of Shiraz
in southwestern Iran
. One can further categorize the reduplicative words into "True" and "Quasi" ones. In true reduplicative words, both words are actually real words and have meaning in the language in which it is used. In quasi-reduplicative words, at least one of the words does not have a meaning. Some examples of true reduplicative words in Persian are: "Xert-o-Pert" (Odds and ends); "Čert-o-Pert" (Nonsense); "Čarand-o-Parand" (Nonsense); "Āb-o-Tāb" (much detail). Among the quasi-reduplicative words are "Zan-o-man" (wife); "Davā-Mavā" (Argument); "Talā-malā" (jewelry); and "Raxt-o-Paxt" (Items of Clothing). In general reduplication in Persian, is mainly a mockery of words with non-Persian origins.
, Punjabi
, Gujarati
and Bengali
use reduplication in some form or the other. It is usually used to sound casual, or in a suggestive manner. It is often used to mean etcetera. For example in Hindi, chai-shai (chai means tea, while this phrase means tea or any other supplementary drink or tea along with snacks). Quite common in casual conversations are a few more examples like shopping-wopping, khana-wana.
Reduplication is also used in Dravidian languages
like Telugu
for the same purpose.
nouns are formed by reduplication. As in other languages, the meaning is not that of a true plural, but collectives that refer to a set of the same or related objects, often in a particular situation.
For example, "rangi changi"* describes an object that is extremely or vividly colorful, like a crazy mix of colors and/or patterns, perhaps dizzying to the eye. The phrase "hina mina" means "scattered," like a large collection of objects spilled (or scampering, as in small animals) in all different directions. The basic Nepalese word for food, "khana" becomes "khana sana" to refer to the broad generality of anything served at a meal. Likewise, "chiya" or tea (conventionally made with milk and sugar) becomes "chiya siya": tea and snacks (such as biscuits or cookies). *Please note, these examples of Nepalese words are spelled with a simplified Latin transliteration
only, not as exact spellings.
, a word can be reduplicated while replacing the initial consonants (not being m, and possibly missing) with m. The effect is that the meaning of the original word is broadened. For example, tabak means "plate(s)", and tabak mabak then means "plates, dishes and such". This can be applied not only to nouns but to all kinds of words, as in yeşil meşil meaning "green, greenish, whatever". Although not used in formal written Turkish, it is a completely standard and fully accepted construction.
is too strong an expression, somewhat similarly to slavic languages. The structure may be written also separately as 'genitive' 'nominative', which may create confusion on occasion (f.e. 'suurensuuri jalka' 'big of big foot' vs. 'suuren suuri jalka' 'big foot of a big one')
and is usually used to form a frequentive verb or for emphasis.http://www.african.gu.se/aa/pdfs/aa02004.pdf,http://www.spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de/TAPS/Downing.pdf
Popular names that have reduplication include
, reduplication is used in nouns and adjectives.
For stress, as in גבר גבר (Gever Gever) where the noun גבר 'man' - is duplicated to mean a manly man, a man among man. Or as in לאט לאט (le-aht le-aht) where the adverb לאט 'slowly' - is duplicated to mean very slowly.
Meaning every, as in יום יום (yom yom) where the noun יום 'day' is duplicated to every day, day in day out, day by day.
Some nouns and adjectives can also be made into diminutives by reduplication of the last two consonants, e.g.
Reduplication in Hebrew is also productive for the creation of verbs, by reduplicating the root or part of it e.g.:
dal (דל) 'poor,spare' > dilel (דלל) 'to dilute' but also dildel (דלדל) 'to impoverish, to weaken';
nad (נד) 'to move, to nod' > nadad (נדד) 'to wander' but also nidned (נדנד) 'to swing, to nag'.
, reduplication is used in verbs and adjectives to form adverbs. Many Burmese words, especially adjectives such as ('beautiful' [l̥a̰pa̰]), which consist of two syllables (when reduplicated, each syllable is reduplicated separately), when reduplicated ( → 'beautifully' [l̥a̰l̥a̰ pa̰pa̰]) become adverb
s. This is also true of many Burmese verbs, which become adverbs when reduplicated.
Some nouns are also reduplicated to indicate plurality. For instance, , means "country," but when reduplicated to , it means "many countries" (as in , "international"). Another example is , which means "kinds," but the reduplicated form means "multiple kinds."
A few measure words can also be reduplicated to indicate "one or the other": (measure word for people) → (someone) (measure word for things) → (something)
, typically denoting emphasis, less acute degree of the quality described, or an attempt at more indirect speech: xiǎoxiǎo de 小小的 (small), chòuchòu de 臭臭的 (smelly). In case of adjectives composed of two characters (morphemes), each character is reduplicated separately: piàoliang 漂亮 (beautiful) reduplicates as piàopiàoliangliang 漂漂亮亮.
Verb reduplication is also common in Standard Chinese, conveying the meaning of informal and temporary character of the action. It is often used in imperative expressions, in which it lessens the degree of imperativity: zuòzuò 坐坐 (sit (for a while)), děngděng 等等 (wait (for a while)). Compound verbs are reduplicated as a whole word: xiūxixiūxi 休息休息 (rest (for a while)).
Noun reduplication is found in the southwestern dialect of Mandarin, which is nearly absent in Standard Chinese. For instance, in Sichuan
, bāobāo 包包 (handbag) is used whereas Beijing and Guoyu use bāor 包儿. However, there are few nouns that can be reduplicated in Standard Chinese, and reduplication denotes generalisation and uniformity: rén 人 (human being) and rénrén 人人 (everybody (in general, in common)), jiājiāhùhù 家家户户 (every household (uniformly)) - in the latter jiā and hù additionally duplicate the meaning of household, which is a common way of creating compound words in Chinese.
nouns have collective
forms produced by reduplication (possibly with rendaku
), such as 人々 hitobito "people" (h → b is rendaku) – these are written with the iteration mark
"々" to indicate duplication. This formation is not productive
and is limited to a small set of nouns. Similarly to Standard Chinese, the meaning is not that of a true plural
, but collectives that refer to a large, given set of the same object; for example, the formal English equivalent of 人々 would be "people" (collective), rather than "persons" (plural individuals).
Japanese also contains a large number of mimetic words
formed by reduplication of a syllable. These words include not only onomatopoeia, but also words intended to invoke non-auditory senses or psychological states. By one count, approximately 43% of Japanese mimetic words are formed by full reduplication, and many others are formed by partial reduplication, as in がささ〜 ga-sa-sa- (rustling) – compare English "a-ha-ha-ha".
. They are formed by repeating a part of a word to form new words, altering the meaning of the original word. Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech.
Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:
Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:
Examples of blunt sounds or physical conditions:
uses reduplication for several purposes, including emphasis and pluralization. Reduplication in Khmer, like many Mon–Khmer languages, can express complex thoughts. Khmer also uses a form of reduplication known as "synonym compounding", in which two phonologically distinct words with similar or identical meanings are combined, either to form the same term or to form a new term altogether.
and Indonesian
, reduplication is a very productive process. It is used for expression of various grammatical functions (such as verbal aspect) and it is part in a number of complex morphological models. Simple reduplication of nouns and pronouns can express at least 3 meanings :
Reduplication of an adjective can express different things :
Reduplication of a verb can express various things :
Notice that in the first case, the nasalisation of the initial consonant (whereby /p/ becomes /m/) is repeated, while in the second case, it only applies in the repeated word.
(New Zealand
) uses reduplication in a number of ways.
Reduplication can convey a simple plural meaning, for instance wahine "woman", waahine "women", tangata "person", taangata "people". Biggs calls this "infixed reduplication". It occurs a small subset of people words in most Polynesian languages.
Reduplication can convey emphasis or repetition, for example mate "die", matemate "die in numbers"; and de-emphasis, for example wera "hot" and werawera "warm".
Reduplication can also extend the meaning of a word; for instance paki "pat" becomes papaki "slap or clap once" and pakipaki "applaud"; kimo "blink" becomes kikimo "close eyes firmly".
people of south eastern Australian, plurals are formed by doubling a word, hence 'Wagga' meaning crow becomes Wagga Wagga meaning 'place of many crows'. This occurs in other place names deriving from the Wiradjuri language including Gumly Gumly, Grong Grong and Book Book.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
is a morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
process in which the root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
or stem of a word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
(or part of it) is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
Reduplication is used in inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
s to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
to create new words. It is often used when a speaker adopts a tone more "expressive" or figurative than ordinary speech and is also often, but not exclusively, iconic
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
in meaning. Reduplication is found in a wide range of languages and language groups, though its level of linguistic productivity
Productivity (linguistics)
In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is...
varies.
Reduplication is the standard term for this phenomenon in the linguistics literature. Other terms that are occasionally used include cloning, doubling, duplication, and repetition.
Form
Reduplication is often described phonologicallyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
in one of two different ways: either (1) as reduplicated segments (sequences of consonants/vowels) or (2) as reduplicated prosodic
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
units (syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s or mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
s). In addition to phonological description, reduplication often needs to be described morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
as a reduplication of linguistic constituents
Constituent (linguistics)
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down...
(i.e. words, stems, roots
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
). As a result, reduplication is interesting theoretically as it involves the interface between phonology and morphology.
The base is the word (or part of the word) that is to be copied. The reduplicated element is called the reduplicant, often abbreviated as RED or sometimes just R.
In reduplication, the reduplicant is most often repeated only once. However, in some languages, reduplication can occur more than once, resulting in a tripled form, and not a duple as in most reduplication. Triplication is the term for this phenomenon of copying three times. Pingelapese has both reduplication and triplication.
| Basic Verb | Reduplication | Triplication |
|---|---|---|
| kɔul 'to sing' | kɔukɔul 'singing' | kɔukɔukɔul 'still singing' |
| mejr 'to sleep' | mejmejr 'sleeping' | mejmejmejr 'still sleeping' |
Triplication occurs in other languages, e.g. Ewe
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
, Shipibo
Shipibo language
Shipibo is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is an official language of Peru....
, Twi, Mokilese
Mokilese language
Mokilese or Mwoakilloan is a Micronesian language originally spoken on Mokil Atoll, Federated States of Micronesia. Of the 1200 Mokilese speakers, only about 500 live on Mokil.-External links:*...
, Min Nan
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
.
Sometimes gemination
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
(i.e. the doubling of consonants or vowels) is considered to be a form of reduplication. The term dupleme has been used (after morpheme) to refer to different types of reduplication that have the same meaning.
Full and partial reduplication
Full reduplication involves a reduplication of the entire word. For example, KhamKham language
Kham -- narrowly defined -- is a complex of Tibeto-Burman Magaric languages spoken natively in isolated highlands of Rolpa and Rukum districts of Rapti and the westernmost part of Baglung district in Dhaulagiri Zone by western clans of the Magar tribe, called collectively Kham Magar or Northern...
derives reciprocal forms from reflexive
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
forms by total reduplication:
| [ɡin] | 'ourselves' | → | [ɡinɡin] | 'we (to) us' | (ɡin-ɡin) | |||
| [jaː] | 'themselves' | → | [jaːjaː] | 'they (to) them' | (jaː-jaː) | (Watters 2002) |
Another example is from Musqueam Halkomelem "dispositional" aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
formation:
| [kʼʷə́ɬ] | 'to capsize' | → | [kʼʷə́ɬkʼʷəɬ] | 'likely to capsize' | (kʼʷə́ɬ-kʼʷəɬ) | |||
| [qʷél] | 'to speak' | → | [qʷélqʷel] | 'talkative' | (qʷél-qʷel) | (Shaw 2004) |
Partial reduplication involves a reduplication of only part of the word. For example, Marshallese
Marshallese language
The Marshallese language is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands, and the principal language of the country...
forms words meaning 'to wear X' by reduplicating the last consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) sequence of a base, i.e. base+CVC:
| kagir | 'belt' | → | kagirgir | 'to wear a belt' | (kagir-gir) | |||
| takin | 'sock' | → | takinkin | 'to wear socks' | (takin-kin) | (Moravsik 1978) |
Many languages often use both full and partial reduplication, as in the Motu
Motu language
Motu is one of many Central Papuan Tip languages, and is spoken by the Motuans, native inhabitants of Papua New Guinea...
example below:
| Base Verb | Full reduplication | Partial reduplication |
|---|---|---|
| mahuta 'to sleep' | mahutamahuta 'to sleep constantly' | mamahuta 'to sleep (plural)' |
| (mahuta-mahuta) | (ma-mahuta) |
Reduplicant position
Reduplication may be initial (i.e. prefixal), final (i.e. suffixSuffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
al), or internal (i.e. infix
Infix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem . It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.-Indonesian:...
al), e.g.
Initial reduplication in Agta
Agta
Agta may refer to:* Agta - any of the languages of the Philippine island of Luzon, along to east coast from the northern tip to the latitude of Manila.* Agta - any of the Aeta peoples of the Philippines.* Kapre of the Philippines...
(CV- prefix):
| [ɸuɾab] | 'afternoon' | → | [ɸuɸuɾab] | 'late afternoon' | (ɸu-ɸuɾab) | |||
| [ŋaŋaj] | 'a long time' | → | [ŋaŋaŋaj] | 'a long time (in years)' | (ŋa-ŋaŋaj) | (Healey 1960) |
Final reduplication in Dakota
Lakota language
Lakota is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages , and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux...
(-CCV suffix):
| [hãska] | 'tall (singular)' | → | [hãskaska] | 'tall (plural)' | (hãska-ska) | |||
| [waʃte] | 'good (singular)' | → | [waʃteʃte] | 'good (plural)' | (waʃte-ʃte) | (Shaw 1980, Marantz 1982, Albright 2002) |
Internal reduplication in Samoan
Samoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
(-CV- infix):
| savali | 'he/she walks' (singular) | → | savavali | 'they walk' (plural) | (sa-va-vali) | |||
| alofa | 'he/she loves' (singular) | → | alolofa | 'they love' (plural) | (a-lo-lofa) | (Moravcsik 1978, Broselow and McCarthy 1984) | ||
| le tamaloa | 'the man' (singular) | → | tamaloloa | 'men' (plural) | (tama-lo-loa) |
Internal reduplication is much less common than the initial and final types.
Copying direction
A reduplicant can copy from either the left edge of a word (left-to-right copying) or from the right edge (right-to-left copying). There is a tendency for prefixing reduplicants to copy left-to-right and for suffixing reduplicants to copy right-to-left:Initial L → R copying in Oykangand Kunjen (a Pama–Nyungan language of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
):
| [eder] | → | [ededer] | 'rain' | (ed-eder) | ||
| [alɡal] | → | [alɡalɡal] | 'straight' | (alg-algal) |
Final R → L copying in Sirionó:
| achisia | → | achisiasia | 'I cut' | (achisia-sia) | |||
| ñimbuchao | → | ñimbuchaochao | 'to come apart' | (ñimbuchao-chao) | (McCarthy and Prince 1996) |
Copying from the other direction is possible although less common:
Initial R → L copying in Tillamook
Tillamook language
Tillamook is an extinct Salishan language, formerly spoken by the Tillamook people in northwestern Oregon, United States. The last fluent speaker is believed to have died in the 1970s; between 1965 and 1972, in an effort to prevent the language being destroyed, a group of researchers from the...
:
| [ɡaɬ] | 'eye' | → | [ɬɡaɬ] | 'eyes' | (ɬ-ɡaɬ) | |||
| [təq] | 'break' | → | [qtəq] | 'they break' | (q-təq) | (Reichard 1959) |
Final L → R copying in Chukchi
Chukchi language
The Chukchi language is a Palaeosiberian language spoken by Chukchi people in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug...
:
| nute- | 'ground' | → | nutenut | 'ground (abs. sg.)' | (nute-nut) | |||
| jilʔe- | 'gopher' | → | jilʔejil | 'gopher (abs. sg.)' | (jilʔe-jil) | (Marantz 1982) |
Internal reduplication can also involve copying the beginning or end of the base. In Quileute, the first consonant of the base is copied and inserted after the first vowel of the base.
Internal L → R copying in Quileute
Quileute language
Quileute , also known as Quillayute , is the only surviving Chimakuan language, spoken by a few Quileute and Makah elders on the western coast of the Olympic peninsula south of Cape Flattery at La Push and the lower Hoh River in Washington state, USA...
:
| [tsiko] | 'he put it on' | → | [tsitsko] | 'he put it on (frequentative)' | (tsi-ts-ko) | |||
| [tukoːjoʔ] | 'snow' | → | [tutkoːjoʔ] | 'snow here and there' | (tu-t-ko:jo’) | (Broselow and McCarthy 1984) |
In Temiar, the last consonant of the root is copied and inserted before the medial consonant of the root.
Internal R → L copying in Temiar (an Austro-Asiatic language of Malaysia):
| [sluh] | 'to shoot (perfective)' | → | [shluh] | 'to shoot (continuative)' | (s-h-luh) | |||
| [slɔɡ] | 'to marry (perfective)' | → | [sɡlɔɡ] | 'to marry (continuative)' | (s-ɡ-lɔɡ) | (Broselow and McCarthy 1984, Walther 2000) |
A rare type of reduplication is found in Semai
Semai
The Semai are a semisedentary people living in the center of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, known especially for their nonviolence . They speak Semai, a Mon-Khmer language. The Senai belong to the Senoi ethnic group....
(an Austro-Asiatic language of Malaysia). "Expressive minor reduplication" is formed with an initial reduplicant that copies the first and last segment of the base:
| [kʉːʔ] | → | [kʔkʉːʔ] | 'to vomit' | (kʔ-kʉːʔ) | |||
| [dŋɔh] | → | [dhdŋɔh] | 'appearance of nodding constantly' | (dh-dŋɔh) | |||
| [cruhaːw] | → | [cwcruhaːw] | 'monsoon rain' | (cw-cruhaːw) | (Diffloth 1973 |
Reduplication and other morphological processes
All of the examples above consist of only reduplication. However, reduplication often occurs with other phonological and morphological process, such as deletionElision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
, affixation of non-reduplicating material, etc.
For instance, in Tz'utujil
Tz'utujil
The Tz'utujil are a Native American people, one of the 21 Maya ethnic groups that dwell in Guatemala. Together with the Xinca, Garífunas and the Ladinos, they make up the 24 ethnic groups in this relatively small country. Approximately 100,000 Tz'utujil live in the area around Lake Atitlán...
a new '-ish' adjective form is derived from other words by suffixing the reduplicated first consonant of the base followed by the segment [oχ]. This can be written succinctly as -Coχ. Below are some examples:
- [kaq] 'red' → [kaqkoχ] 'reddish' (kaq-k-oχ)
- [qʼan] 'yellow' → [qʼanqʼoχ] 'yellowish' (qʼan-qʼ-oχ)
- [jaʔ] 'water' → [jaʔjoχ] 'watery' (jaʔ-j-oχ) (Dayley 1985)
Somali
Somali language
The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....
has a similar suffix that is used in forming the plural of some nouns: -aC (where C is the last consonant of the base):
- [toɡ] 'ditch' → [toɡaɡ] 'ditches' (toɡ-a-ɡ)
- [ʕad] 'lump of meat' → [ʕadad] 'lumps of meat' (ʕad-a-d)
- [wɪːl] 'boy' → [wɪːlal] 'boys' (wɪːl-a-l) (Abraham 1964)
This combination of reduplication and affixation is commonly referred to as fixed-segment reduplication.
In Tohono O'odham
Tohono O'odham
The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...
initial reduplication also involves gemination
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
of the first consonant in the distributive plural and in repetitive verbs:
- [nowiu] 'ox' → [nonnowiu] 'ox (distributive)' (no-n-nowiu)
- [hódai] 'rock' → [hohhodai] 'rock (distributive)' (ho-h-hodai)
- [kow] 'dig out of ground (unitative)' → [kokkow] 'dig out of ground (repetitive)' (ko-k-kow)
- [ɡɨw] 'hit (unitative)' → [ɡɨɡɡɨw] 'hit (repetitive)' (ɡɨ-ɡ-ɡɨw) (Haugen forthcoming)
Sometimes gemination can be analyzed as a type of reduplication.
Phonological processes, environment, and reduplicant-base relations
- overapplication
- underapplication
- backcopying
- base-reduplicant "identity" (OTOptimality theoryOptimality theory is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the interaction between conflicting constraints. OT models grammars as systems that provide mappings from inputs to outputs; typically, the inputs are conceived of as underlying representations, and...
terminology: BR-faithfulness) - tonal transfer/non-transfer
Function and meaning
In the Malayo-Polynesian family, reduplication is used to form plurals (among many other functions):- MalayMalay languageMalay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
rumah "house", rumah-rumah "houses".
In pre-1972 Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
and Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
orthography, 2 was shorthand for the reduplication that forms plurals: orang "person", orang-orang or orang2 "people". This orthography has resurfaced widely in text messaging and other forms of electronic communication.
The Nama language
Nama language
The Khoekhoe language, or Khoekhoegowab, also known by the ethnic term Nàmá and previously the now-discouraged term Hottentot, is the most widespread of the Khoisan languages. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa by three ethnic groups, the...
uses reduplication to increase the force of a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
: go, "look;", go-go "examine with attention".
Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
also uses reduplication: 人 rén for "person", 人人 rénrén for "everybody". Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
does it too: 時 toki "time", tokidoki 時々 "sometimes, from time to time". Both languages can use a special written iteration mark
Iteration mark
Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word.-Chinese:In Chinese, 二 or 々 is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character, but it is never used in formal writing or printed matter...
々 to indicate reduplication, although in Chinese the iteration mark is no longer used in standard writing and is often found only in calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
.
Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
formerly used reduplication to form a number of verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
forms, especially in the preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
or perfect. In the older Indo-European languages, many such verbs survive:
- spondeo, spopondi (LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, "I vow, I vowed") - (GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, "I leave, I left") - (Greek, "I see, I saw"; these Greek examples exhibit ablaut as well as reduplication)
- háitan, haíháit (GothicGothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
, "to name, I named")
None of these sorts of forms survive in modern English, although they existed in its parent Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
. A number of verbs in the Indo-European languages exhibit reduplication in the present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
stem rather than the perfect stem, often with a different vowel from that used for the perfect: Latin gigno, genui ("I beget, I begat") and Greek τίθημι, ἔθηκα, τέθηκα (I place, I placed, I have placed). Other Indo-European verbs used reduplication as a derivational process; compare Latin sto ("I stand") and sisto ("I remain"). All of these Indo-European inherited reduplicating forms are subject to reduction by other phonological laws.
Contemporary spoken Finnish
Spoken Finnish
Colloquial Finnish is the "dialectless" colloquial standard of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna...
uses reduplicated nouns to indicate genuinity, completeness, originality and being uncomplicated as opposed to being fake, incomplete, complicated or fussy. It can be thought as compound word formation. For example, Söin viisi jäätelöä, pullapitkon ja karkkia, sekä tietysti ruokaruokaa. "I ate five choc-ices, a long loaf of coffee bread and candy, and of course food-food". Here, the "food-food" is contrasted to the "junk-food" -- the principal role of food is nutrition, and "junkfood" isn't nutritious, so "food-food" is nutritious food, exclusively. One may say "En ollut eilen koulussa, koska olin kipeä. Siis kipeäkipeä" ("I wasn't at school yesterday because I was sick. Sick-sick, that is"), meaning one was actually suffering from an illness and is not making up excuses as usual.
- ruoka "food", ruokaruoka "proper food", as opposed to snacks
- peli "game", pelipeli "complete game",as opposed to a modMod (computer gaming)Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
- puhelin "phone", puhelinpuhelin "phone for talking", as opposed to a pocket computer
- kauas "far away", kauaskauas "unquestionably far away"
- koti "home", kotikoti "home of your parents", as opposed to one's current place of residence
These sorts of reduplicative forms, such as "food-food," are not merely literal translations of the Finnish but in fact have some frequency in contemporary English for emphasising, as in Finnish, an "authentic" form of a certain thing. "Food-food" is one of the most common, along with such a possibilities for "car-car" to describe a vehicle which is actually a car (small automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
) and not something else such as a truck
Truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, with the smallest being mechanically similar to an automobile...
, or "house-house," for a stand-alone house
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
structure as opposed to an apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
, for instance.
Reduplication comes after inflection in Finnish. Young adults may ask one another Menetkö kotiin vai kotiinkotiin? "Are you going home or home-home?" The reduplicated home refers to the old home that used to be their home before they moved out to their new home.
In Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
, the verbs gah or goh "go", cho "come", la or lo "let" and aafa or aafo "begin" reduplicate when combined with other verbs.
| example: | Si | chunt | üse | Chrischtboum | cho | schmücke. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| literal translation: | she | comes | our | Christmas tree | come | adorn |
| translation | She comes to adorn our Christmas tree. | |||||
| example: | Si | lat | ne | nid | la | schlafe. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| literal translation: | she | lets | him | not | let | sleep |
| translation: | She doesn't let him sleep. | |||||
In some Salishan languages
Salishan languages
The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest...
, reduplication is used to mark both diminution and plurality, one process applying to each end of the word, as in the following example from Shuswap
Shuswap
Shuswap *Secwepemc - an indigenous people in British Columbia, Canada, also known in English as the Shuswap*Shuswap language - a language spoken by the Secwepemc...
. Note that the data was transcribed in a way that is not comparable to the IPA, but the reduplication of both initial and final portions of the root is clear: ṣōk!Emē'’n 'knife' reduplicated as ṣuk!ṣuk!Emen'’me’n (Haeberlin 1918:159).
Reduplicative babbling in child language acquisition
During the period 25–50 weeks after birth, all typically developing infants go through a stage of reduplicated or canonical babblingBabbling
Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition, during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering sounds of language, but not yet producing any recognizable words...
(Stark 198, Oller, 1980). Canonical babbling is characterized by repetition of identical or nearly identical consonant vowel combinations, such as 'nanana' or 'didididi'. It appears as a progression of language development as infants experiment with their vocal apparatus and home in on the sounds used in their native language. Canonical/reduplicated babbling also appears at a time when general rhythmic behavior, such as rhythmic hand movements and rhythmic kicking, appear. Canonical babbling is distinguished from earlier syllabic and vocal play, which has less structure.
Proto-Indo-European
The Proto-Indo-European languageProto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
used partial reduplication of a consonant and e in many stative aspect verb forms. The perfect or preterite (past) tense of some Ancient Greek, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, and Gothic verbs preserves this reduplication:
lúō 'I free' vs. léluka "I have freed"
- hald "I hold" vs. haíhald (hĕhald) "I/he held" "I run" vs. "I ran" or "have run"
Proto-Indo-European also used reduplication for imperfective aspect. Ancient Greek preserves this reduplication in the present tense of some verbs. Usually, but not always, this is reduplication of a consonant and i, and contrasts with e-reduplication in the perfect:
dídōmi "I give" (present) dédōka "I have given" (perfect)
- } sísdō → hízō "I set" (present)
- } sésdomai → hézomai "I sit down" (present; from sd-, zero-grade of rootProto-Indo-European rootThe roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
in *sed-os → ἕδος hédos "seat, abode")
The Proto-Indo-European word = "wheel
Wheel
A wheel is a device that allows heavy objects to be moved easily through rotating on an axle through its center, facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Common examples found in transport applications. A wheel, together with an axle,...
" (Greek kuklos "circle
Circle
A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any of the points and the centre is called the radius....
") also has reduplication, likely for onomatopoeia.
English
English uses some kinds of reduplication, mostly for informal expressive vocabulary. There are three types:- Rhyming reduplication: hokey-pokey, razzle-dazzle, super-duper, teenie-weenie, wingding
Although at first glance "Abracadabra
Abracadabra
Abracadabra is an incantation used as a magic word in stage magic tricks, and historically was believed to have healing powers when inscribed on an amulet...
" appears to be an English rhyming reduplication it in fact is not; instead, it is derived from the Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
formula "Abəra kaDavəra" meaning "I would create as I spoke")
- Exact reduplications (baby-talk-like): bye-bye, choo-choo, night-night, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo
Couscous is not an English example for reduplication, since it is taken from a French word which has a Maghrebi origin.
- Ablaut reduplications: bric-a-brac, chit-chat, criss-cross, ding-dong, jibber-jabber, kitty-cat, knick-knack, pitter-patter, splish-splash, zig-zag.
In the ablaut reduplications, the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated ablaut variant of the vowel is a low vowel.
None of the above types are particularly productive, meaning that the sets are fairly fixed and new forms are not easily accepted, but there is another form of reduplication that is used as a deprecative called shm-reduplication
Shm-reduplication
Shm-reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable is repeated with the copy beginning with shm- , pronounced...
that can be used with most any word; e.g. baby-shmaby, cancer-schmancer and fancy-schmancy. This process is a feature of American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
from Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
, starting among the American Jews
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, then the New York dialect and then the whole country.
When the slang -ma- infix
Infix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem . It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.-Indonesian:...
is used on a two-syllable word with an initial open syllable, the second syllable is reduplicated and the infix appears in between, though often the first instance of the reduplicated syllable is reduced to consonant-schwa. Thus from oboe we get oboe-ma-boe or oba-ma-boe, and from purple we get purple-ma-ple or purpa-ma-ple (Yu 2004).
Contrastive focus reduplication. Exact reduplication can be used with contrastive focus (generally where the first noun is stressed
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
) to indicate a literal, as opposed to figurative, example of a noun, or perhaps a sort of Platonic ideal
Platonic idealism
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas,Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction...
of the noun, as in "Is that carrot cheesecake or carrot CAKE-cake?". This is similar to the Finnish use mentioned above. An extensive list of such examples is found in http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/redup-corpus.html.
More can be learned about English reduplication in Thun (1963), Cooper and Ross (1975), and Nevins and Vaux (2003).
Dutch
While not common in Dutch, reduplication does exist. Most, but not all (e.g., pipi, blauwblauw (laten), taaitaai (gingerbread)) reduplications in Dutch are loanwordLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s (e.g., koeskoes, bonbon, (ik hoorde het) via via) or imitative (e.g., tamtam, tomtom). Another example is a former safe sex campaign slogan in Flanders: Eerst bla-bla, dan boem-boem (First talk, then have sex). In Dutch the verb "gaan" (to go) can be used as an auxiliary verb, which can lead to a triplication: we gaan (eens) gaan gaan (we are going to get going). The use of gaan as an auxiliary verb with itself is considered incorrect, but is commonly used in Flanders. Numerous examples of reduplication in Dutch (and other languages) are discussed by Daniëls (2000).
Afrikaans
AfrikaansAfrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
regularly utilizes reduplication to emphasize the meaning of the word repeated. For example, krap means "to scratch one's self," while krap-krap-krap means "to scratch one's self vigorously." http://www.mta.ca/faculty/arts/mll/linguistics/exercises/morpho.html Reduplication in Afrikaans has been described extensively in the literature - see for example Botha (1988), Van Huyssteen (2004) and Van Huyssteen & Wissing (2007).
Romance
In ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
reduplication was used both to create new words or words associations (tran-tran, via via, leccalecca) and to intensify the meaning (corri!, corri! = run!, run!).
Common in Lingua Franca
Mediterranean Lingua Franca
The Mediterranean Lingua Franca or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century.-History:...
, particularly but not exclusively for onomatopoeic action descriptions:
"Spagnoli venir...boum boum...andar; Inglis venir...boum boum bezef...andar; Francés venir...tru tru tru...chapar." ("The Spaniards came, cannonaded, and left. The English came, cannonaded heavily, and left. The French came, trumpeted on bugles, and captured it.")
Common uses for reduplication in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
are the creation of hypocoristic
Hypocoristic
A hypocorism is a shorter form of a word or given name, for example, when used in more intimate situations as a nickname or term of endearment.- Derivation :Hypocorisms are often generated as:...
s for names
French names
This article describes the conventions for using people's names in France, including the norms of custom and practice, as well as the legal aspects.-Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur:In normal polite usage, a person's name is preceded by an honorific:...
, whereby Louise becomes Loulou, and Zinedine Zidane
Zinedine Zidane
Zinedine Yazid Zidane is a retired French footballer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Zidane was a leading figure of a generation of French players that won the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship...
becomes Zizou; and in many infantile words, like dada, 'horse' (standard cheval), tati, 'aunt' (standard tante), or tonton, 'uncle' (standard oncle).
In Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, reduplication is not uncommon and it has been used for both the creation of new words (including many from onomatopoeia), for example, mormăi, ţurţur, dârdâi, and for expressions, like talmeş-balmeş, harcea-parcea, terchea-berchea, ţac-pac, calea-valea, hodoronc-tronc, or in more recent slang, trendy-flendy.
Slavic languages
The reduplication in the Russian languageReduplication in the Russian language
The reduplication in the Russian language serves for various kinds of the intensification of the meaning.Reduplication is also observable in borrowed words, such as "" and "" , but since the words were borrowed as is from other languages, they are not examples of reduplication as it works in the ...
serves for various kinds of intensifying of the meaning and exists in several forms: a hyphenated or repeated word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
(either exact or inflected reduplication), and forms similar to shm-reduplication
Shm-reduplication
Shm-reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable is repeated with the copy beginning with shm- , pronounced...
.
Persian
Reduplication is a very common practice in PersianPersian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, to the extent that there are jokes about it. Mainly due to the mixed nature of the Persian language, most of the reduplication comes in the form of a phrase consisting of a Persian word -va- (and) and an Arabic word, like "Taghdir-Maghdir". Reduplication is particularly common in the city of Shiraz
Shiraz
Shiraz may refer to:* Shiraz, Iran, a city in Iran* Shiraz County, an administrative subdivision of Iran* Vosketap, Armenia, formerly called ShirazPeople:* Hovhannes Shiraz, Armenian poet* Ara Shiraz, Armenian sculptor...
in southwestern Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. One can further categorize the reduplicative words into "True" and "Quasi" ones. In true reduplicative words, both words are actually real words and have meaning in the language in which it is used. In quasi-reduplicative words, at least one of the words does not have a meaning. Some examples of true reduplicative words in Persian are: "Xert-o-Pert" (Odds and ends); "Čert-o-Pert" (Nonsense); "Čarand-o-Parand" (Nonsense); "Āb-o-Tāb" (much detail). Among the quasi-reduplicative words are "Zan-o-man" (wife); "Davā-Mavā" (Argument); "Talā-malā" (jewelry); and "Raxt-o-Paxt" (Items of Clothing). In general reduplication in Persian, is mainly a mockery of words with non-Persian origins.
Indo-Aryan (and Dravidian) languages
Typically all Indo-Aryan languages, like HindiHindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, Punjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
and Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
use reduplication in some form or the other. It is usually used to sound casual, or in a suggestive manner. It is often used to mean etcetera. For example in Hindi, chai-shai (chai means tea, while this phrase means tea or any other supplementary drink or tea along with snacks). Quite common in casual conversations are a few more examples like shopping-wopping, khana-wana.
Reduplication is also used in Dravidian languages
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
like Telugu
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
for the same purpose.
Nepalese
A number of NepaleseNepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
nouns are formed by reduplication. As in other languages, the meaning is not that of a true plural, but collectives that refer to a set of the same or related objects, often in a particular situation.
For example, "rangi changi"* describes an object that is extremely or vividly colorful, like a crazy mix of colors and/or patterns, perhaps dizzying to the eye. The phrase "hina mina" means "scattered," like a large collection of objects spilled (or scampering, as in small animals) in all different directions. The basic Nepalese word for food, "khana" becomes "khana sana" to refer to the broad generality of anything served at a meal. Likewise, "chiya" or tea (conventionally made with milk and sugar) becomes "chiya siya": tea and snacks (such as biscuits or cookies). *Please note, these examples of Nepalese words are spelled with a simplified Latin transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
only, not as exact spellings.
Turkish
In TurkishTurkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, a word can be reduplicated while replacing the initial consonants (not being m, and possibly missing) with m. The effect is that the meaning of the original word is broadened. For example, tabak means "plate(s)", and tabak mabak then means "plates, dishes and such". This can be applied not only to nouns but to all kinds of words, as in yeşil meşil meaning "green, greenish, whatever". Although not used in formal written Turkish, it is a completely standard and fully accepted construction.
Finnish
Reduplication is commonly used only with 'suurensuuri' 'big of big', 'pienenpieni' 'small of small' and 'hienonhieno' 'fine of fine' but other adjectives may sometimes be duplicated as well, where a superlativeSuperlative
In grammar, the superlative is the form of an adjective that indicates that the person or thing modified has the quality of the adjective to a degree greater than that of anything it is being compared to in a given context. English superlatives are typically formed with the suffix -est In...
is too strong an expression, somewhat similarly to slavic languages. The structure may be written also separately as 'genitive' 'nominative', which may create confusion on occasion (f.e. 'suurensuuri jalka' 'big of big foot' vs. 'suuren suuri jalka' 'big foot of a big one')
Hungarian
Reduplication is usually rhyming. It can add emphasis: 'pici' (tiny) -> ici-pici (very tiny) and it can modify meaning: 'néha-néha' ('seldom-seldom': seldom but repeatedly), 'erre-arra' ('this way-that way', meaning movement without a definite direction), 'ezt-azt' ('this-that', meaning 'all sort of things'), Reduplication often evokes a sense of playfulness and it's quite common when talking to small children.Bantu languages
Reduplication is a common phenomenon in Bantu languagesBantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
and is usually used to form a frequentive verb or for emphasis.http://www.african.gu.se/aa/pdfs/aa02004.pdf,http://www.spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de/TAPS/Downing.pdf
- SwahiliSwahili languageSwahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
piga 'to strike'; pigapiga 'to strike repeatedly' - Ganda okukuba (oku-kuba) 'to strike'; okukubaakuba (oku-kuba-kuba) 'to strike repeatedly, to batter'
- Chewa tambalalá 'to stretch one's legs'; tambalalá-tambalalá to stretch one's legs repeatedly'
Popular names that have reduplication include
- Bafana Bafana
- Chipolopolo
- Eric Djemba-DjembaEric Djemba-DjembaEric Daniel Djemba-Djemba is a Cameroonian footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for Danish side Odense BK and the Cameroon national football team. He has previously played club football in France, England and Qatar.-Nantes:...
- LualuaLomana LuaLuaLomana Trésor LuaLua is a Congolese footballer who plays for Blackpool, and the Congo DR national football team.LuaLua was born in Kinshasa, but moved to England at a young age. After impressing in a college football match, he signed for Colchester United. There, he scored a total of 21 goals in...
- Ngorongoro
Hebrew
In the HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, reduplication is used in nouns and adjectives.
For stress, as in גבר גבר (Gever Gever) where the noun גבר 'man' - is duplicated to mean a manly man, a man among man. Or as in לאט לאט (le-aht le-aht) where the adverb לאט 'slowly' - is duplicated to mean very slowly.
Meaning every, as in יום יום (yom yom) where the noun יום 'day' is duplicated to every day, day in day out, day by day.
Some nouns and adjectives can also be made into diminutives by reduplication of the last two consonants, e.g.
- כלב (Kelev) = Dog
- כלבלב (Klavlav) = Puppy
- חתול (Chatul) = Cat
- חתלתול (Chataltul) = Kitten
- לבן (Lavan) = White
- לבנבן (Levanban) = Whitish
- קטן (Katan) = Small
- קטנטן (Ktantan) = Tiny
Reduplication in Hebrew is also productive for the creation of verbs, by reduplicating the root or part of it e.g.:
dal (דל) 'poor,spare' > dilel (דלל) 'to dilute' but also dildel (דלדל) 'to impoverish, to weaken';
nad (נד) 'to move, to nod' > nadad (נדד) 'to wander' but also nidned (נדנד) 'to swing, to nag'.
Burmese
In BurmeseBurmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
, reduplication is used in verbs and adjectives to form adverbs. Many Burmese words, especially adjectives such as ('beautiful' [l̥a̰pa̰]), which consist of two syllables (when reduplicated, each syllable is reduplicated separately), when reduplicated ( → 'beautifully' [l̥a̰l̥a̰ pa̰pa̰]) become adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s. This is also true of many Burmese verbs, which become adverbs when reduplicated.
Some nouns are also reduplicated to indicate plurality. For instance, , means "country," but when reduplicated to , it means "many countries" (as in , "international"). Another example is , which means "kinds," but the reduplicated form means "multiple kinds."
A few measure words can also be reduplicated to indicate "one or the other": (measure word for people) → (someone) (measure word for things) → (something)
Chinese
Adjective reduplication is common in Standard ChineseStandard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, typically denoting emphasis, less acute degree of the quality described, or an attempt at more indirect speech: xiǎoxiǎo de 小小的 (small), chòuchòu de 臭臭的 (smelly). In case of adjectives composed of two characters (morphemes), each character is reduplicated separately: piàoliang 漂亮 (beautiful) reduplicates as piàopiàoliangliang 漂漂亮亮.
Verb reduplication is also common in Standard Chinese, conveying the meaning of informal and temporary character of the action. It is often used in imperative expressions, in which it lessens the degree of imperativity: zuòzuò 坐坐 (sit (for a while)), děngděng 等等 (wait (for a while)). Compound verbs are reduplicated as a whole word: xiūxixiūxi 休息休息 (rest (for a while)).
Noun reduplication is found in the southwestern dialect of Mandarin, which is nearly absent in Standard Chinese. For instance, in Sichuan
Sichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
, bāobāo 包包 (handbag) is used whereas Beijing and Guoyu use bāor 包儿. However, there are few nouns that can be reduplicated in Standard Chinese, and reduplication denotes generalisation and uniformity: rén 人 (human being) and rénrén 人人 (everybody (in general, in common)), jiājiāhùhù 家家户户 (every household (uniformly)) - in the latter jiā and hù additionally duplicate the meaning of household, which is a common way of creating compound words in Chinese.
Japanese
A small number of native JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
nouns have collective
Collective number
In linguistics, singulative number and collective number are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item...
forms produced by reduplication (possibly with rendaku
Rendaku
is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...
), such as 人々 hitobito "people" (h → b is rendaku) – these are written with the iteration mark
Iteration mark
Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word.-Chinese:In Chinese, 二 or 々 is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character, but it is never used in formal writing or printed matter...
"々" to indicate duplication. This formation is not productive
Productivity (linguistics)
In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is...
and is limited to a small set of nouns. Similarly to Standard Chinese, the meaning is not that of a true plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
, but collectives that refer to a large, given set of the same object; for example, the formal English equivalent of 人々 would be "people" (collective), rather than "persons" (plural individuals).
Japanese also contains a large number of mimetic words
Japanese sound symbolism
This article describes sound symbolic or mimetic words in the Japanese language. Most languages have such words; for example, "bang", "zap", "ding", "slither", "pop", etc. in English. Sound symbolic words occur more often in Japanese than in English—they are found in formal as well as vernacular...
formed by reduplication of a syllable. These words include not only onomatopoeia, but also words intended to invoke non-auditory senses or psychological states. By one count, approximately 43% of Japanese mimetic words are formed by full reduplication, and many others are formed by partial reduplication, as in がささ〜 ga-sa-sa- (rustling) – compare English "a-ha-ha-ha".
Vietnamese
Words called từ láy are found abundantly in VietnameseVietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
. They are formed by repeating a part of a word to form new words, altering the meaning of the original word. Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech.
Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:
- đau → đau điếng: hurt → hurt horribly
- mạnh → mạnh mẽ: strong → very strong
- rực → rực rỡ: flaring → blazing
Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:
- nhẹ → nhè nhẹ: soft → soft (less)
- xinh → xinh xinh: pretty → cute
- đỏ → đo đỏ: red → somewhat red
- xanh → xanh xanh: blue/green → somewhat blue/green
Examples of blunt sounds or physical conditions:
- loảng xoảng — sound of glass breaking to pieces or metallic objects falling to the ground
- hớt hơ hớt hải- (also hớt ha hớt hải) — hard gasps -> in extreme hurry, in panic, panic-stricken
- lục đục — the sound of hard, blunt (and likely wooden) objects hitting against each other -> disagreements and conflicts inside a group or an organisation
Khmer
KhmerKhmer language
Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
uses reduplication for several purposes, including emphasis and pluralization. Reduplication in Khmer, like many Mon–Khmer languages, can express complex thoughts. Khmer also uses a form of reduplication known as "synonym compounding", in which two phonologically distinct words with similar or identical meanings are combined, either to form the same term or to form a new term altogether.
Austronesian
The wide use of reduplication is certainly one of the most prominent grammatical features of Indonesian and Malay (as well as of other South-East Asian and Austronesian languagesMalay and Indonesian
In MalayMalay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
and Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, reduplication is a very productive process. It is used for expression of various grammatical functions (such as verbal aspect) and it is part in a number of complex morphological models. Simple reduplication of nouns and pronouns can express at least 3 meanings :
- Diversity or non-exhaustive plurality :
- Burung-burung itu juga diekspor ke luar negeri = "All those birds are also exported out of the country".
- Conceptual similarity :
- langit-langit = "ceiling; palate; etc." < langit = "sky";
- jari-jari = "spoke; bar; radius; etc." < jari = "finger" etc.
- Pragmatic accentuation :
- Saya bukan anak-anak lagi! "I am not a child anymore!" (anak = "child")
Reduplication of an adjective can express different things :
- Adverbialisation : Jangan bicara keras-keras! = "Don't speak loudly!" (keras = hard)
- Plurality of the corresponding noun : Rumah di sini besar-besar = "The houses here are big" (besar = "big").
Reduplication of a verb can express various things :
- Simple reduplication :
- Pragmatic accentuation : Kenapa orang tidak datang-datang? = "Why aren't people coming?"
- Reduplication with me- prefixation, depending on the position of the prefix me- :
- Repetition or continuation of the action : Orang itu meukul-mukul anaknya : "That man continuously beat his child";
- Reciprocity : Kedua orang itu pukul-memukul = "Those two men would beat each other".
Notice that in the first case, the nasalisation of the initial consonant (whereby /p/ becomes /m/) is repeated, while in the second case, it only applies in the repeated word.
Māori
The Māori languageMaori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
(New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
) uses reduplication in a number of ways.
Reduplication can convey a simple plural meaning, for instance wahine "woman", waahine "women", tangata "person", taangata "people". Biggs calls this "infixed reduplication". It occurs a small subset of people words in most Polynesian languages.
Reduplication can convey emphasis or repetition, for example mate "die", matemate "die in numbers"; and de-emphasis, for example wera "hot" and werawera "warm".
Reduplication can also extend the meaning of a word; for instance paki "pat" becomes papaki "slap or clap once" and pakipaki "applaud"; kimo "blink" becomes kikimo "close eyes firmly".
Australian Aboriginal languages
Reduplication is common in many Australian place names due to their Aboriginal origins. Examples: Turramurra, Parramatta, Wooloomooloo. In the language of the WiradjuriWiradjuri
The Wiradjuri are an Indigenous Australian group of central New South Wales.In the 21st century, major Wiradjuri groups live in Condobolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera and Griffith...
people of south eastern Australian, plurals are formed by doubling a word, hence 'Wagga' meaning crow becomes Wagga Wagga meaning 'place of many crows'. This occurs in other place names deriving from the Wiradjuri language including Gumly Gumly, Grong Grong and Book Book.
See also
- IdeophoneIdeophoneIdeophones are words used by speakers to evoke a vivid impression of certain sensation or sensory perceptions, e.g. smell, color, shape, sound, action, or movement. Ideophones are attested in all languages of the world, however, languages differ in the extent to which they make use of them...
- AugmentAugment (linguistics)In linguistics, the augment is a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages, most notably Greek, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages such as Sanskrit, to form the past tenses.-Indo-European languages:...
- Amredita
- Language acquisitionLanguage acquisitionLanguage acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
- Syntactic doublingSyntactic doublingSyntactic gemination, or syntactic doubling, is an external sandhi phenomenon in Italian and some other Western Romance languages. It consists in the lengthening of the initial consonant after words of certain categories....
- For an example of a language with many types of reduplication see: St'at'imcets language#Reduplication.
- Word wordWord wordContrastive focus reduplication is a little-studied type of syntactic reduplication found in some languages that indicates the prototypical meaning of the repeated word or phrase, a form of retronymy. The term word word was coined by U.S...
- List of people with reduplicated names
External links
- Reduplication (Lexicon of Linguistics)
- What is reduplication? (SIL)
- Echo-Word Reduplication Lexicon
- Exhaustive list of reduplications in English
- List of contrastive focus reduplications in English
- graz database on reduplication (gdr) Institute of Linguistics, University of GrazUniversity of GrazThe University of Graz , a university located in Graz, Austria, is the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria....