LINGUIST List 2.859

Sat 14 Dec 1991

Disc: Reduplication

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication
2. Geoffrey Russom, Reduplication
3. "Bruce E. Nevin", reduplication
4. Jacques Guy, Reduplication
5. Dr M Sebba, Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication

Message 1: Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication

Re reduplication: I'm not quite sure how far you wish to carry
the idea, but a nickname for "Luigi" in Italian is "Gigi", which
would be AB ==> BB.
L Morgan

Sometimes a stem ABC reduplicates as ABC rather than as AABC, etc.
(i.e., the whole stem is repeated). Things like chop-chop,
yum-yum (and I think the latter's ancestor in an African language).
 -- Rick

Joe Stemberger <STEMBERGER%ELLVAXvx.acs.umn.edu> asks about
reduplication.
I have a supposition for which I claim no originality but have no
source.
Reduplication is often an areal feature. This is so in many
American languages, for instance.
I can readily see how reduplication might arise from expressive
repetition. "Then he climbed quick! quick! up the stairs." An obvious
place for conventionalization, a step toward formal grammatical status,
is in baby talk. In many Sprachbund situations cross-linguistic
intermarriage is commonplace. It is easy to slip into speaking to
non-native speakers as though to children, so there is another occasion
for conventionalization.
Reduplication in the American language I have been working on, Pit River
(aka Achumawi), is closely tied to sound symbolism. A c'ayc'a:ya is a
bird that goes c'ay! c'ay! all the time (California bluejay). (In this
language what I am writing p' t' c' etc are glottalized but lenis, not
really "ejective".) A classificatory root like -yut'- or -q`Hot- is
reduplicated when used predicatively with copula:
digu'yu:t'i to crush something squishy (like fruit) with hand
yut'yut' 'yuwi it's squishy
dic'iq`Ho:ti to crush something crumbly (like chalk) with foot
q`Hot`q`Hot` 'yuwi it's crumbly
It seems plausible that these grammatical conventions using
reduplication might have evolved from expressive repetition.
I have no idea how this supposition would stand up cross-linguistically.
	Bruce Nevin
	bnbbn.com

How about the fa??al form of Arabic? Reduplication of the medial consonant,
looks to me.

Message 5: Re: 2.846 Queries: Ling. Dictionary, Texas Ling. Forum, Reduplication

In reply to Michael Covington on reduplication:
Russian attributive adjectives (the "long form") have reduplicated
endings of the form -aya -oye -iyi, in contrast with the "short forms"
-a, -o, -i. E.g. krasn-aya "red" etc.
This looks like pattern ABCC.
I'm not a Slavicist, just repeating what I think is conventional wisdom.