The subject matter of this study is reduplicative constructions in Swedish which more properly form a part of a clause than a lexical unit. In practise, the object of investigation is immediate and deliberate word repetition in speech and writing. This kind of repetition may occur, for example, with two (or more) juxtaposed prenominal adjectives, like in sme sme barn 'little little children'. In addition, the repetition may form a unit by coordination, like in Han ger och ger 'He walks and walks'.
Reduplication of the illustrated type has not gained much attention in linguistic research. Repetition is, however, more often mentioned in works in stylistics although treated from a specific rhetorical perspective. Syntactic reduplication may yet be observed in everyday language, and this will necessiate a linguistic inquiry of the phenomenon. Moreover, the subject is of general theoretical interest, since reduplication is regarded as one of linguistic universals and icons.
The data for the present investigation consist of a computer corpus of three million words, including texts from newspapers, fiction (literary prose), and conversations. The quantitative analysis indicates that syntactic reduplication is not a highly frequent phenomenon in Swedish. Yet, fiction and conversations show some kind of regular, even though generally infrequent,occurence of reduplication.
Ultimately, this has a link to the Saussurian concept of relative motivation: the mind introduces an order into certain parts of the mass of signs. In other words, Swedish syntactic reduplication also delimits the arbitrariness of the sign from the more abstract system point of view.
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