Talk:Reduplication

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Japanese

Does reduplication have anything to do with the large number of Japanese language double-words (e.g. gorogoro, sorosoro, potsupotsu, barabara, garagara, kurukuru, wakuwaku, pekopeko, isoiso, etc)?

It depends a little bit on your definition of reduplication, but in general, yes, surely. The article's definition and description is far too narrow, I'm planning on extending it to be more complete --Strangeloop (talk) 21:25, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think there are two distinct categories of duplicated words in Japanese. Things like hitobito = people (hito = person) or hibi = days (hi = day) are clear examples of reduplication, complicated by rendaku, the way initial "h" turns into "b" in compounds. In these case the word that gets doubled has its own kanji. But then there are the words which don't have kanji and are even often written in katakana, which seem to be to be onomatopeia in the extended Japanese style, and often have associations of childishness. I'd say "pekopeko" (hungry), fuwafuwa (soft) and so on would fall into this category, which isn't really reduplication: for one thing the phrase that's doubled ("jiro", "fuwa" etc) doesn't have much distinct meaning of its own. This page is on the subject, although it doesn't seem to draw the same distinction that seems quite crisp to me. --AlexChurchill 11:53, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
As I said, it depends. I think it is useful to make language-internal (semantic) distinctions between words or word classes that show reduplication, like you do. But I think that a general description of reduplication would have to focus on what happens (i.e., duplicating (some part of) the word), because that seems to define the phenomenon. Lots of interesting semantic things happen in reduplication, and lots of word classes undergo the process; it would be good to mention all sorts of examples in the article, but one shouldn't ground the definition of the morphological process on this variation. So I would, for example, be reluctant to add the condition that the base should have a distinct meaning of its own. - Strangeloop (talk) 06:51, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Reduplication in English?

Many informal or pejorative English forms like shilly-shally, mumbo-jumbo, hugger-mugger are often described in dictionary etymologies as formed by reduplication. The article's definition suggests only the possibility of conjugation/declension of a word, rather than creating new words. Is there some other technical name for the process at work in English? Joestynes 04:29, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

English also has exact reduplication which means something along the lines of "canonical example of" or "literal interpretation of." For example, if I were to say "My father used to have a pet lion" you might respond "He had a lion lion?", that is, did he actually have a literal lion as a pet, or did you mean something figurative? You also see this in sentences like "Yeah, but do you like like her?" 128.135.226.181
I haven't got a thought-out opinion on your English examples (I remember reading some article about this sort of English forms, I'll try to dig it up), but surely reduplication is not confined to conjugation/declension of a word, or to grammatical functions only. I call it reduplication, but there you have the problem: we haven't got a very thorough definition of reduplication here. I think it's best to focus on the morphological aspect of reduplication, since that is what defines the phenomenon. If it is used in grammar or somewhere else is of course interesting, but it doesn't belong to the definition.
Many African language use reduplication extensively for all sorts of semantic nuances as well as grammatical tasks. Yoruba for example uses (partial) reduplication to add the notion of 'intensity' to an adjectival concept: rògòdò 'round and big' > rògòdò-dò 'very round and big' and gbèm 'heavy and soft' > gbèm-gbè 'very heavy and soft'.
I am planning a rewrite of this article soon, since I think it is a little too anecdotal and example-centered (does anyone know the meaning of 'wiki-wiki' in Hawaiian?). If anyone disagrees with me, just let me know. --Strangeloop (talk) 21:25, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"wiki-wiki" means, as far as I know, "very fast" or "express" in Hawaiian. When you land in Honolulu and are about to depart the plane, the airplane staff instructs you that you need to take the "wiki wiki bus" (express bus) to get to the terminal.
the example given of Finnish slang seems quite similar to reduplication usage I would consider to be a part of commonly used English, at least here in the UK. I can't think of any examples, but as far as I can tell I would say that in English, the first instance of the redoubled word becomes an adjective that describes the following word as being literally true. To use the Finnish example (although i'm not sure if this would ever come up in English usage) "food food" would mean food that has the property of being literally real/proper food, as opposed to food that has some degree of fakeness about it - pretty similar to the Finnish. Can anyone think of any examples that would be more commonly used in English, and perhaps explain it a little better than I can? ;) --81.136.198.37 23:14, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
google gives Corpus of English contrastive focus reduplications which I also am too lazy to incorporate into the article. Joestynes 01:22, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm amazing this article doesn't refer to "schm" reduplication! (Reduplication, schmeduplication.) Though I guess it might be more accurate to call it Yiddish reduplication than English reduplication... Somegeek 13:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a separate article shm-reduplication. It's referred to and linked to in the "English reduplication" section. User:Angr 13:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I had performed a text search of the article for 'schm', my mistake. Somegeek 19:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] leipo and leloipa

Instead of using an irregular example of a Greek verb, shouldn't a more regular one like luw be substituted? E.g. luw to leluka in the perfect.

Maybe, although neither of them are very bright examples of reduplication. Probably we should look out for more prototypical examples of reduplication to use in the article. — mark ✎ 15:38, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
My understanding is that leipo, leloipa is a fairly obvious example of IE reduplication; the irregularity comes from the fact that it also exhibits vowel gradation in the past stem. Perhaps this should be pointed out. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:55, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] organization suggestion

Hi.

I suggest that this page be organized into different redup. types. Maybe something like:

  • partial redup
  • total
  • prefixal
  • suffixal
  • internal
  • with or without non-iterative content
  • segmental redup (C, CV, CVC)
  • syllable/mora redup
  • etc. etc.

Also a survey of some of the common functions & meanings of reduplication, as it is often iconic in meaning.

I'll provide a bibliography later, in case folks are interested. peace - Ish ishwar 20:50, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese reduplication

Currently the article mentions the following:

Mandarin Chinese also uses reduplication: 人 ren for "person", 人人 renren for "everybody". Japanese does it too: 時 toki "time", tokidoki 時々 "sometimes, from time to time". Note that in these languages reduplication is not a productive process, i. e. it's not part of a regular system.

I don't know about Japanese, but that last statement is not true for Chinese. Reduplication has become idiomatic for nouns such as 人, but it is productive for other parts of speech. Any measure word in Chinese can be reduplicated. For instance 枝, the measure word for stick-like objects, can be used in the following manner:

一枝筆 = One pencil
枝枝筆 = Every pencil

Reduplication is also productive for verbs as well. When verbs are reduplicated, it indicates a delimitative aspect. For instance:

看看 (look look) = to have a little look
討論討論 (discuss discuss) = to have a little chat

Lastly, reduplication in adjectives serves to emphasize the adjective. Is there a reason why the statement about reduplication as an unproductive process is there? Does it apply only to Japanese? --Umofomia 10:31, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Since there hasn't been any response in a week, I've removed the statement. --Umofomia 09:48, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] In Basque

For reduplication in Basque, see:

[edit] Why "reduplication" when "duplication" would seem to be correct?

Given a word, "x", duplication would produce "x x". The prefix "re" has several meanings; undoing something (for example, a term familiar to Wikipedia, "revert"),or doing something again ("repeat"). Given "x" and its duplication generating "x x", it would be pointless for the "re" of "reduplication" to mean undo (thus generating the single "x") so it must mean to duplicate again (generating either "x x x" if you think only the original "x" is referenced or "x x x x" if the the result thus far is again duplicated).

The obvious question: Naming this process "duplication" would seem to be adequate, indeed logically correct. Why was it named "reduplication"? 69.106.255.221 (talk) 04:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Reduplication is just the standard linguistic term, and has been for some time. It seems redundant, but there are other words in English like that too. 71.82.211.210 (talk) 06:54, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit May 24th: I eternally seem to be getting this confused. In fact it is the allophone that is the specific, and phoneme that is the abstract, the reverse of my comment here! — robbiemuffin page talk 14:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)) Another one I think is like that is grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence, which almost always is really grapheme-to-allophone correspondence. — robbiemuffin page talk 20:30, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
71.82.211.210 above is right: it is just the standard linguistic term at least since Pott's early comparative study of the phenomenon. See Pott, August Friedrich. 1862. Doppelung (Reduplikation, Gemination): Als eines der wichtigsten Bildungsmittel der Sprache, beleuchtet aus sprachen aller Welttheile. Meyer. — mark ✎ 09:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew

Hebrew language also has some examples:

par (פר) - Bull parpar (פרפר) - Butterfly

gal (גל) - Wave galgal (גלגל) - Wheel

tzar (צר) - Narrow tzartzar (צרצר) - cricket

kookoo (קוקו) - crazy (person) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.52.21 (talk) 00:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

There oought to be a section added on reduplication in Semitic languages. In Semitic, we find reduplication of at least the following sorts, using numerals for radical consonants: 123 -> 1223 123 -> 12323