Reduplication

[Alex Francois]

hello,

Reduplication is common in Austronesian languages, with a variety of
meanings.
One of these meanings (albeit a rare one, and non-productive) is
diminutive.

e.g. West Tarangan (Maluku, Indonesia):   *seldi* 'shrimp' =>
*sel**sel**di*'small shrimp'   (Nivens 1993: 384)

       Manam (Oceanic, PNG):  *moata* 'snake'  => *moata-moata* 'worm'
(Lichtenberk 1983: 611)

       Mwotlap (Oceanic, Vanuatu):  *ēy* 'lobster'  => *ēy**ēy* 'shrimp'
(François 2004: 181)
                           *qol* 'surgeonfish, larger variety'  =>
*qolqol*'surgeonfish, smaller variety'

I mentioned these examples in my discussion of reduplication and its
polysemy in the language Mwotlap.
Reduplication is there only fully productive for verbs and adjectives;
for nouns, it is a process of lexical derivation, which only affects some
lexemes.
Its semantics include (on nouns) diminutive, qualitative, plural, and (on
verbs) pluractional, distributive, intensive, atelic, intensional,
infinitive, etc.  I tentatively proposed the notion of "fragmentation" as a
way to capture reduplication's core underlying meaning in this language.

François, Alexandre. 2004. La réduplication en mwotlap : les paradoxes du
fractionnement<http://alex.francois.free.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2004_Reduplication_Mwotlap.pdf>.
In Elizabeth Zeitoun (ed.), *Les langues
austronésiennes<http://fdl.univ-lemans.fr/fr/liste-des-numeros/n23_24.html>.
*Special issue of *Faits de langues* n°24: 177-195.

Incidentally, Mwotlap does not use reduplication for hypocoristic
functions.  The diminutive meaning is thus here "pure", i.e. not
contaminated by any affective meaning such as expressivity, endearment or
familiarity  — a situation Paul suggested should be “difficult, perhaps
impossible” to find.

best,
Alex

********

2013/3/3 Anvita Abbi <anvitaabbi at gmail.com>

> Dear Scott,
> Base reduplication for diminutives or for approximation of taste and color
> adjectives is common in most of the Indo-Aryan languages , e.g.
> *hari '*green'* *but *hari hari *'greenish' or
> *karwa *'bitter' but *karwa karwa *'somewhat bitter' in Hindi.
> Munda languages such as Kharia also have similar structures, e.g.
> *goej*  'dead' but *goej goej* 'dead-like'.
> Kurux, a North Dravidian language shares the structure with Hindi because
> of contact with IA languages.
> Austroasiatic languages such as Khasi is very rich in expressive
> morphology to indicate diminutive meaning but the non reduplicated part can
> not be considered a base as it has no meaning of its own.
> For details see *Reduplication in South Asian languages. An areal,
> typological and historical study *(1991) by Anvita Abbi.. Allied
> Publishers.
> Anvita
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Scott T. Shell <ay2493 at wayne.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'm looking for languages that reduplicate base forms to create
>> diminutives.
>>
>> An example from Bamyili Creole:
>>
>> bragbrag        'froggy'          pəpəp         'puppy'
>> daŋgidaŋgi      'donkey'          daldal        'dollie'
>>
>> Can anyone else help add to this list? It is important that the
>> reduplication process carries no grammatical information. Also, I must
>> point out that I am not looking for partial base reduplication. It must be
>> the entire base.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Scott T. Shell
>> Graduate Student, Wayne State University
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Prof. Anvita Abbi
> Centre for Linguistics
> School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies
> Jawaharlal Nehru University
> New Delhi 110067
> www.andamanese.net
> President: Linguistic Society of India
> URL: http://www.jnu.ac.in/FacultyStaff/ShowProfile.asp?SendUserName=anvita
>
>
>
>


-- 
Alex François
LACITO-CNRS <http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/index_en.htm>, France;
Australian National
University<http://chl.anu.edu.au/disciplines/linguistics/index.php>,
Canberra
http://alex.francois.free.fr
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