clones (was: "Don't call us, we'll call you" (1963))

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:37 PM -0400 4/1/01, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Sun, Apr 01, 2001 at 09:47:24PM +0800, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>  for "X X for variable X" are hopeless.  Anyone have any suggestions
>>  on how to proceed if one wished to trace the history of the clone
>>  construction in English via cites?
>
>No, but there was a scholar at the U of Chicago who was working on
>this to a big degree. I'm sure there's a literature on the subject.
>
>JTS

You're probably referring to Nancy Dray, who wrote her 1987 Master's
thesis on the topic ("Doubles and Modifiers in English").  I've also
published on the topic, and more recently there's a paper by
Jackendoff et al. that investigates them.  I have a lot of data on
(what I call) clones, especially since I give my Words & Meaning
students an assignment every year in which they are asked to collect
naturalistic examples and analyze the conditions under which they
occur.  In brief, it's a very frequent, robust, and rule-governed
construction in modern American English (with correlates in Dutch and
Spanish, at least).   I should note that I'm referring to this
particular construction in which the first (modifying) element in
"job job", "salad salad", "hot hot", "like him like him", "hooking up
hooking up", etc. serves to narrow down the domain to which the
second (head) element would normally apply by providing either a
"prototype" or "value-added" class of referents.  Thus a job job will
generally denote one that you get paid for (as opposed to a volunteer
position) OR one that is a significant, prestigious, or upscale
position.  So in response to Gerald Cohen, who wonders
>    "job job"?--Was this ever more than a slightly used construction?

I can respond that it is now.  What I was wondering, and what was not
addressed in Dray's work, mine, or Jackendoff et al.'s, is when and
where did it originate.  (Or, more indirectly, how this could be
researched.)

>FWIW, two thoughts come to mind here:
>1) We may deal with an expression that originated with small
>children, for whom reduplication is common. A small child might have
>asked his/her father if he was leaving "for his job job."

With the above meaning, i.e. his more highly paid job as opposed to
the one he moonlights at in the evenings for additional pay?  Doesn't
seem like an aspect of children's language.

>And then
>the parents might have affectionately adopted the children's
>reduplicated term. (Cf. parents' adopting of children's mangled
>versions of their own names or the names of siblings, to be used
>affectionately as nicknames.)

This occurs, but I don't think it's relevant to the

>2) "job job" sounds very close to "John John," President Kennedy's
>son (so called as a small child).  Any possible influence here? Is
>"job job" pretty much isolated?

No, and no.  The cloning mechanism is quite productive (in some
people's speech, not all) and not at all limited to or particularly
characterized by this particular example.   We've had at least one
earlier exchange on this--see the archives for November 7, 1996.