Another example of doubling....

[Henry Kammler]

Hi Mike

[Henry]

> >I think pishpish and pish are not connected. "pishpish" is derived from the
> >French expression to call / lure a cat from somewhere (like sayings are very
> >widespread: the comparable German expression would be "mietzmietz"
> >['mi:tsmi:ts]).  "pish" is from "fish" of course. Maybe you find a similar
> word
> >for chicken somewhere, the one domestic animal to have surely had a special
> >call.
>

[Mike]

>
> I of course didn't mean that they _were_ connected, except insofar as being
> partial homonyms.  I was only meaning that with the doubling of the
> syllable, the meaning would necessarily be construed entirely differently.
> I'd always heard puss-puss and hyas puss-puss up here, by the way, rather
> than pish-pish (even though that's what's in Anderson).......

OK, then I have misunderstood you. Looking for reduplicated syllables is of course
the first step. The second is what does reduplication do in the language. It makes
CJ look very native because reduplication is one of the most common morphological
processes in the native donor languages of CJ. In verbs, reduplication can convey
aspect meanings such as "once forth and back" (iterative) or "over and over again"
(repetitive), it may be used in grammatical processes such as pluralization or
comparation of adjectives (or expressing intensity). I bet there is no native
American language that does not have some sort of reduplication as part of its
grammatical system.

And animals again:
"Minou" or "minon" is French for pussycat (thus "minouminou" for calling it). The
same is "Mieze" [mi:tse] or "Miezekatze" [mi:tsekatse] in German and we call a cat
by "miezmiez!". The "puss" part in CJ reminds me of how Nahuatl-speakers in Mexico
call their cats: "pspspspsps" (sounds like "piss" -- oops! --- or "puss" without
vibration of the vocal cords). When I mentioned chickens some days ago I had in
mind that the term for chickens in some languages might similarly derive from the
typical call the farmers use with their chickens, e.g. in German "puutputputput"
(high pitch on first syllable, low tone all the rest). But probably "chicken" is
such a good sounding word that it was borrowed into the languages directly (in
Nootka it's "chikinis").

Henry

{ol mcdonald had a farm ....}
:-)