assoc echo

[Frans Plank]

Edith,

echo-WORDS?, referring to similar kinds of THINGS??

In "Reduplication meets the phonological phrase in Bengali" by my colleague
Jennifer Fitzpatrick Cole (The Linguistic Review 13, 1996, 305-356) I read
that, at least in Bengali (Jennifer also mentions Kolami, Tamil
(Dravidian), Sasak, Gayu (Indonesian), Engenni, and Vietnamese as having
phrasal redupl) we're dealing with PHONOLOGICAL PHRASES, in the formal
sense of what entity is getting reduplicated.  (These can be more, or
perhaps also less, than morphological words.)  Morphologically and
semantically, it is true (according to my source), phrasal reduplication is
anchored to the word:  only the first morph word in the phon phrase matters
for the meaning.

But these relevant words need not be words referring to THINGS (nouns):
ANYthing goes -- e.g. black-tlack spiders 'black and other colored
spiders', black spiders-stiders 'black spiders and other (not necessarily
black) beasties', black spiders-tlack spiders 'black and other colored
spiders' (?);  chew-tew gorommoshla 'to chew and such acitivities
gorommoshla', sleep-tleep fall, sleep fall-tall, sleep fall-tleep fall 'to
lie down and such'.


This is becoming a very wide domain, then, "AND SUCH", of which ASSOC is
supposed to be an instance.