Ding dong! Ablaut and other reduplications Today when I thought about the words chitchat and jibber jabber, I started wondering if other languages have a similar rule like English about the order of v

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Miriam

Ding dong! Ablaut and other reduplications

Today when I thought about the words chitchat and jibber jabber, I started wondering if other languages have a similar rule like English about the order of vowels: the ablaut reduplication. The rule is that if there are three vowels, the order is I, A and O: tic tac toe, and if there are only two vowels, the I comes before the A or the o: King Kong.

There are also other kinds of reduplications in English. Examples are taken from here: <a href="https://www.proedit.com/ablaut-reduplication/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.proedit.com/ablaut-reduplication/</a>;

<ul><li>"Rhyming reduplication refers to simple word pairs that rhyme": Boogie-woogie, super-duper</li><li>"Exact reduplication employs repeated words evocative of baby talk, which soften the tone of the subject": bye-bye, night-night</li><li>"Shm-reduplication is a feature of American English with Yiddish roots. It expresses indifference by pairing a word with a made-up reformation of the first word where the initial consonant is replaced by shm.": fancy-shmancy, cancer-shmancer</li><li>"Comparative reduplication repeats an adjective to indicate an object’s change over time": "My spaceship went higher and higher"</li><li>"Contrastive focus reduplication uses stressed repetition to highlight the distinction between a noun’s essence and its literal state:" "I’m awake, but I’m not AWAKE-awake."</li></ul>

We have similar rules in German:

ablaut: plitsch-platsch

rhyming: doppelt-gemoppelt

exact: wauwau

We also have comparative and contrastive focus reduplication. We don't have the shm-reduplication though, even though we have many words from Yiddish in German.

What about your native or target language? What kinds of reduplications do you have? Are they different from English? Would you maybe rather say dong-ding instead of ding-dong?

17 déc. 2019 17:25

Commentaires · 8

Oh we use it at the drop of a hat in Hindi (and also Bengali). Often the first consonant is replaced with a W or SH. Examples:

kaam waam / shaam nahi hai kya?

(Haven't you got any work etc?)

pyar wyar / shyar karna afat hai

(Falling in love etc is a pain)

khana wana / shana kuchh milega?

(shall we get any food etc)

There are other slightly differing expressions that are used as integral pairs:

hilna dulna (to move - in a lazy way)

chalna phirna (walk and move)

nachna koodna (dance and jump)

khel kood (play and jump)

gaana bajaana (singing and playing instruments)

bak jhak / chik chik (argument)

bak bak (talking too much)

chat pat (quick, fast)

I could go on but that gives the general idea. The idea goes even into swear expressions.

18 décembre 2019

Yeah me too. It seems much more common in Hindi than in English. In Spanish on the other hand it seems less common. But you got me curious so I searched for reduplication in Spanish and found a paper about it. <a href="https://biblioteca.unirioja.es/tfe_e/TFE001209.pdf#page37" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://biblioteca.unirioja.es/tfe_e/TFE001209.pdf</a>;

In their comparison commentary they note that many of the forms of reduplication are used less in Spanish than in English. They noted ablaut reduplication does exist and gave the examples tictac, zigzag, Yayo, and Lola. They also mentioned a type that isn’t found in English, topic reduplication. An example they give of it is «Llorar, (como que) no ha llorado, pero tampoco anda muy alegre.»

17 décembre 2019

Hindi uses a lot of reduplication. गप शप (gap shap) is used for chit chat and exact reduplication can be used to intensify. For example साफ़ (saaf) means clean but साफ़ साफ़ means very clean. I’ll let the resident experts chime in whether there are other types of reduplication in Hindi. I noticed things like the above often though.

17 décembre 2019

@Som

Thanks for this interesting redubplications examples. So, Hindi does have a sh-reduplication. And thanks for the explanation about "saaf saaf". Funnily, I saw this phrase a couple of days ago in a post by an Indian acquaintance. I don't know any Hindi but at least I understand "saaf saaf" now.

Currently, I'm learning Turkish and there I stumbled upon

şöyle böyle = so-so

yavaş yavaş = slowly

harf harf söylemek = to spell

19 décembre 2019