THEORY: Reduplication

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, From Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tunuframe.Html wrote:
>
> > reduplication - whether full or partial - has been a natural feature of
> > sumerian and is still in all austronesian, chinese, malayo-polynesian
> > and many african languages.
>
> And Denden of course ;-). Reduplication is used for plurals, habitual
> aspect and exemplars. Denden is a language's language - see, English
> nearly reduplicates, too.
Actually, there is an emerging reduplication pattern in English
that I call "genuine reduplication." It is total reduplication,
and it is used to refer to a prototypical instance of the
referent. Imagine the following conversations:

Buffy:   "So do you like Ken?"
Barbie:  "Well, I don't *like* like him." (meaning that Barbie's
liking Ken should not be construed as a genuine or serious
romantic attraction)

Husband: "So do you want to go out to eat tonight?"
Wife:    "Sure, but let's go to *restaurant* restaurant this
time; I'm tired of McDonalds." (meaning that, whatever its
virtues, McDonald's is not a real restaurant--presumably because
there are no waiters or table cloths)

I'm hearing this with increasing frequency. How many of you
native English speakers have done this in the last 24 hours?
(C'mon, raise those hands; I know you're out there.) Is this
what you mean by exemplars, Boudewijn?

Also, lest someone think me overly clever, the subject heading
is actually the title of a seminal 1982 article on reduplication
by Alec Marantz. I liked it so I lifted it.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu                 "All grammars leak."
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~elzinga/               -Edward Sapir