Re: THEORY: Uses of reduplication

Eric Christopherson wrote:
>>"And she would come here all the time, all the time, all the time."
>
>Yeah. I guess what I'm getting at is where the dividing line is  between
>repetition and reduplication.
Just on the basis of Indonesia, the reduplicated form has a different
meaning-- with nouns it mainly pluralizes-- anak-anak "anak2" 'children',
anjing2 'dogs'

some forms become plural/indefinite: macam 'kind of...': dua macam anjing
'two kinds of dogs' > macam-macam anjing '(several) different/various kinds
of dogs'

Quite a few change the meaning radically (though there's usually still a
visible relation): mata 'eye', mata2 1. eyes 2. a spy, to spy; idiomatic
se-mata2 'merely, only...'; kala 'time', ber-kala2 from time to time; then
there's anak-anakan 'doll'; kuda 'horse' kuda-kudaan 1. 'ride piggy-back; 2.
a hobby-horse

I think you can redup. lots of verbs to intensify or diminish the meaning;
tidur 'sleep' tidur2 'nap'

Indonesian is also full of redups. with vowel variation ("jingles") like
kocar-kacir 'in disorder' (neither word exists on its own) I think speakers
can almost create these on the fly; or cons.variation (rarer I think)
kosong-losong 'completely empty' (kosong 'empty', no "losong")

Entire doctoral dissertations have been written on redup. in Indonesian !!

Engl. has some like this-- mish-mash, hoity-toity, but I can't think of any
that match the other categories.

I don't see your earlier "book-book" as a redup; it's more an attribute+head
noun+noun combo, like housecat, man-cave ;-) or Indian-Indian vs.
American-Indian.