Re: Degrees of comparation
| From: | Roger Mills <romilly@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, September 6, 2001, 3:42 |
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Nik Taylor wrote:
---
>Jesse Bangs wrote:
>> harillai "extremely beautiful, overwhelmingly beautiful"
>> harillui "too beautiful, excessively beautiful"
>
>Reduplication in Uatakassí generally conveys both of these, that is,
>ziikú "beautiful", ziikuziikú "extremely beautiful" OR "too beautiful",
>depending on context.
I've just realized that reduplicated Kash adj. (most of them, anyway) can
mean either "very/really X" or "kind of/a little X" depending as usual on
context and intonation, but also on which interjection is used:
A: aka ta virik puna yu? 'Isn't that house beautiful?'
B: uwa, hayi, viri-virik 'Ooh, yes, really beautiful' OR
B: ena, viri-virik, mo... 'Well, it's kinda pretty, but.....'