畳語の研究

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  • ジョウゴ ノ ケンキュウ
  • A Study of Reduplicated Words

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Reduplication is the repetition of all or part of a word and is one of the most basic word formation processes. Reproduction is not limited to onomatopoeia, and reduplicated words have many grammatical functions. They appear not only in Japanese but also in other languages.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the features of reduplicated words. In order to do this, I compared morphologically and semantically reduplicated words in Japanese, English, French, Indonesian and Tutuba, which all belong to different language groups. The results showed that there were two types of forms of reduplicated words: full reduplication and partial reduplication. Full reduplication is used more frequently than partial reduplication. With regard to partial reduplication, three types were observed: (a) repetition of syllables; (b) ablaut (vowel change); and (c) consonant mutation. I also examined the meanings of the reduplicated words and classified them into seven semantic categories. I compared the meanings of reduplicated words across languages and suggest a frequency-based hierarchy of the meanings added through reduplication. In sum, while there is diversity of meanings added through reduplication,the most frequent meanings added are intensification of the original meaning of the word or expression, and repetition or continuity of an activity.

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