A Preliminary Study of the Semantics of Reduplication英文.pdfVIP

A Preliminary Study of the Semantics of Reduplication Terry Regier  TR April Abstract There is a universal comp onent to the semantics of reduplication which can b e ex pressed as a radial category of concepts I present this radial category along with supp orting evidence from a range of languages and motivations for the links b etween the various senses The structure of the radial graph gives rise to a numb er of pre dicted implicational universals I also show that the radial category for reduplication shares an entire subsystem of concepts with the radial category for the Russian verbal prex raz This sharing of subsystems of concepts across separate radial categories suggests that there is a single universal core conceptual network with individual constructions covering dierent p ossibly overlapping regions  The author may b e reached by email as regiericsiberkeleyedu The Semantics of Reduplication Reduplication expresses a wide and initially somewhat arbitraryseeming array of meanings crosslinguistically There is however a core set of meanings which recur so frequently and in so many languages as to demand explanation Consider for example the English words higgledypiggledy helterskelte r p el lmel l and wil lynil l y These reduplicatives share a semantic comp onent of lack of control with reduplicatives from many other languages eg Russian tjapljap in a slipsho d manner and Bengali ulatpalat helterskelter Other senses which recur crosslinguistically include intensity increased quantity scattering plurality diversity memb er of a class rep etition continuation more than appropriate diminution endearment contempt attenuation augmentation similar