Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Thao Triplication

Thao Triplication Squib Robert Blust university of hawai`i Following a brief review of Thao reduplication, instances of a more involved process termed "triplication" are presented and analyzed. It is concluded that while reduplication has a variety of functions with various lexical categories and may or may not be iconic, triplication functions only with verbs and is necessarily iconic. Triplication serves to increase the degree or intensity of the same semantic dimension invoked by reduplication. Another process termed "serial reduplication" functions only with numerals and involves two quite different semantic contributions to the resulting word. 1. INTRODUCTION. Despite the ubiquity of reduplication as a word-formation process in natural languages, triplication appears to be fairly unusual. Moreover, to my knowledge no bona ²de case of quadruplication has ever been reported. The purpose of this note is to document the occurrence of productive triplication and at least minimal quadruplication in Thao, a moribund Austronesian language still spoken by about 15 elderly persons in the region of Sun-Moon Lake, central Taiwan. Passing reference to Thao triplication appears in Chang (1998:285), where examples based on ten different stems are given. However, a number of other instances of triplication have since been located in Blust (to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Oceanic Linguistics University of Hawai'I Press

Thao Triplication

Blust, R. A.
Oceanic Linguistics , Volume 40 (2) – Jan 12, 2001
Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-hawai-i-press/thao-triplication-FxSJsjBJcC
Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 University of Hawai'i Press.
ISSN
1527-9421
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Squib Robert Blust university of hawai`i Following a brief review of Thao reduplication, instances of a more involved process termed "triplication" are presented and analyzed. It is concluded that while reduplication has a variety of functions with various lexical categories and may or may not be iconic, triplication functions only with verbs and is necessarily iconic. Triplication serves to increase the degree or intensity of the same semantic dimension invoked by reduplication. Another process termed "serial reduplication" functions only with numerals and involves two quite different semantic contributions to the resulting word. 1. INTRODUCTION. Despite the ubiquity of reduplication as a word-formation process in natural languages, triplication appears to be fairly unusual. Moreover, to my knowledge no bona ²de case of quadruplication has ever been reported. The purpose of this note is to document the occurrence of productive triplication and at least minimal quadruplication in Thao, a moribund Austronesian language still spoken by about 15 elderly persons in the region of Sun-Moon Lake, central Taiwan. Passing reference to Thao triplication appears in Chang (1998:285), where examples based on ten different stems are given. However, a number of other instances of triplication have since been located in Blust (to

Journal

Oceanic Linguistics – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Jan 12, 2001

There are no references for this article.