Re: THEORY: Uses of reduplication
| From: | <morphemeaddict@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, March 3, 2008, 1:58 |
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In a message dated 3/2/2008 19:08:36 PM Central Standard Time,
rfmilly@MSN.COM writes:
> 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.
>
One productive area of reduplication in English is phrases where the first
word is copied, but the first consonants are changed to /shm/: "theory -
shmeory". It's a way of sneering at the first word.
stevo </HTML>