Reduplications in English

There is a special highly productive process of word-building in almost every modern language, which results in a large number of words based on the principle of repetition or reduplication of sounds and the appropriate letters. Reduplications are mentioned among compound words, because some scholars consider them as a special type of compounds. However it may be easily seen, that at least one element in the words of this kind has no independent meaning, cannot be used in isolation and should be called a free morpheme.

The reduplicative principle may be different in such words. As a result they may be based on full (complete) reduplication or, on the other hand, they may contain definite alterations of sounds. Depending on this or that type of repitition, all reduplications may be subdivided into:

1. full reduplication: reduplicative compounds proper, consisting of repeated sound-imitative elements (e.g. a hush-hush (a secret), murmur (шепот), bla-bla, pooh-pooh (expression of contempt), quack-quack, choo-choo (a two-way train)), but those also may be simple repeated words (never-never, goody-goody, row-row);

2. combinations with altered reduplication:

   1. ablaut combinations

      1. i-a sounds (chit-chat, riff-raff (отбросы общества), to shilly-shally (колебаться)),

      2. i-o sounds (ding-dong, sing-song (монотонный), tip-top, ping-pong);

   2. rhyme combinations, where altered are the two initial consonants (hurdy-gurdy (шарманка), helter-skelter (беспорядок), lovey-dovey (влюбленный), willy-nilly (волей-неволей), hokus-pokus);

Reduplicative compouinds belong to different styles of speech, but most commonly occur in colloquial discourses. Their expressive character is mainly due to the effect of rhythm, rhyme and sound suggestingness. Like other words, reduplications may take suffixes y, sie, ty, etc.

The important semantic feature which unites all reduplicative words is the sem of plurality that is expressed in an iconical way.

The historical development of English compounds

Compounding is among the oldest methods of wordbulding, occurring in practically all the European languages. However, compounding is especially well-developed in modern Germanic languages.

English has built compound words during all periods and stages of its development. The two most productive types of English compounds have been the following:

1. noun stem + noun stem (rainbow, snowflake, headache), derived from free combinations of words,

2. adjectival stem + noun stem (holiday, sweetmeat).

One interesting historical example is manslaughter (человекоубийство), derived from old English mann slæht with the diverbal noun stem as its second element.

Some of the older historical compounds preserve this type in present-day English. Others have undergone significant phonetic changes, so that their compound nature is not perceived anymore, because they long turned into root words.

Russian linguists call this latter process simplification of stem (опрощение основы), while English grammarians name these words disguised compounds. E.g. daisy (derived from old English dagas eye meaning “day’s eye”), woman (from OE wifman meaning “woman person”), gossip (from OE God siepbe).

Demotivation of compounds is in many cases connected with simplification but not identical to it. Demotivation may be viewed as etymological isolation, when the word loses its former ties with other words with which it was originally connected and associated, e.g. to kidnap originally meant “to cease a yeanling (козленок)”.

The word lady originated from hlefdige with hlef meaning “bread” and dige “to knead”; lord from hleflord (“breadkeeper”).