i’ve got a thing for reduplicatives. there, i said it. i cannot decide if it’s the repetition or the silliness but i love them. i use them in my writing when i can and, when it works, i’m happy. in my collection of short stories set in Hong Kong, the use of reduplicatives is a part of spoken life, mostly because of the pervasive use of pidgin english.
here are some of the reduplicatives contained within my stories: “what-what” and “scotch-scotch” and “same-same”. sometimes, i just repeat phrases like “no problem, no problem” and, although these are not true reduplicatives, they play on repetition. it seems natural to me and that could be because i repeat myself.
reduplicatives are pairs of words. there are three basic types of reduplicatives. some repeat the word exactly (e.g. beriberi), some use rhyme for formation (e.g. hurly-burly) while the others use vowel or consonant shift to come up with the other half of the pair (e.g. chit chat). most reduplicatives are two syllable words (four, if you count both halves of the pair), though there are some with three syllables. i don’t think three syllable words are as successful to my ear but that’s just me. it has something to do with high and low sounds and the variation between them. in two syllable words the sounds are equal and this is what makes a reduplicative stand out. i don’t think i know what i’m saying.
how do you play with words?