Contents introduction 2

REDUPLICATION
Sapir observed that nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication - the repetition of the base of a word in part or in its entirety. He observed that, though rare, reduplication is found in English, e.g.:
pooh-pooh goody-goody wishy-washy
sing-song roly-poly harum-scarum
Later on, Thun showed that reduplication is less marginal than is commonly assumed. He listed and examined about 2,000 reduplicative words in standard English and in various dialects. Reduplicatives (compound words formed by reduplication) are different. The most significant property of these words is that word-formation is driven by phonological factors.¹¹
There are two main types of reduplicatives: rhyme motivated compounds and ablaut motivated compounds. Rhyme here means what it means in poetry: the vowels and any consonant(s) that appear after it in the last syllable are identical, while ablaut means a change in the root vowel. Usually ablaut signals a change in grammatical function, e.g. the o e alternation in long (adj.) vs. length (noun) marks a difference in word-class. These labels for the two categories of reduplicative compounds highlight the fact that the repetition of the bases in compounds of this kind involves copying the rhyme in so-called rhyme motivated compounds, and coping the consonants and altering the vowel in ablaut motivated compounds. Some rhyming compounds are formed by joining bases which are both pre-existing words as in Black-Jack and brain-drain. Probably more common, however, are rhyming compounds where one (or both) bases is not an independent word, as in:
Rhyme motivated compounds:
nitwit helter-skelter namby-pamby
titbit hobnob higgledy-piggledy
nitty-gritty teeny-weeny hurly-burly
Finally, there are ablaut motivated compounds in which one or both bases may not be an independent word:
Ablaut motivated compounds:
tip-top riff-raff ding-dong shilly-shally
tick-tock tittle-tattle wibble-wobble dingle-dangle
ping-pong dilly-dally flip-flop mish-mash