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From: twalsh@quads.uchicago.edu (Espaliered Tomatoes)
Subject: Re: duplication?
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Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 23:05:36 GMT
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In article <3j4pjn$ct@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
David A. Mastroianni <damastro@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:

>just from my casual contact with them.  It's interesting, doubling a word to
>refer to something...well, related to the original word but somehow...
>"higher" than it, I guess, in a sort of mystical sense. 
>	This does not see, like something that would work in English.
>English likes compound words, but duplication I think would sound kind
>of like baby-talk.  Would that go for related languages?

On the contrary, it not only is used in English, but it works, at least where 
I come from SE Penn.  It even works for phrases.  You must have heard middle
school students giggling to themselves:
"I like her.  I don't _like her_ like her, but I like her."
With liking things, I've heard phrases get reduplicaetd indefinitely, but for
merely showing that something is more the genuine article, it rarely goes beyond two, although I once heard one of my friends from high school's mothers say:
"It's not a __salad__ _salad_ salad."
The future psycholinguistics major in me was delighted, but I knew enough to 
keep my mouth shut lest I be thought weird.  Anyway, I have heard 
reduplication used both by children and adults for emphasis, and I never
thought of it as odd, or baby talk.

Odd that no one else has mentioned this already...

--Tracy--
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