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The Japanese language has a special group of words which repeat mostly two syllable word like pera pera, para para, don don, suku suku, that are used adverbially for examples;

Pera pera eigowo hanasu– speak English fluently.

Iki Iki shiteiru – look vivid (fresh)

Don don iku – go fast

Para para furu – rain drizzlingly

Muka muka suru – feel sick (angry)

Pera pera mekuru – turn the page at random

Zuki zuki itamu – ache acutely

Suka suka tooru - pass smoothly

They look like onomatopoeias, but they are not. They don’t reflect any sound, and they are all used adverbially, not as interjections.

I don’t know whether such usage is special to Japanese language or not. Are there a lot of similar form of refrains of nonsensical (on their own) two - (sometimes one) syllable words in separation (unlike the type of crisscross, dillydally, riffraff which are single word) used exclusively adverbially except onomatopoeia (which is not my concern) in English and other languages. If there is, I'm curious to know how we call such a group of words or usages.

Yoichi Oishi
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  • For very small children we have such forms as moo-moo meaning a cow, being the sound a cow makes; or gee-gee for horse being a repetition of gee, being the word of command for a horse. But I suspect that these are not quite the same thing as the Japanese examples you give. – WS2 Jan 10 '16 at 22:04
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    As answerers say, it is reduplication. It is not uncommon in languages around the world, sometimes used to change verb aspect, for emphasis, for diminutives, for all sorts of things. It is unclear from your examples (my not knowing what the constituent Japanese lexemes mean) what exactly the process is in Japanese. That particular use may be specific to Japanese, but reduplication for any reason is not. – Mitch Jan 10 '16 at 22:33
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    English does not do anything like this, or at least it's not in any grammar books. As @WS2 notes, it is common in babytalk/onomatopoiea. Lately it is slang to use reduplication to connote ... authenticity. "You say you can cliff dive, but can you dive dive or are you just jumping in?" 'dive dive' meaning to really dive and not just halfway or badly do it or fake it. – Mitch Jan 10 '16 at 22:36
  • The technique is not often used in English. – Hot Licks Jan 10 '16 at 22:49
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    I'd like to help but my command of English is only so so, I am a dum-dum, and I am tired -- so night night. – alfreema Jan 11 '16 at 04:22
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    The phenomenon @Mitch is describing ("dive dive") is called "contrastive focus reduplication". The phenomenon OP describes seems to generally be called "mimetic reduplication" when talking about Japanese, and "onomatopoeic reduplication" when talking about other languages (e.g. the examples cited in JEL's answer). This contrasts in Japanese with pluralizing reduplication as in Japanese 人々 hitobito "people". – senshin Jan 11 '16 at 04:35
  • @senshin. Refrains of short word (noun) in Japanese like 人々、神々、等々、云々 means a plenty of people and things and generates the sense of plural form, though we dont have distinction of singular and plural as English (German, French, Italian, whatever Indo-European language) has. As you're aware of they are different from the group of the reduplication I quoted in my question. – Yoichi Oishi Jan 11 '16 at 06:57
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    Answered here. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 11 '16 at 10:21
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    @HotLicks, not used often, but one phrase is used a lot. "Bye bye" – Viktor Mellgren Jan 11 '16 at 15:46
  • @Mitch: As Yoichi clarified, these reduplications are adverbial, and as others have shown, this does occur in English, to a degree (although the onomatopoeic variety might be the most familiar, e.g. helter-skelter and the like). Some of the recent informal constructions in English (e.g. now-now, chop-chop) can be traced to other cultures that adopted the language during Imperial times... – Jimi Oke Jan 11 '16 at 15:48
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    @YoichiOishi what do each of these words mean singly? For example, if 'para para' means drizzlingly, what does a single 'para' mean? This will give us an idea of what the reduplication is in Japanese to see how it might correspond to something in English. Can you do that for all your examples? – Mitch Jan 11 '16 at 16:44
  • @Mitch. Most of the words I cited are nonsensical on their own. So they should be always accompanied by verbs they modify. But some of them are apparently derived from existing verbs. For instance ‘iki-iki’ meaning vividly or fresh, I think, derived from the verb, 生きるーikiru - to live. ‘suka-suka’ came from the verb, 透ける-sukeru – become transparent. Para-para seems to be an onomatopoeia of the sounds of rain drops bouncing on anything like roof or 雨傘, paper-made umbrella with a bamboo stick. – Yoichi Oishi Jan 12 '16 at 00:38
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    Possible duplicate of crisscross, dillydally, riffraff, etc – Mari-Lou A Jan 13 '16 at 19:31
  • @ Mari-Lou.@Edwin Ahwarth. All dilly, dally, criss, cross, riff, and raff have legitimate meaning of their own as a single word as everybody understands. Whererea, the family of all words e.g.para-para, pera-pera, don-don has no meaning at all, I repeat, they are totally and utterly nonsensical on their own as a single word, that's the fundamentally diifferent point from Edwin Ashwarth is repeatedly, stubbornly, and obstinately shouting. Beside, they are by no means onomatopoeias. I'm asking if there are the exactly same non-sensical reduplication group of words in English language. – Yoichi Oishi Jan 17 '16 at 00:37

6 Answers6

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The general English term in linguistics for such repetitions is 'reduplication':

re·du·pli·ca·tion n.
....
3. Linguistics
a. A word formed by or containing a reduplicated element.
b. The added element in a word form that is reduplicated.

[reduplication. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved January 10 2016 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reduplication .]

In English, I was able to uncover approximately 75 exact (that is, the repetition is of the entire word, rather than of parts of the word) reduplicative verbs and nouns. Here are some examples:

  • boo-boo, n.
  • jaw-jaw, n. and v.
  • ju-ju, n.
  • la-la, v.
  • no-no, n. and adj.
  • tum-tum, n.
  • yé-yé or yeah-yeah, adj. or n.
  • yum-yum, n.

Exact reduplicative adverbs were fewer:

  • flaunt-a-flaunt, adv. (also quasi-n.; obsolete; said to be onomatopoeic)
  • chop-chop, adv. (and int.)
  • now-now, adv.
  • one-one, adv.
  • piano piano, adv. (also as one word)
  • pop-pop, adv.
  • pretty-pretty, adv.
  • so-so, adv. (and adj.)

Most of these exact reduplicative adverbs would not be well described as onomatopoeic.

'Reduplication' also describes phonetic duplication of parts of words, as in hubble-bubble.

With the exceptions of 'piano piano' and 'pretty-pretty', as far as I've been able to ascertain, the exact English examples are one-syllable words, like your Japanese example "don don".

JEL
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  • But the two-syllable lubbly-jubbly for lovely. – WS2 Jan 10 '16 at 23:31
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    Cross-linguistic tidbit: "don" is actually two morae in Japanese, which is a lot more significant than syllables in that language. e.g., song timing is based on morae, and the "-n" coda has a tendency to be sung as its own syllable. I'm not fluent, but all the examples Yoichi gave (including "don don") look like a 2-mora word doubled to 4 morae. e.g., I'd group "don" with "pera" as having 2, not with "ju". Conversely, "tum-tum" in English does look like a 1-syllable word doubled to 2 syllables. – Soron Jan 11 '16 at 02:12
  • There's also "semi-reduplication", which covers things like "helter skelter" in English and "hitobito" in Japanese. – hobbs Jan 11 '16 at 03:10
  • @hobbs I'm not familiar with the notion of "semi-reduplication", but I don't think it should be said to apply to "hitobito", which is standard pluralizing reduplication to "hitohito" plus a necessary application of rendaku on the second segment. – senshin Jan 11 '16 at 04:37
  • @senshin semi-reduplication is specifically reduplication with a change in sound at the beginning of the second unit. I see your argument for excluding it here, and, well, I'm not sure :) – hobbs Jan 11 '16 at 04:41
  • Hot stuff: piri-piri – Jacinto Jan 11 '16 at 10:24
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    "gaga" is a good example of a very familiar reduplicated word – ThomasH Jan 11 '16 at 14:36
  • If I understand correctly, the phenomenon of reduplication is used to emphasis a noun in a manner like this "It's going to be a party party, so dress up" as opposed to "Oh, it's just a get-together, just wear your street clothes." I can't think of a succinct way to describe the meaning. – user1359 Jan 11 '16 at 15:19
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    @jel you should add "no-no" to your list, it's the most common one. – P. O. Jan 11 '16 at 17:09
  • Hebrew uses that quite a lot! For example, there's this one "pattern": KilKul. Bilbul - confusion Gilgul - Revolution (spin) Dildul (morphed to Dilul) - thinning (as in paint thinner) Hilhul (with Hei) (morphed to Hilul) - Praise (Halel-u-ya) Zilzul - Disrespect Hilhul - (with Khet) Trickle (or, morphed to Hilul: Desecration) Tiltul - Rocking ... Probably about 10-13 more :) – DraxDomax Jan 11 '16 at 17:46
  • I would point out that none of these words are really "proper" english. I don't recognize all of them, but they seem to mostly be slang, colloquialisms, or baby-talk. – David K Jan 11 '16 at 20:13
  • It's worth noting that many of these are borrowed from other languages. – Chris Sunami Jan 12 '16 at 16:52
  • Don’t forget “jub jub.” – Simon White Feb 04 '16 at 17:20
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This is called reduplication in English. You might be interested to read Key's 1965 paper on the topic. Here's another on Japanese.

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    The two sources you cited are very helpful. I was under inpression the reduplication like para para, sara sara is unique to Japanese language, but it's universal. Thank you very much. – Yoichi Oishi Jan 10 '16 at 22:32
  • @Yoichi: Yes this is certainly a universal phenomenon (albeit more pronounced in some more than others)! – Jimi Oke Jan 11 '16 at 15:37
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As others have said, the repetitive structure of these words is described as reduplicative or the result of reduplication. In terms of function, these Japanese words are often called ideophones (see also the Wikipedia article); this refers to words that act a bit like onomatopoeia, but that represent ideas rather than sounds. English doesn't use ideophones much, if at all, but they are present in many other languages. They aren't always reduplicative as in Japanese, but they often are.

herisson
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A book that I have on Japanese grammar (I don't recall the name or author) used the following linguistic terms based on what they described.

  • A phonomime is an onomatopoeia, the verbal representation of a sound, like a bark or a meow.
  • A phenomime is the verbal representation of anything perceived with the other five senses, like the twinkling of a star or the touch of a slimy object.
  • A psychomime is the verbal representation of anything internal to the body, particularly psychological or emotional states, such as the pitter-pat of anticipation or the spinning world of someone who's had too much to drink.
Paul Rowe
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sumelic's answer is spot on, and I'd like to expand on it (but can't comment with low rep). These Japanese words are often called mimetics in linguistic research, which is a better classifier, as reduplication refers only to their structure. Although they are not onomatopoeias, these words are still considered instances of sound symbolism. Wikipedia also has a summary.

Aprel
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  • Maybe a mod can make this a comment? – AAM111 Jan 12 '16 at 00:17
  • Aprel sais that she/he would have made this a comment if she/he had the rep. This seems like a new user who will turn out to be an asset to the site. Let's just let this stand. – ab2 Jan 12 '16 at 01:01
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Somewhat related to Contrastive focus reduplication also. i.e. using a word twice to indicate the prototypical meaning.

Example:

"I forgot my charger to my E-book, so I had to read a book-book."

"I got soy milk in my coffe, i was assuming milk-milk was the default"

Community
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Viktor Mellgren
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