reduplicative

English

Etymology

reduplicate +‎ -ive

Adjective

reduplicative (not comparable)

1. Formed by redoubling; reduplicate, double
   • 1848, Chevalier Bunsen, Charles Meyer, Max Müller, Three Linguistic Dissertations:

     The loss of the reduplicative syllable in the perfect is sufficiently accounted for by the same occurrence in almost all the modern, and even some of the ancient branches of the Indo-Germanic family.

   • 2004, Jean Robert Opgenort, A Grammar of Wambule:

     A hyphen (-) is generally used to indicate the boundary between the components of ordinary and reduplicative compounds in derivational morphology.

Derived terms

• reduplicative paramnesia

Noun

reduplicative (plural reduplicatives)

1. (grammar) A word obtained by the process of reduplication.
   • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

     Grammatically, Malay uses reduplication for plurals (burung = bird, burung-burung = birds) and thus repeated words are commonly heard in Malay speech; in contrast, in English reduplicatives are much less frequent and often involve phoneme modulation (ding-dong; wham-bam).