In another thread we were talking about "reduplication," and I see that we've discussed it quite a bit here. I had thought of "yo-yo" as being "onomatopoeic," and then an "alliteration," and finally Shu told me it was a "reduplication." In the other thread, it seemed more like an "ideophone" to me.

When I look "reduplication" up in Dictionary.com, it says,

quote:

3. Grammar.
a. reduplicating as a grammatical pattern.
b. the added element in a reduplicated form.
c. a form containing a reduplicated element.

In the other thread I wondered if it really was a reduplication because it is just one word, and I didn't see that as a "grammatical pattern." However, when I read all our old posts about it, it does seem that "yo yo" is a reduplication. Is it? What exactly does Dictionary.com mean by "grammatical pattern?"

An example of reduplication as a grammatical pattern is verb formation in ancient Greek. Sometimes the initial consonant is reduplicated.

luō "I loosed"
leluka "I have loosened"

graphō "I write"
gegraphō "I have written"
egraphon "I was writing"
egegraphē "I had written"

In Malay, the word is reduplicated - this is lexical reduplication.
raja "king"
raja-raja "kings"

In English, reduplication is found in words like mish-mash, hanky-panky. beriberi and ilang-ilang are reduplicated forms in their original languages (Sinhala and Tagalog).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Yes, in those old posts, for example, people were calling the first line of double dactyls (such as "higgledy piggledy") "reduplications."

[BTW, how about some more double dactyls here? I've sorely missed them!)