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Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:31 pm
by Eirene
Q: Is there an official linguistics name for words with two similar-sounding parts, like wishy-washy, namby-pamby, dilly-dally, or fuddy-duddy? Some of the ones I can think of rhyme and some have a vowel change.
A:
"The repeating of parts of words to make new forms is called reduplication."
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:39 pm
by Dead Cat
So "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" is a double reduplication?
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 9:04 am
by Katya
Fun fact: In English reduplicative phrases that only have a vowel change, the vowel (almost?) always changes from high to low. So "wishy-washy" and "tic-tac," but not "washy-wishy" or "tac-tic."
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 9:16 am
by Digit
bada-bing!
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 3:10 pm
by Yarjka
Is this related at all to the diminishing effect of replacing the first consonant of a word with "schm", such as "fancy, schmancy"? That comes from Yiddish, I believe.
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:00 am
by Portia
Katya wrote:Fun fact: In English reduplicative phrases that only have a vowel change, the vowel (almost?) always changes from high to low. So "wishy-washy" and "tic-tac," but not "washy-wishy" or "tac-tic."
Does this come from how the sounds are produced in our mouths? (Back to front, in other words.)
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 1:19 pm
by Katya
Yarjka wrote:Is this related at all to the diminishing effect of replacing the first consonant of a word with "schm", such as "fancy, schmancy"? That comes from Yiddish, I believe.
I don't know. I suppose you'd have to start by investigating the semantic effects of rhyming constructions.
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 1:20 pm
by Katya
Portia wrote:Katya wrote:Fun fact: In English reduplicative phrases that only have a vowel change, the vowel (almost?) always changes from high to low. So "wishy-washy" and "tic-tac," but not "washy-wishy" or "tac-tic."
Does this come from how the sounds are produced in our mouths? (Back to front, in other words.)
No clue. I don't even know if it's a global constraint or if it's just limited to English.
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 7:59 pm
by The Happy Medium
The reduplicated words are also minimal pairs because they share the same phonemes except one.
Re: Linguistics-y question I almost asked
Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 10:52 pm
by Katya
The Happy Medium wrote:The reduplicated words are also minimal pairs because they share the same phonemes except one.
Oh, minimal pairs! That's a good way of describing them.