Reduplication is a linguistic term for doubling up a word or a morpheme (smallest unit of language that carries meaning) to derive a new meaning than the original word. In Chinese it's called 疊詞. Today we will look at some reduplications used in Cantonese.
1) Motherese - baby talk, making words sound more "cute" (This is common in many languages of the world; applies to nouns, verbs, and adjectives)
食菜菜好冇？ - Want some veggie?
買架車車俾BB - Get a witto car for baby
Others are found in nouns, verbs, and adjectives:
NOUNS:
2) Replaces determiner to mean "every/all X"
次次都係咁 - it's like this every time
碟碟都咁大 - all the dishes are big
3) one by one (emphasis on individually rather than all together); must be in the format of "一XX"
一個個黎唔使爭 - [line up] one by one; don't fight
頭髮剪到一執執咁 - hair looks choppy with strands of varying length (doesn't translate well)
VERBS:
4) During a continuous action state; must be in the format of "XX下"
坐坐下覺得好凍 -When I was sitting, it got cold
坐坐下覺得好凍 -When I was sitting, it got cold
上上下堂突然有多個教授跑入黎 - In the middle of class, another professor ran in
5) VERB for a brief duration of time; in a noncommiting manner
我睇睇je... 冇諗住買 - I'm just looking around, wasn't gonna buy
你諗諗先 - just think about it for a bit
上我屋企坐坐先走啦 - come to my place and sit for a few minutes before you leave
ADJECTIVES:
6) To a lesser degree (must be in the format of "XX地"
個蛋糕甜甜地 - the cake is kind of sweet
十月未落雪，不過天氣都凍凍地 - it's not snowing in October, but it gets a bit cold
7) Intensifier (less flexible combination)
少少－ 俾多少少時間我；落少少糖 - Give a little bit more time; give me a tiny little bit of sugar
dd－ 差dd就贏到 - we lost by just a little bit
(I can really think of very limited examples for this one.)
There we have it. If you pay attention you really use reduplication every day. Can you think of any more uses for reduplication in Cantonese? Which one is your favorite? And most important question of all: 「少少」少過「少」定「少」少過「少少」？
Next time we will talk about lexical reduplication in adjectives (e.g. how you can say 紅bok bok but never 黃bok bok).
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