Reduplicatives in english and in vietnamese = từ láy trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
********

vũ thị vân thuỳ
reduplicatives in English
and in Vietnamese
(từ láy trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt)

GRADUATION THESIS
Field: Linguistics

VINH 2009

1


VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
********

reduplicatives in
English and in
Vietnamese
(tõ l¸y trong tiÕng anh và tiếng việt)

GRADUATION THESIS
Field: Linguistics
Supervisor

:

Cao Thị Phơng, MA.

Student

:

Vũ Thị V©n Thuú

Class

: 46 B2

2


VINH, MAY 2009

Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Table of contents
List of tableS and fingures
Abbreviations
Part I: Introduction
1.

Reason for choosing the topic

2.

Aims and objectives of the Study

3.

Methods of the Study

4.

Scope of the Study

5.

Format of the Study

Part II: contents
Chapter 1: Back ground
1.1.

Definition of a word

1.2.

Characteristics of a word

1.3.

Classification of words

1.3.1. According to the semantic aspect
1.3.2. According to the morphological structure

1.3.3. According to parts of speech (grammatical category)
1.3.4. According to the stylistic aspect of the language
1.4.

Word-formation

1.4.1. Derivation and inflection
1.4.2. Compounding
1.4.3. Reduplication
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1.4.4. Conversion
1.4.5. Shortening
1.4.5.1. Initialisms
1.4.5.2. Acronyms
1.4.5.3. Clippings
1.4.5.4. Blends
1.4.5.5. Back-formation
1.4.5.6. Sound-imitation
1.4.5.7. Words from manner, names
1.5.

Word meaning

Chapter 2: Reduplicatives in English and in Vietnamese
2.1. Definitions
2.1.1. Defintion of English reduplication
2.1.2. Defintion of Vietnamese reduplication
2.2. Characteristics of reduplicative

2.3. Classification of reduplicative
2.3.1 English reduplicatives
2.3.1.1. Reduplicative compounds proper
2.3.1.2. Ablaut combinations
2.3.1.3. Rhyme combinations
2.3.1.4. Shm – reduplicative
2.3.1.5. – Ma – infix reduplicative
2.3.2. Vietnamese reduplicatives
2.3.2.1. Full reduplicative
2.3.2.1.1. Full reduplicative in which all segments and tone are repeated
2.3.2.1.2. Full reduplicative is formed by a full copy of the base with a
modified tone.
2.3.2.2. Partial reduplicative
2.3.2.2.1. Alliterative reduplicative
2.3.2.2.2. Ablaut reduplicative
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2.3.2.2.3. Rhyme reduplicative
2.3.2.3. Multiple reduplicatives
2.4. Formation of reduplicatives
2.4.1. Full reduplicative
2.4.2. Partial reduplicative
2.4.2.1. Ablaut reduplicative
2.4.2.2. Rhyme reduplicative
2.4.3. Multiple reduplicative
2.4.4. Other formation
Chapter 3: Meaning and usage of reduplicatives
3.1. Meaning of reduplicatives
3.2. Usage of reduplicatives

Part III: Conclusion
References

5


Part I: Introduction

1. Reasons for choosing the topic
There are many aspects of language that one might be interested
in learning. During the course of learning English we have chance to deal
with many aspects of English language, in that we are interested in its
semantic field. Especially, we found it interesting when learning the greed
– upon meaning of certain strings of sound and learning how to combine
these meaningful units into larger units that also convey meaning.
Speaker’s linguistics knowledge permits him to combine phonemes into
morphemes, morphemes into words, or rather word compounds that carry
meaning of some kind from lexical meanings of individuals or from their
structural meanings. In fact, compounding or word – composition is one of
the productive types of word – formation in modern English language.
Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems,
which occur, in the language as free forms. In a compound word, the
immediate constituents obtain the integrity and structural cohesion that
make them function in a sentence as a separate lexical unit.
In compound words, reduplication is a special way to create new words
both in English and in Vietnamese. Reduplicative compounds are used in
variety ways. That is the reason why we decide to choose the subject entitle
“ Reduplicatives in English and in Vietnamese” with a hope that this study
will make a small contribution to teaching and learning reduplications.
2. Aims of the Study

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The first aim of this Study is to help the learners improve their
knowledge of English and Vietnamese reduplications.
The second aim of the study is to enrich English and Vietnamese
language.
Lastly, this Study aims at giving a comparison of similarities and
differences between English and Vietnamese reduplicatives.
3. Methods of the Study
To do this Study we use these methods:
- Collective method
- Analytics method
- Comparative method
4. Scope of the Study
Because of time limit, we cannot come up with all the aspects of
reduplicatives in English and in Vietnamese; we only focus on some main
points of the topic. The main points include an overview of reduplicatives
and the usage of them in literature. The focus here should be restricted to a
discussion of compounds base on reduplication in English and in
Vietnamese.
5. Format of the Study
The study is designed into three main parts:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Contents
Chapter 1: Background
Chapter 2: Reduplication in English and in Vietnamese
Chapter 3: Meaning and usage of reduplication
Part III: Conclusion

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Besides these three main parts, the thesis also consists of the
acknowledgement, the table of contents, the table, abbreviation and the
references.

Part II: CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND
1.1.

Definition of a word
In Arnold (1986: 28), a word has a sound form because it is a certain

arrangement of morphemes; it has its morphological structure, when used in
actual speech. it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic
functions and signal various meanings.
a word is considered as the central element of any language system;
therefore, the word is a sort of focus for the problems of phonology,
lexicology, syntax and morphology and so on. Thus, what is the word? In
this study, we would like to propose some following definitions.
Firstly, in lexicology, Anstrushina, G. B., et.al. (1986: 6) state that:
- The word is a unit of speech, which severs the purposes of human
communication.
- The word can be perceived as the total of the sounds, which comprise it.
- The word view structurally, possesses several characteristics.
To support their concepts, they based on distinguishing between the
internal and the external structures of the word. The external structure of
the word means the morphological structure. For example, in the word

“impression”, the following morphemes can be: the prefix “im-“, the root
“press” and the noun-forming suffix “-ion”. The internal structure of the
word or its meaning is commonly referred to as the word’s semantic
structure. In addition, this is the word’s main aspect. Another structural
8


aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external and
internal unity. All that Anstrushina, G. B., et.al. said about the word can be
summed up as follows: The word is a speech unit used for the purposes of
human communication, materially representing a group of sounds,
possessing a meaning susceptible to grammatical employment and
characterized by formal and semantic unity.
In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, Richards, et.al.,
(p. 27) word is the smallest of the linguistic unit which can occur on its own
in speech and writing.
In speech, word boundaries may be recognized by slight pauses. In
writing, word boundaries are usually recognized by spaces between the
words.
Besides two above word studies, Arnold, I.V. (1986) also gave his
definition of the word.
“The word may be defined as the basic unit of language, uniting
meaning and form; it is composed of one or more morphemes, each
consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation”.
Within the scope of linguistics, the word has been defined
syntactically, semantically, phonologically, and by combining various
approaches. It has been syntactically defined for instance as “the minimum
sentences” by Sweet, H and much later by Bloomfield, L. as “a minimum
free form”.
To Sapir, E. he took into consideration the syntactic and semantic

aspects when he called the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying
bits of isolated meaning into which sentence involves itself”.
A purely semantic treatment will be found in Stephen Ullmann’s
explanation” will fall into a certain number of meaningful segments, which
are ultimately composed of meaningful units. These meaningful units are
called words”. The semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated by
Gardiner’s definition: “a word articulate sound symbol in its aspect of
9


denoting something which is spoken out”. The eminent French linguist
Meillet, A (1866-1936) combined the semantic, phonological and
grammatical criteria give this definition: a word is defined by the
association of a particular meaning with the particular grammatical
employment.
In Vietnamese, there are also some definitions of a word given by
some authors. In Hoang Tat Truong (1993), Palmer noted that a word is
marked if not by “spaces” or “pauses”, at least by some features of the
sound system of language. The definition seems to be the most satisfactory
is that the word is the fundamental unit of language. It is a dialectical unity
of form and content. The content or meaning of the word is not identical to
notion, but it may reflect human notion and in this sense many be
considered as the form of their existence. Semantically, Nguyen Hoa
(2004)defined word as follows: words are regarded as the smallest
indivisible meaningful unit of a language, which can operate immediately.
Thus so far have there been many definition about word from
different aspects. Among them, the most common one is that word is the
smallest independent and meaningful unit of a language.
1.2. Characteristics of a word
We can consider some following characteristics of a word.

(i) The word is an indivisible unit.
Sapir point out the very important characteristics of the word is
its indivisibility. It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning,
one or two other or both of the several parts remaining as a helpless waif a
comparison of the article “a” and the prefix “a-“ in “a lion” and “alive”. A
lion is a word group because we can separate its elements and insert other
words between them such as: “a living lion” or “a dead lion”, etc. but alive
is a word, it is uninterruptible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can be
inserted between its elements.
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(ii ) The word may consist of one or more morphemes.
When it consists of one morpheme only, then it cannot be broken down
into smaller meaningful units, for example, dog, hand, work, etc. These are
called simple words, which are typically minimum free forms, in the sense
that they may stand by themselves and yet act as minimally complete
utterances, for example, in answer to a question. When words consist of
more than one morpheme, they may be either complex or compound.
Complex words may be broken down into one free form and one or more
bound forms such as: dog-s, happi-ly, quick-er, whereas compound words
consist of more than one free form such as: black + bird, green + house,
swimming + pool, etc.
(iii) The word occurs typically in the structure of phrases.
According to the hierarchy adopted by Jackson, H & Amvella, E.,
morphemes are used to build words, words to build phrases, phrases to
build clauses, clauses to build sentences. This is the typical mapping of
lower level into higher-level units. However, in a typical mapping, a
higher-level unit may be used in a lower level unit.
For example: a clause “who came late” may be used like an adjective

(word) to modify the head noun “man” in a sentence such as “the man who
came late was my brother”. Thus, we shall still regard such unit as a
sequence of words, it has merely shifted levels.
(iv) Another important characteristic of each word is that it should
belong to a specific word class or part of speech where the same form
appears in more than one class, as frequently happens in English, we regard
the various occurrences as separate words, for example, smoke (verb) as
distinct from smoke (noun). It may even be suggested that a word is
defined by two factors: its semantic “nucleus” and the class to which it
belongs.

11


(v) The last characteristic of the word is the word can be
positionally mobile. It means that a word may have different positions in the
structure of a sentence.
For example:
The boy walked slowly up the hill.
Slowly, the boy walked up the hill.
1.3. Classification of words
1.3.1. According to the semantic aspect
There are two catergories of words. They are content and function
words.
- Content words (lexical or notion words) are words whose lexical
meaning is clear (noun, verb, adjective, adverb).
- Function words (grammatical words) are words whose meanings
mainly denote the grammatical function of the word in the sentence
(article, preposition, interjection, etc.)
1.3.2. According to the morphological structure

- Simple words are words which consist of a free morpheme with or
without an inflectional morpheme.
For example: sing, smoke, work, etc.
- Derived words or complex words are words which consist of either
a free root or bound root with derivational morpheme.
For example: multiply, production, manager, etc.
- Compound words are words which consist of at least two free root
morphemes with or without derivational morpheme.
For example: black board, green house, etc.
1.3.3. According to parts of speech (grammatical category)
In this part we have noun, verb, adjective, adverb, ect.
1.3.4. According to the stylistic aspect of the language
There are three main types: informal, formal, and neutral words.
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- Type 1: informal words.
In this type, we have four main sub-groups: colloquial words, dialect
words, vulgarism and slang words (general and special slang words)
+ Colloquial words are used in everyday speech conversational
speech by ordinary people of all age groups. Colloquial words are often
shortened form.
For example:

mum = mother
Dad = father

+ Dialect words are regional forms of English, they belong to only a
certain terriority or locality.
For example:

From Yorshire: brass = money
Niver = never
From Scotland: lock = lake
Boning = fine
+ slang words are metaphors, jocular, often used with a coarse
mocking, cynical coloring. Slang words are often used by young people.
+ Vulgarisms are coarse and rough words used by some uneducated
people and are not generally used in public.
For example: damn it
- Type 2: formal words
In this type, there are four sub-groups: learned words (bookish
words), archaic or poetic words, technical term or professional termilogy,
and non-assimilated foreign words.
+ Learned words: mainly associated with printed pages. Most of them
are Latin, Greek, and French.
+ Archaic or poetic words: used in historical novels or in poetry when
the authors want to create a particular period atmosphere. They are old
English.
For example:

morn = morning
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Thee = you
Eve = evening
+ Technical term or professional terminology
Every field of modern activity has its specialized vocabulary. There is a
special medical vocabulary and similarly special terminologies for
psychology, botany, music linguistics, teaching methods and many others.

+ Non-assimilated foreign words: borrowed from other
languages which still remain their spelling and pronunciation.
-Type 3: Neutral words
Neutral words are used in all kinds of situations neither formal nor
informal, in both written and spoken communication. Neutral words are
mostly native words.
1.4. Word-formation
Word-formation is the process of building new words from the
material already existing in language according to certain structural and
semantic patterns and formulates (Hoang Tat Truong, 1993:15). Or
word-formation can be understood as the process of producing new
words from the resources of this particular language.
1.4.1. Derivation and inflection
Derivation is a lexical process, which actually forms a new word out
of existing one by the addition of a derivational affix.
Inflection is a general grammatical process, which combines words
and inflectional affixes to build alternative grammatical forms of words.
From two definitions, we can see there are two types of affixes
(derivational and inflectional affixes) used to build the new words.
Derivational affixes can change the word class of the item they are
added to and establish words as members of the various word classes.
Table 1: Some English derivational affixes.
Affix

word

Semantic effect
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Examples

class
change
Suffixes
-able
-ation
-er
-ing

Able to be X’ed
The result of X’ing
One who X’s
The act of X’ing

Fixable
Realization
Worker
The shooting

V→A
-ion
-ive
-ment
-al
-ial
-ian
-ic
-ize
-less

-ous

V→A
V→N
V→N
V→N

In the process of X’ing

The

V→N
V→A
V→N
N→A
N→A
N→A
N→A
N→V
N→A
N→A

child
The result of act of X’ing Protection
Having the property of X Assertive
The act or result of X’ing Adjournment
Pertaining to X
National
Pertaining to X
Presidential

Pertaining to X
Canadian
Having the property of X Organic
Put in X
Hospitalize
Without X
Penniless
The property of having or Poisonous

being X
A→V
Make X
A→ Adv In an X manner

sleeping

-ate
-ly
Prefixes
ExN→N
InA→A
UnA→A

Former X
Not X
Not X

Ex-president
Incompetent
Unhappy

V→V
V →V

Reserve X
X again

Untie
Replay

Re-

Activate
Quietly

Inflectional affixes may be described as “relational markers” that fit
words for use in syntax. To form a new word we use both inflection and
derivational affixes. If derivational and inflectional affixes occur,
derivations are inner, closer to the stem, and inflection are outer, furthest
from the stem.
For example:
Base form

+ derivation

Frightened

+ inflection

fright

-en
15

-ed


Activating

active

-ate

-ing

Payments

pay

-ment

-s

Resignations

resign

-ation

-s

1.4.2. Compounding
Compounding is the process of joining two or more words together.
A compound word is a combination of two or more words joined together
with or without a hyphen. From the way to combine words into compound
words we can consider these types of compounds.
The first way is base on the parts of speech.
Table 2: Ways of combining a compound word
compound
Noun

+ noun
N+N

+verb
N+V

+adjective
N+A

+adverb
N + Adv

Verb

Moon-light
V+N

Drop-kick
V+V

Sea-sick
V+A

No case
V + Adv

Adjective

Pick-pocket
A+N

Dive-bomb
A+V

No case
A+A

Lift-off
A + Adv

Adverb

Black dog
Adv + N

Dry-clean
Adv + V

Blue-green

Adv + A

No case
Adv
+

Back-talk

Over-do

Off-white

Adv
In-to

Through the table 2, we can classify compounds into: compound
noun (some special compound noun (V+ Adv = N)), compound verb,
compound adjective, compound adverb, compound preposition, compound
pronoun and compound conjunction.
The second way is base on the meaning of the compound we have
two types:
- Motivated compounds (non – idiomatic compound) are those
whose meaning can be deduced from the meaning of the parts.
For example: school leaver, housekeeper, etc.

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- Non – motivated compounds (idiomatic compound) are those
whose meaning cannot be deduced from the meaning of the parts, there is

no relation between the meaning of the compound and the meaning of its
parts.
For example: teach – in = workshop
Hotdog = a kind of sauces
Another way is base on the structure. There are two main types of
this. They are simple compounds and derivational compounds.
- Simple compounds are words, which consists of only free bases.
For example: headache, armchair, highway, etc.
- Derivational compounds are words, which consists of free bases
and derivational morphemes.
For example: kind – hearted,
The last way is base on the relations between the components. There
are two types: coordinative compounds and subordinate compounds.
- Coordinative compounds are those of which are equal.
For example: fifty – fifty, bye – bye, etc.
- Subordinate compound are those in which one component
dominated other.
For example: beautiful girl, ugly girl, etc.
1.4.3. Reduplication
Reduplication is the special way of forming new words by
doubling one stem with or without the change of a vowel or a consonant.
For example: ping-pong, hoity-toity, ha-ha, etc.
This type of word formation greatly facilitated in modern English by
the vast number of monosyllable. Stylistically speaking, most words made
by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slangs.
For example:
Walkie-talkie (a portable radio)
17

Riff-raff (the worthless or disreputable element of society)
In general, there are three main types of reduplication:
reduplicative compounds proper (1), ablaut combination (2), and rhyme
reduplication (3).
For example:
(1) Hush-hush: secret
Pool-pool: to express contempt
(2) Chit-chat: gossip
Ping-pong: table tennis
(3) Mumbo-jumbo: deliberate mystification
Hoity-toity: snobbish
1.4.4. Conversion
Conversion may be defined as a process which a word belonging
to one word class is transferred to another word class without any
concomitant change of form, either pronunciation or spelling. Conversion
most often involves a change from one word class to another. The major
kinds of conversion are N → V, V → N, A → N, and A → V.
For example:
N → V: to bottle, to network, etc.
V → N: a call, a guess, etc.
A → N: to better, to wrong, etc.
A → V: the poor, the rich, the disable, etc.
Adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and even affixes
can all act as bases for conversion as in “ to up price” (preposition → verb),
the hereafter (adv → noun).
Moreover, many of these word classes can undergo conversion into
more than one other word class.
For example:
To go down (Adv particle)
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To down a beer (V)
To have a down on somebody (N)
Finally, it should be noted that even a whole phrase might undergo
conversion and act as a noun (1), or as a adjective (2).
For example:
(1) A for get-me-not
A has been
A don’t know
(2) A Monday morning feeling
A not-to - be-missed opportunity
1.4.5. Shortening
Shortening is the way of creating a new word from a word or a
phrase by leaving out a part or some parts, without the change of meaning
or word class of the word.
There are five main types of shortening.
1.4.5.1. Initialisms
Initialisms make a new word from the initial letter of a word group.
initialisms are spoken as individual letters.
For example:
Ph D: doctor of philosophy
EEC: European Economic Community
TV: television
Some initialisms present full words (1), some present elements in a
compound or just parts of a word (2).
For example:
(1) UN: United Nations
EEC: European Economic Community
(2) TV: television

ID: identification card
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1.4.5.2. Acronyms
Acronyms are formed from the initial sounds or letter of a string of
words. Acronym are pronounced as single words.
For example:
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
UNESCO:

United

Nations

Educational,

Scientific,

and

Cultural

Organization
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
1.4.5.3. Clippings
Clippings are formed by subtracting one or more syllable from a word
- Initial clipping: (tele)phone
- Final clipping: exam(ination)
- Initio-final clipping: (in)flu(enza), (re)fridge(erator)

- Elliptico-conventional clipping: pub(lic house), pop(ular music)
A particular type of clipping, favor in Australia and British English is
that a long word is reduced to single syllable, then “y” or “ie” is added to
the end.
For example:
Movie = moving + picture
Telly = television
1.4.5.4. Blends
Blend is a word, which is made out of the shortened forms of two
other words.
For example:
Motel = motor + hotel
Telecast = television + broadcast
Blends are common in commercial and politic language.
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For example:
Transito = transfer + resistor
Interpol = international + police
Heliport = helicoper + airport
1.4.5.5. Back-formation
Back-formation or reversion involves the shortening of a longer by
the subtraction of a suffix (normally the suffix “er”, or “ing”).
For example:
Editor (N) → edit (V)
Laser (N) → lase (V)
One regular source of back-formed verbs in English is based on the pattern:
DOER – ER = DO.
1.4.6. Sound-imitation

Words coined by this interesting type of word building are made
by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals,
birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects.
There are four types of words formed by this way:
- Words showing animals
For example: mew – mew, etc.
- Words showing movement of water
For example:
- Words showing actions made by men
For example: ha – ha, etc
- Words showing sounds made by animals
For example: gee – gee, etc.
1.4.7. Words from manners
This kind of word comes from words, which is considered as human
beings’ characters.
For example:
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Hitle (denotes a person who follows Nazism)
Hoạn Thư (denotes a person who is jealous)
Tiger (denoted a person who is strong or powerful)
1.5. Word meaning
Every word combines lexical and grammatical meanings. The
grammatical meaning reflects the ways in which the lexical meaning
operate. The same grammatical meaning may be shared by different words.
For instance, words such as development, progress are the abstract nouns.
The lexical meaning is the realizations of concept or motion.
Similarly, the same lexical meaning is shared by different grammatical
forms of a word: warm, warmer, warmest. Lexical meaning is classified

into denotative and connotative meaning.
- Denotative meaning is the explicit, literal meaning. It involves a
broader consensus. That is, the denotative meaning of a sign would be
broadly agreed upon by members of the same culture and by different
cultures.
For example: “dogs” denotes a common animal with four legs,
often kept by human beings as pets or trained for hunting, working,
guarding, etc.
- Connotative meaning conveys value, judgments, and evaluative
implications behind the literal meaning. It is determined by the cultural
codes to which the interpreter has access and the connotative meaning of a
word can have strong emotional content.
For example: the word “dog” has different connotative meanings
in different cultures.
In Arabic culture: it has negative connotation, dirty and inferiority but in
British culture, it has positive one: friendship and loyalty gay.
There are four types of connotation simplified in Arnold (1986):

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- Stylistic connotation is related to the situation in which the word is
used: the social circumstance (formal, familiar), the social relationships
between the listeners and the speakers (polite, rough), the type and purpose
of communication (learned, poetic, and official).
- Evaluative connotation express attitudes and approval or
disapproval.
- Emotional or affective connotation means the referent denoted in
denotative meaning is associated with emotions.
- Intensitive connotation has expressive and emphatic values.

These four types of connotation are also mentioned in Hoang Tat
Truong.
Denotation and connotation are both important dimensions of
determining the word meaning in a given content. Different from the
denotation, the connotation is optional and it has some “additional property
of lexemes, e.g., poetic, slang, casual, colloquial, formal, literary,
humorous rhetorical, etc.” (Jackson & Amvella, 2000: 58). Thus
connotation can be regarded as an additional meaning to denotation.

Chapter 2: Reduplicatives in English and in
Vietnamese
2.1. Definition
2.1.1. Definition of English reduplications
Reduplications are also called reduplicative compounds or echowords, echo-phrase. Reduplicative compounds are used in a variety of
23


ways. These words are found abundantly in English. Many linguists do
research on this subject. The first problem is how can we give the
definition about reduplication? Different authors have different ideas. Let's
consider these follows.
Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which
the root or stem of a word, or part of a it, is repeated.
In lexicology, reduplication is the special way of forming the new
word by doubling one stem with or without the change of a vowel or a
consonant. In other words, in reduplication new words are made by
doubling a stem, either without any phonetic change as in bye-bye, or with
a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat, etc.
According to Richards, J & et.al (1985: 241). Reduplication is the
repetition of a syllable, a morpheme or a word.

Another definition by crystal, D. may be easier: reduplication is a
word or lexeme that contains two identical or very similar parts.
For example:
Goody-goody
Din-din
See-saw
Walkie-talkie
Phonologically, reduplication is often described in one of two
different ways: either (1) as reduplicated segments (sequences of
consonants/vowels) or (2) as reduplicated prosodic units (syllable or
moras).
In addition to phonological description, reduplication often needs
to be described morphologically as a reduplication of linguistic constituents
(words, stems, and roots). As a result, reduplication is interesting
theoretically, as it involves the interface between phonology and
morphology. The base is the word (or part of a word) that is to be repeated.
The reduplicated element is called the reduplicant. In reduplication,
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reduplicant is most often repeated only once. However, in some languages,
reduplication can occur more then one, resulting in a tripled form.
Although these above definitions are expressed in different ways
they have the same meaning: reduplication is a way of forming new words
by doubling the stem with or without phonetic change. This process is called
reduplicative process.
2.1.2. Definition of Vietnamese reduplication
The word "reduplication" means "từ láy", “từ lấp láy" or "từ láy
âm" appears in everyday speech and it is used by people of all age groups.
Like in English, many Vietnamese linguists pay attention to reduplication.

they also do the research on this topic.
Do Huu Chau (1998) said that: reduplication is formed by
reduplicative process, in which word or part of word is repeated.
In Nguyen Thien Giap (1996), reduplication is the unit formed by
complete repetition or repetition based on the phonetic change of the root.
According to Phan Thieu (2001) reduplication is the word that
consists of two or more than syllables repeated (it means that both word and
part of it is repeated)
From these above definitions, we can propose a common and
satisfactory

one:

reduplicative compounds are words formed by

reduplicative modes in which words or parts of it is repeated.
For example:
xinh xinh (cute)
đo đỏ (somewhat red)
hớt hơ hớt hải also hớt ha hớt hải (in extremely hurry, in panicstricken)
2.2. Characteristics of reduplicative

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