REDUPLICATION. 259 



a feature common to all languages of the globe, although they may greatly 

 differ in the mode of applying it. 



Thus, in the English terms gewgaw, riffraff, tiptop, syllables were doubled 

 for some augmentative purpose; the Sahaptin family reduplicates for form- 

 ing diminutives, as mu%]imu%li flg, kussikussi dog. English and German 

 show traces of syllabic duplication to designate a preterit tense, a feature 

 once common to all the dialects of the Indo-European family: fell, held, 

 slept, are forms of an imperfect tense which are the remnants of ancient forms 

 parallel to the Gothic faifal, haihald, saislep. 



Some languages reduplicate their radical syllables for the purpose of 

 forming onomatopoetic, iterative, frequentative, or usitative verbs and nouns, 

 indicating gradation in the adjective and adverb, or of forming certain 

 derivatives ; other tongues, again, indicate in this manner the ideas of sev- 

 eralty, plurality, totality, or collectivity, and purposely modify the redupli- 

 cated terms phonetically for each of the several morphologic functions to 

 whicli they may be applied. 



Syllabic duplication has exercised a thorough-going influence on the 

 development of the Klamath language of Oregon, giving origin to delicate 

 and ingenious grammatic and lexical distinctions. Its workings can be 

 studied to more advantage in a few languages only, although linguistic 

 development has taken a similar turn in the Malay-Polynesian family and 

 in the forms of speech disseminated along the western coast of North Amer- 

 ica, especially in the Nahuatl and Selish stocks of languages. 



The reduplicative process has originated in the idea of repetition or 

 iteration, applied to space, surface, intensity, time, and other categories. 

 The stage immediately preceding syllabic reduplication was that of repeat- 

 ing the entire word, as we see it in the Hebrew t6b t6b, '■'■ gi. A good^'' for 

 very good, and in Mohave, where the adverb accompanying the adjective 

 is repeated to indicate gradation : valtaye great, large; valtai tahana larger ; 

 valtai tahan tahdn tahdiia the largest one. Although the latter is a triplica- 

 tion, a twofold mention of the adverb is just as frequent in Mohave, where 

 the elements have not yet coalesced into a single word. All the different 

 and most varied shapes of reduplication of the radix can be brought in two 

 classes: iterative reduplication, when used for the derivation of words; dis- 

 tributive reduplication, when used for inflectional purposes. 



