Article,
Identical constituent compounding: A corpus-based study
Folia Linguistica, 38 (3--4): 297--331 (2004)NW4 P760.c.321.
Abstract
Even though the phenomenon of repetition in language has attracted a fair amount of attention in English linguistics, the area of one of its most specific incarnations is still more or less uncharted. Examples are: job-job or jealous-jealous. These forms are used to single out or emphasize a prototype reading of job and jealous, respectively. This phenomenon, referred to here as 'identical constituent compounding', has never before been properly researched in any depth. In doing so for the first time, especially by corpus linguistics means, this can be regarded as a pilot study - as well as a continuation of research into the broader area of 'nonce' word-formation (which forms the theoretical framework and starting-point). This is, however, primarily an empirical study. Its base ranges from the renowned British National Corpus and some smaller, more specialized, established corpora to newly compiled corpora especially tailored to this end. Through the latter, more emphasis was placed on contexts of informal dialogue situations, which are the principal domain for identical constituent compounds to occur in (and at the same time one notoriously underrepresented in most standard corpora). The search results delivered by custom-made software allow some generalizations about this compounding type and also about its standing in relation to some other forms of repeated strings. Identical constituent compounding may be a relatively low-frequency phenomenon, but at the same time it is one of the most specifically defined ones amongst any repetition phenomena, especially in terms of communicative function. A brief look at other languages, especially German and Italian, complements the study.
