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"doubling" nouns in English? | ||
Tags: Colloquial Language | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 16 18 March 2010 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
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I'm talking about doubling a noun to give a specific meaning.
For example, a conversation among students who are away at college. Student 1: "What are you doing after class today?" Student 2: "I'm going home." Student 1: "oh, back to your dorm room?" Student 2: "no, home home" (first "home" is emphasized in speech) Student 1: "oh, to your parents' house." Student 2: "yeah." I hear this kind of thing ALL THE TIME so there has to be a name for it and surely other people have noticed it as well. Person 1: "How do I cook this steak?" Person 2: "Throw it on the grill." Person 1: "Can I use the George Foreman Grill?" (portable electric grill that is very popular in the US) Person 2: "No, I mean cook it on the grill grill." Person 1: "alright" *goes outside and turns on the grill* It seems to be commonly used to refer to a "real" version of something, such as in the first example, your parents' house is the "real" home (which they own) compared to your dorm (which is temporary). Or in the second example, a George Foreman grill is not a "real" grill compared to an actual gas or charcoal grill that you might have on your deck. Is this regional? My father teases me and my mother when we say something like this, like he will say "oh really? Just what is a 'grill grill'?" lol. And we will say "shut up you know what we mean!" Yet I've heard nearly everyone else use this construction as well, and even people who don't use it, they still understand it. Anyone else experience this? Guy 1: "I need to get a TV for my office." Guy 2: "why not just get a TV tuner card for your computer and watch TV on your monitor? It's cheaper than buying a TV." Guy 1: "no, I want a TV TV." Edited by IronFist on 18 March 2010 at 9:37pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6494 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 2 of 16 18 March 2010 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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I have nothing substantial to post here, but this was fun to read. Thanks!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6817 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 3 of 16 18 March 2010 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
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Wikipedia claims that this has been called "contrastive focus reduplication" by at least some linguists, and it gives a few other Indo-European languages which it has also been identified. Reduplication in general is a relatively popular occurrence among languages.
See: Contrastive focus reduplication and Reduplication 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| standtorise Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5434 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Mandarin, Norwegian, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 16 18 March 2010 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, this is pretty commonplace in daily conversation. I can't think of a good example at the moment, but I know that I have used this construction more than a few times in my life. Very interesting to ponder about it now, I'll have to catch myself the next time I spontaneously blurt one of these out :P
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 16 18 March 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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I've used this in French myself (native).
1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 16 19 March 2010 at 1:36am | IP Logged |
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I think the first time I heard that was in a 90210 show where somebody mentioned an "Allison" and somebody else (Brandon, I think) asked "Allison Allison?".
The Seinfeld episode "The Doodle" also comes to mind: Elaine: Do you like him or do you like him like him? Paula: Like like. In Swedish I mostly hear "...as in...": "no, I want a TV as in television set" Maybe the reduplication is common in other parts of Sweden. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 16 19 March 2010 at 3:44am | IP Logged |
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Cool, I'm glad you all know what I'm talking about :)
Even cooler that it has a name! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5704 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 16 19 March 2010 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
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Just pointing out that this is sometimes used with "like" Mostly by children.
As in "Bobby, likes Jenny. I mean LIKE likes Jenny" 1 person has voted this message useful |
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