Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

adjectival roots that form Yoshikawa’s “denominative reduplication” subset is one such
group (Yoshikawa 1993, 305), repeated in (14).
(14) a. bar 6.bar 6 /babbar/ “to be white”
b. sig 7.sig 7 /sissig/ “to be green”
c. dag 2.dag 2 /daddag/ “to be clean”
d. gun 3.gun 3 /guggun/ “to be speckled”
Note as well that the regular form of bar 6.bar 6 is babbar, that of dag 2.dag 2, dadag and
that these two forms always occur in reduplicated form.
Mandarin uses reduplication to code two distinct, but in my view, related
morphosyntactic phenomena that may illuminate a distinct class of adjectives in
Sumerian that is also formed through reduplication: what Li and Thompson term “the
delimitative aspect” and certain forms of diminutive adjectives. Li and Thompson
characterize the meaning of the delimitative aspect as “doing the action ‘a little bit,’ or
for a short period of time” (Li and Thompson 1981, 232).
(15) Mandarin Chinese (Li and Thompson 1981, 233, ex. 195)
ni3 shi4 (yi) shi4 kan4
you try one try see
Try it a little and see!
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