Echo word
kind of reduplication in South Asian languages
An echo word, in linguistics, is a form of reduplication as a widespread areal feature in the languages of South Asia. Echo words are characterized by reduplication of a complete word or phrase, with the initial segment or syllable of the reduplicant being overwritten by a fixed segment or syllable. In most languages in which this phenomenon is present, echo words serve to express a meaning of "... and such; and things like that." In some cases the echo word may express a depreciative meaning as well.
Echo word usage is almost exclusively a feature of colloquial spoken speech. It is avoided in formal speech and writing in all languages.
For example, Tamil echo words are formed with a ki(i) sequence overwriting the onset and nucleus of the first syllable of the reduplicant (Keane 2001). ki- with a short vowel is used if the first syllable of the original word or phrase has a short vowel; if the first vowel is long, kii- is used instead. E.g.:
Echo words in Hindi are typically created with a fixed initial v:
When an echo word is formed from a word that already begins with v, complete identity between the base and reduplicant is avoided by overwriting with a different fixed segment (Nevins 2005):
Persian:
This kind of avoidance of complete identity is found in many languages with echo words. In some other languages, echo word formation simply fails in cases where an echo word's reduplicant portion would be identical to the base (Abbi 1985).
“Echo word” enters the record as kind of reduplication in South Asian languages. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Echo, word and kind can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Echo word” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.