City planning manager Wendy Rampson with a stack of books just checked out of the Ann Arbor District Library – on learning Indonesian. Already noted: reduplicative plural formation. [photo]
Fifth & William
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Only a linguist would note a reduplicative plural formation (translation for the non-linguists, please?)
In English, most plural nouns get formed adding some sort of /s/-like sound to the end of the singular noun [e.g., singular – book; plural – books]. In Indonesian, many plurals are formed by making a second copy of the whole noun (reduplicating it). [e.g., buku saya (my book); buku-buku saya (my books)].
Knowledge of English also seems to include the ability to make reduplicative patterns, even if they do not entail repetition of an entire word. For example, there’s a 2008 conference paper [link] that analyzes the language game from the Simpson’s TV show, which involves repetition of a word chunk after insertion of “diddly”.