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Chapter 14
What does reduplication intensify?
e semantics and pragmatics of reduplicated forms
in Italian and their equivalents in German
Silvia Bonacchi
University of Warsaw
In the present paper, the semantics of reduplication forms in Italian is ana-
lyzed on the basis of their intensifying pragmatic functions in regard to their
base-forms (duration, graduation, modulation, disambiguation, accreditation
of speaker, appeal to hearer) and to their “embodied” character (evoking gestu-
ality and suprasegmentality) and compared with their possible equivalents in
German. Reduplicative forms in Italian not only modify the truth-conditional
value of verbal units – in the direction of a quantitative or qualitative intensifi-
cation –; furthermore they express a new use-conditional (pragmatic) meaning.
Reduplication is, in face-to-face-communication, therefore to be considered an
important instrument of emotive communication (as strategic and intentional
conveying of emotional information about feelings and attitudes towards things,
events, interlocutors), used in specific contexts to express an affective register. Its
main function is the modulation of affective intensity and the evocation of con-
versational and emotional (affective) implicatures. Instead of reduplicated forms,
German uses other language resources which produce use-conditional (prag-
matic) meanings: intensifiers, intensifying prefixes, modal particles, adverbs,
verbal forms.
Keywords: reduplication, intensification, modulation of affective intensity,
implicatures, embodied communication
1. Introduction
Reduplication is an important mechanism in most languages for the creation of new
words and for the modification of meaning (Pott 1863; Watts 1968; Moravcsik 1978;
Skoda 1982; Antoniak 2005). It is based on the repetition of language units used
as source material for the repetition (the base), which leads to a verbal “unit” with
a new meaning (the reduplicant). According to the definition by Bzdęga (1965),
doi 10.1075/slcs.189.15bon
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