La reduplicación en chabacano zamboangueño: entre la morfología y la expresividad

• Main Author: Eduardo Tobar Delgado
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associação de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 2019-07-01
• Series: Journal of Ibero-Romance Creoles
• Subjects: productive reduplication; lexical reduplication; ideophones; zamboangueño chabacano; iconicity
• Online Access: http://www.acblpe.com/revista/volume-9-2019/la-reduplicacion-en-chabacano-zamboangueno

In this article, based on a corpus of 675 reduplications in Zamboangueño Chabacano, we analyse quantitatively and qualitatively, from a synchronic perspective, not only reduplications that have a morphological function, but also lexical reduplications, including those of a more ideophonic character, which have barely received any attention until now. The numerous formal, functional and semantic correspondences with creole and non-creole languages appear to corroborate universal tendencies in this phenomenon, among which, because of the theoretical challenge they pose, we may highlight those readings seen as little iconic or non-iconic. In this work, we argue for points of view which associate the iconicity of reduplication with its semantic interpretation as imperfect similarity, going beyond a vision restricted to the concept of increment. The semantic and iconic connections between all types of reduplication suggest a common origin and pave the way for constructing a conceptual framework that encompasses most of the cases.