タイ語における名詞の反復

Abstract

Reduplication is a type of word formation in the Thai language. It refers to the repetition of a word (noun, verb, adjective, etc.), and is employed to add various meanings to a word, such as intensity, softness, continuation, to indicate reiterative activities, and plurality. A lot of previous works concerning reduplicated Thai words have pointed out that the reduplication of noun words indicates plurality. In fact, the reduplicated word “dèk dèk (children)” indicates the plurality of “dèk (a child)” , but the word “ phûu-yài (an adult)” is never reduplicated in this way. This paper aims to study the morphological and semantic characteristics of noun words for which reduplication occurs. The results show the structural features of the word reduplicated and the meanings produced by the reduplication as follows: 1) The reduplication of noun words most often occurs in monosyllabic words, but seldom occurs in polysyllabic or compound words. 2) The reduplication of monosyllabic noun words indicates various meanings, such as unspecified large numbers, idiomatic meanings, etc. as well as plurality, but the reduplication of polysyllabic words or compound words does not indicate unspecified large numbers or plurality.