タイ語における動詞の反復

Abstract

In the Thai language, reduplication of words frequently occurs in verbs as well as nouns and adjectives, etc. The reduplication of verbs is utilized to add various meanings to a verb. However, a lot of previous works concerning reduplicated Thai words have pointed out no more than that the reduplication of verbs indicates continuation and reiterative activities. It is the purpose of this paper to study the word construction and semantic characteristics of verbs for which reduplication occurs. The results show the structural features of the verb reduplicated and the meanings produced by the reduplication as follows: 1) The reduplication of verbs usually occurs in monosyllabic words, and can consecutively occur in two verbs, e.g. “kin(eat) / nɔɔn(sleep)”→“kin-kin-nͻͻn-nͻͻn(eat-eat-sleep-sleep)”, as well as in solo verbs, e.g. “yim(smile)” → “yím-yím(smile-smile)”. 2) The consecutive reduplication of two verbs indicates continuation and reiteration of two activities or idiomatic meanings. The reduplication of solo verbs indicates passivity, imprecision,urging, activities of unspecified large numbers or plurality of agents, as well as continuation and reiteration of an activity, and idiomatic meanings. Moreover, the reduplication of solo verbs sometimes implies the agent’s mental state in addition to physical activity. Additionally, functional conversion through verb reduplications has been observed. Specifically, the function of reduplicated verbs has been seen to shift to mimic the function of adverbs when they follow another verb, but to adjectives when they follow a noun.