You Can Say That Again!

Have you ever come across a sentence that repeats itself itself [sic]? That repetition of itself was a typo, and is a common type of writing error, but there are many circumstances when a repetition is intentional. Sometimes we repeat words due to a perfectly grammatical syntactic fluke, one of which we discussed in Is Is Is an Issue? You may encounter even more repeated words in a particular usage known as reduplication. We see it in sentences like, “The novel is available as an e-book and as a book-book.”

Reduplication is a linguistic phenomenon of repetition, one that Antidote’s dictionary defines as “the meaningful repetition of syllables, morphemes or words, either exactly or with a slight phonetic change”. In English, we use reduplication for novel word formation, creative or prosodic turns of phrase, emotional impact enhancement, or clarification.

Words That Echo

Reduplication is one way that new words are birthed into the English language. Because of their rhyming and sing-song feel, many such words are informal or even childish. Some fully repeated words are so-so and boo-boo. But there are also many words and expressions with partial reduplication via rhyming pairs.¹ Some of these consist of two pre‑existing words:

fender bender
beaver fever
dream team

Others play with the phonetics of the meaningful (or meaning-giving) word:

artsy-fartsy
easy-peasy
super-duper

Yet other English rhyming words appear to have no meaningful components:

hoity-toity
helter-skelter

We also have combinations that follow a linguistic pattern called ablaut, a phenomenon of vowel alternation. A common example of ablaut (outside of reduplication) is the conjugation of the verb sing (sing, sang, sung). However, when combined with reduplication, new words can emerge:

chit-chat
dilly-dally
tick-tock

We have a preference for vowel sequences that go from high vowels (like /i/) to low (like /ɑ/). That is, chit-chat intuitively sounds better than chat-chit. These kinds of formations persist because, like rhymes, we like the way they sound.

I Could Go On and On

Other times, repeating words exactly can intensify or enhance an aspect of the word’s meaning. With some adverbs, this reduplication is synonymous with very and other degrees of emphasis:

A long, long time ago…

Meaning: a very long time ago

I am so, so, SO, so doomed!

Meaning: I am extremely doomed.

In fact, many parts of speech can be repeated this way, to different effect. For verbs and the particles of phrasal verbs, reduplication can emphasize a continuous or repetitive action:

He watched the leaves float down, down, down the stream.

She could dance and dance and dance all night long.

However, if the context does not permit such an interpretation, the repetition sounds odd:

*I could go for, for, for Thai food.

This lacks the necessary continuous aspect, making the repetition sound like hesitation or stuttering.

Repeated nouns emphasize their importance:

It’s always about money, money, money with you.

The choice of how many times a word is repeated, and whether to use “and”, is based on a personal sense of rhythm, prosody and style.

Clarified Milk

One could argue that the previous two types of repetition are not true reduplication, since they don’t change meaningfully: echoing word formations (like easy-peasy) rarely change meaning and intensifying reduplication (like so, so, SO) is mainly stylistic. In this next section, we will discuss a repetition that is truly reduplication—in fact, you might say it counts as reduplication-reduplication.

This type of repetition is used in colloquial speech to clarify an ambiguity in a particular context, and—as just demonstrated—the entire word (or phrase) itself is repeated with emphasis.² There are several ways in which this reduplication can appear. The most common usage picks out the most prototypical type of a thing, in contrast to other types. A common instance can be heard in cafés:

“Can I have a latte with milk-milk?”

Meaning: cow’s milk, not a non-dairy substitute like oat milk or soy milk.

It can also pick out one specific thing in the context:

“Can you grab the book from the table? The, you know, the book-book?”

Meaning: the book that we were just talking about.

It can be used to emphasize a literal meaning and exclude a euphemistic or idiomatic meaning. In the case of idioms, it is actually necessary to repeat the entire idiom:

“You don’t have to tell me the whole story. I didn’t mean ‘tell me about it’-tell me about it.”

Meaning: Do not literally tell me about it; I just meant that I can relate.

“Would you like to get coffee sometime? Just coffee-coffee, not a date.”

Meaning: drinking coffee together as friends or acquaintances.

Ironically, it can also be used to highlight a euphemistic meaning, especially when accompanied by raised eyebrows:

Person A: “Would you like to get coffee sometime?”
Person B: “Like, coffee-coffee, or just coffee?”

Raised eyebrows help differentiate this example from the last one, in addition to the context.

“So they’re, like, together-together.”

Meaning: dating, not just being in the same location.

Reduplication’s association with disambiguation is so strong that it can force someone to infer an ambiguity that they weren’t aware of:

“For once, we got chicken-chicken at a fast food joint.”

The listener is left wondering about the type of chicken fast food restaurants usually serve. Yikes!

While various grammatical categories (verbs, adverbs, nouns, etc.) can be reduplicated in this way, the phenomenon is restricted to words with semantic variation (i.e. multiple possible meanings). Words that lack multiple interpretations, like determiners, conjunctions, certain prepositions and other functional words, cannot be repeated in this way (except when embedded in an expression or phrasal verb).

Double Up on Your Words

While syntactic repetitions like is is and that that are found in formal written work, most of the repetitions discussed in this article are infrequent in writing due to their informal tone. However, there is a time and place for these doubled-up phrases: when you want to have twice as much wordplay, to be doubly sure of what you’re talking about, or to avoid double entendres, these reduplications can be handy‑dandy.

This article was concocted by

Antidote’s linguists