A Preliminary Study of the Semantics of Reduplication

There is a universal component to the semantics of reduplication, which can be expressed as a radial category of concepts. I present this radial category, along with supporting evidence from a range of languages, and motivations for the links between the various senses. The structure of the radial graph gives rise to a number of predicted implicational universals. I also show that the radial category for reduplication shares an entire subsystem of concepts with the radial category for the Russian verbal preex raz-. This sharing of subsystems of concepts across separate radial categories suggests that there is a single universal core conceptual network, with individual constructions covering diierent, possibly overlapping, regions.