Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Detail #139: Continuous verb aspect, reduplication and a twist on reduplication in general

The reason I present this idea in the order I do is that this is how I came up with it - following this path of thinking.

Ok, so doing something along the lines given below is quite obvious:
I run run ≃ I habitually run
I think think ≃ I habitually think
etc
However, how about forming an intermitten aspect by non-continuous reduplication, i.e. by placing some other arguments between the two verbs:
I run a bit run ≃ I sometimes run, I run, then I don't, then I run again
I sing songs sing ≃ I sing every now and then

So basically, weakening the effect of reduplication by increasing the distance between the reduplicated elements. We could maybe extend this to plurals by reduplication:
house burn.pres = a|the house burns
house house burn.pres = houses are burning 
house burn.pres house = a few houses are burning

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