--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 6:41:51 PM on Tuesday, August 29, 2006, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> > <gpiotr@> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> Reduplication may also express intensity, repetition and
> >> the like ("It rained and rained as he rode and rode").
>
> > And originally that meant: it rained, then it rained; he
> > rode, then he rode. Plurality of rains spells, plurality
> > of riding stages.
>
> What is your evidence for original plurality rather than the
> duration and/or intensity that the usage now conveys?
>
Partly logical: the idea is that a reduplicated verb stem
(and its nominal derivates) would designate several
occurrences of the type of event the root of the reduplicated
stem designates. Duration and intensity are logically, as far
as I can tell, derivative concepts of plurality (via the concept
of repetition).
Partly linguistic: reduplication is used in general in the
world's languages to designate plurality, a piece of
information I first saw in Miguel's notes, in which he
explained the reduplication of the perfect as originally
the result of congruence with the absolute in an ergative
PIE, which I now propose to revise to congruence with the
subject in an ordinary accusative PIE, which forces me
to assume the perf.sg. was unreduplicated.
Torsten