汉语叠词及其英译(2)
II. A Brief Study of Chinese and English Reduplicated Words
2. 1 The Definition and Classification of Chinese Reduplicated Words
According to American Heritage Dictionary, it puts forward the definition of Reduplication, “an often grammatically functional repetition of a radical element or a part of it occurring usually at the beginning of word and often accompanied by change of the radical vowel.”(Delta, 40) Reduplicated words also are known as reduplicative words which mean grammatically functional repetition of a word. And reduplicated words are overlapping patterns of morpheme and syllable, which can be a simple word or compound word. Reduplicated words can make the sentences more expressive and aesthetic, enhance the vividness as well as the musical of passage that indicates the feelings of the writers. Reduplication is also a pattern where the double or multiple occurrence of a sound string, syllable, morpheme, or word within a larger syntagmatic unit. The way of translating reduplicated words will benefit a lot to daily communications and transmit Chinese traditional culture at the same time.
It is well-known that reduplicated words are commonly used in Chinese. Nouns, verbs, numerals, adjectives and adverbs can be used as reduplicated words. According to different standards, Chinese reduplicated words can be pided into different categories. There are two main classifications of Chinese reduplicated words as follows:
The total reduplication is shaped by two characters or four characters that have reduplication. For instances, if we use A to represent the first Chinese characters and B to stand for the other different character, then we will get some examples as follows:
1)AA: 天天 看看 红红 慢慢
2)AABB: 高高新兴 三三两两 密密麻麻 地地道道
3)ABAB: 一个一个 雪白雪白 漆黑漆黑 考虑考虑
The partial reduplication is applied to refer the reduplication that includes more than two characters. At the same time, we still use the A to stand for the first Chinese character and B represents the second character. C is the third and so on. There are some examples as follows: