In Jordan's "Colloquial Esperanto" (and everywhere else I remember seeing this) examples of duplicative forms are always adjectives or adverbs, e.g., finfine, plenplena.

Can this be done with other parts of speech?

Noun - virviro = a he-man

Preposition - subsub = way down under

Verb - finfini = to finish once and for all

Pronoun - ŝiŝi = she and nobody else

Conjunction - sese = if and only if (a technical term in mathematical logic, often abbreviated as "iff" )

Do these work?

Bruso:In Jordan's "Colloquial Esperanto" (and everywhere else I remember seeing this) examples of duplicative forms are always adjectives or adverbs, e.g., finfine, plenplena.

Can this be done with other parts of speech?

Noun - virviro = a he-man

Preposition - subsub = way down under

Verb - finfini = to finish once and for all

Pronoun - ŝiŝi = she and nobody else

Conjunction - sese = if and only if (a technical term in mathematical logic, often abbreviated as "iff" )

Do these work?

My (highly subjective) impression : Finfini sounds fine to me (and gets a handful of hits on Google). Virviro sounds a little odd (but has a larger following, per Google), and the others just sound wrong to me.

While I suppose it's technically possible, my feeling is that many of these forms would be very (and unnecessarily) confusing, even to experienced Esperantists.

Just my opinion.

Thanks,

Paul

Bruso:Do these work?

I agree with Paul.

Finfini sounds fine to my ears, although probably only because of how prevalent finfine is. I've never used finfini, nor seen it used (that I can remember), but it still seems like something even I'd come up with (rightly or wrongly).

Virviro doesn't set off any grammar/syntax alarms, and if I saw it I think I'd know what it meant. A he-man, a manly man, a "man's man", something like that.

The rest, though? No. They don't work.

Note that the words that work are a verb and a noun, which are typical word-building targets. The words that don't work are a preposition, pronoun, and conjunction, which generally have a somewhat limited use in constructions (never acting as roots, for example), and are almost never targets themselves. In other words, we don't tend to word-build new prepositions, pronouns, or conjunctions, but we do tend to word-build new verbs and nouns (and adjectives and adverbs, as you note).

So, as long as you stick to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, you can probably get away with duplicative constructions. Assuming that they make obvious sense, of course. And not everything will. There are no defined rules regarding what duplications mean, so the meaning would need to be really inherently obvious. Virviro, for example, (I think) meets that requirement. Akvakve*, on the other hand, probably doesn't.

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* It isn't just water-ly. It's WATER water-ly! No, I have no idea what that means. Just because you can double some roots up doesn't mean you should.

Conjunction - sese = if and only if (a technical term in mathematical logic, often abbreviated as "iff" )

A minor note, I would translate "iff" as "se, kaj nur se" or maybe "ekzluzive se". "Sese" would more readily be construed as "sixthly" (ses-e).

In general I would advise against overusing this feature. It should only be used for particular emphasis where the root word is short and the risk of ambiguity is low. So, for instance, "ruĝruĝa", "belbela", and "helhela" are all fine by me, whereas something like "metalmetala" is both a mouthful and is unclear (extremely metallic? as in metallic texture, metallic appearance?)

When dealing with nouns or verbs, duplication becomes even more confusing. "Finfino" and "finfini" sound OK, but probably only because of their similarity to a widely accepted duplication, "finfine". But again, I'd recommend avoiding most of these forms.

As for subsub, I find it odd indeed. However, subsube feels more natural for some reason, and does have some occurences on Google.

On a somewhat related note, I wonder if, in the future, if the infuence of Asian speakers grows stronger, duplicative forms will become more accepted and get a wider range of meaning.

For example, iomiom or possibly iomiome could become an alternative to iomete, following the pattern of "sadikit sadikit" in Malay.

Also, in Singlish (a frowned upon yet widespread way of speaking English among many native speakers of various Asian languages in Singapore) "Can can!" is the enthusiast, affirmative answer to "Can you do it?". So maybe this expressive confirming value of duplication might get adopted too.
- Ĉu vi povas fari tion?
- Povpove!

Tempodivalse:
A minor note, I would translate "iff" as "se, kaj nur se" or maybe "ekzluzive se".

Nur se and precize se are other options.

darkweasel:

Tempodivalse:
A minor note, I would translate "iff" as "se, kaj nur se" or maybe "ekzluzive se".

Nur se and precize se are other options.

I think they are different, precize se is ⇔ but nur se is ⇐.