Form and Meaning in Word Formation: A Study of Afrikaans Reduplication

This study provides a unified analysis of reduplication, a highly complex word formation process, in Afrikaans. Botha concludes that the reduplication principles at work in Afrikaans are not unique to that tongue and, in fact, that they are used by many other languages. Furthermore, Botha shows that neither special conceptual structures nor even standard reduplication procedures are needed to interpret Afrikaans reduplication, thus supporting recent work in cognition by Ray Jackendoff and other scholars. The book’s analysis provides concrete illustration of Galilean linguistic inquiry at work in the study of word formation and meaning. Botha’s study is theoretically and methodologically advanced and will be as interesting for its arguments as for its findings in the fields of morphology, word formation, and semantics.