Unexpected languages

[ChenZheChina]

It seems to me that Chinese works rather well in an aspect I am particularly interested in: reduplication.
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I find 27 instances of exact reduplication:
 guāiguāi 
 tiāntiān 
 děngděng 
 cuìcuì 
 tiāntiān 
 gūlū gūlū,
 bǎ bǎ 
 báibái 
 bèngbèng 
 xiǎoxiǎo 
 jǐnjǐn 
 jiànjiàn 
 tiáotiáo 
 yīngyīng 
 tōutōu 
 chángcháng 
 wāwā 
 mànmàn 
 xìxì 
 tōutōu 
 qiāoqiāo 
 shēnshēn 
 zǒuzhe zǒuzhe,
 mànmàn 
 hǎohǎo 
 dìdì 
 yuǎnyuǎn 

The frequency of exact reduplication appears perfectly compatible with what is observed in the Voynch ms.
Is this pinyin text something you can easily read and understand? If so, could you please explain the meaning of some of these occurrences of reduplication?

Hi Marco,

Some of these words could be easily read, if the syllable has few homonyms. Others require contexts to understand.

• guāiguāi 乖乖 “obediently”
  
• tiāntiān 天天 “everyday”
  
• děngděng 等等 “et cetera”
  
• cuìcuì 脆脆 “brittle”
  
• tiāntiān 天天 “everyday”
  
• gūlū gūlū 咕噜咕噜 “onomatopoeia for glottal sounds”
  
• bǎ bǎ 粑粑 “shit” (This is wrong after checking the contexts. Should be two separate phrases 一把 把我 instead of one)
  
• báibái 拜拜 “bye-bye” or 白白 “white” (confirmed to be 白白 after checking the contexts)
  
• bèngbèng 蹦蹦 “jumping”
  
• xiǎoxiǎo 小小 “little”
  
• jǐnjǐn 仅仅 “only” (this is wrong after checking the contexts. Should be another homonym 紧紧 “firmly”)
  
• jiànjiàn 渐渐 “gradually”
  
• tiáotiáo 条条 “line-by-line”
  
• yīngyīng 嘤嘤 “onomatopoeia for crying”
  
• tōutōu 偷偷 “secretly”
  
• chángcháng 常常 “often, always” (this is wrong after checking the contexts. Should be another homonym 长长 “long”)
  
• wāwā 哇哇 “onomatopoeia for crying”
  
• mànmàn 慢慢 “slowly”
  
• xìxì 细细 “thin, fine”
  
• tōutōu 偷偷 “secretly”
  
• qiāoqiāo 悄悄 “secretly”
  
• shēnshēn 深深 “deeply”
  
• zǒuzhe zǒuzhe 走着走着 “while walking”
  
• mànmàn 慢慢 “slowly”
  
• hǎohǎo 好好 “well”
  
• dìdì 弟弟 “younger brother”
  
• yuǎnyuǎn 远远 “from distance, distantly”
  

As you could see, most reduplication in Chinese are adjacents / adverbs (in Chinese, whether a modifier is an adjacent or an adverb depends on whether you’re modifying a noun or a verb, unless the meaning of the modifier could only be adjacent or adverb exclusively). There are also onomatopoeia reduplication, which are easy to understand. Verb reduplication and noun reduplication are very complicated, which I will not explain here.

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you gave me caused almost no difficulty reading, except some proper nouns and some old vocabularies that I do not recognize even written in Hanzi. With context, most pinyin texts are readable, though much slower.

Edit: I tried to read the pinyin text after removing tone marks. It is still readable, but even much slower. In the tonal version, I could determine a word usually within one or two following words, but in the tone-removed version, I sometimes have to read until the end of a sentence to determine what a word is in the beginning.