Unexpected languages

[ChenZheChina]

From these examples, it seems clear that reduplication is systematically used to generate words. In this text, the most frequent case seems converting an adjective into an adverb, e.g.
mànmàn 慢慢 “slowly”
where màn means "slow"

At least one case seems to involve duration:
zǒuzhe zǒuzhe 走着走着 “while walking”

Hi, Marco.

Your observation is quite strong! Yes, in most cases, one-syllable adjacents turn into adverbs in reduplication, except where the adjacent cannot be an adverb. Let’s review the words in the pinyin text.

• guāiguāi 乖乖 “obediently” ← 乖 “obedient”
  
• cuìcuì 脆脆 “brittle” ← 脆 “brittle” cannot be an adverb
  
• báibái 白白 “white” ← 白 “white” cannot be an adverb
  
• xiǎoxiǎo 小小 “little” ← 小 “little” cannot be an adverb. Corresponding adverb is 少. Such irregularity might be one of few legacies of ancient Chinese
  
• jǐnjǐn 紧紧 “firmly” ← 紧 “firm”
  
• chángcháng 长长 “long” ← 长 “long” cannot be an adverb. In English, long can be used as an adverb when referring to time, but probably not for distance as in this case.
  
• mànmàn 慢慢 “slowly” ← 慢 “slow”
  
• xìxì 细细 “thin, fine” ← 细 “thin, fine” In English, both thin and fine could be both adjacent and adverb. *
  
• qiāoqiāo 悄悄 “secretly” ← 悄 “quiet, silent”
  
• shēnshēn 深深 “deeply” ← 深 “deep”
  
• hǎohǎo 好好 “well” ← 好 “good”
  
• yuǎnyuǎn 远远 “from distance, distantly” ← 远 “far away”
  

* For this example, I thought it was an adverb at first, but found it to be an adjacent because it is modifying a noun. See the rule 2 below.

But keep in mind that, as I mentioned before, whether a word is adjacent or adverb is finally decided by whether they are modifying nouns or verbs.

1. You may add an adverb indicator 地 or 点 to turn one-syllable adjacents into adverbs, as in 孩子们很乖地说 “children said obediently” and 快点走 “go quickly”
2. You may add an adjacent indicator 的 to turn reduplication adverbs into adjacents, as in 长着细细的凤眼 “having thin eyes”
3. It is still very natural to say 快走 “go quickly”, using one-syllable words as adverbs.

In sum, we could usually interpret reduplication words as adverb, and their one-syllable counterpart as adjacent, when no indicator is given. However, there are still expressions where one-syllable adverbs and two-syllable adjacents exist.

Maybe the difference between adjacents and adverbs are not so clear in Chinese as in European languages.

The last example, zǒuzhe zǒuzhe 走着走着 “while walking”, is a bit different.


走着 zǒuzhe itself could express “while walking” well enough, but

…着…着 ...zhe ...zhe, when two verbs are the same, is an expression, which emphasize that the verb will be interrupted suddenly or accidentally, or something unexpected will happen, usually in a bad way. In the pinyin text, the sentence is:

下午的太阳不像中午那么热，但是走着走着，我们都开始流汗，也觉得口渴。
The sun in the afternoon is not so hot as in the noon, but while walking, we began to sweat, and to feel thirsty.

As you could see, they did not expect the sun to be that hot at first, but they finally realized that they were wrong.

This is long, so I’ll put the rest in the next post.