Unexpected languages

[MarcoP]

I’m not sure whether we could compare Chinese words with reduplication or quasi-reduplication to Voynichese words, because Chinese is written hanzi-by-hanzi, or syllable-by-syllable. But, yes, words with structures like ABB, AAB or AABB do exist. Search “叠词” for examples.

Thank you, Zhe!
The problem you mention is very significant for pseudo-reduplication.

These are the numbers I presented You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for exact reduplication and some forms of pseudo-reduplication in the Voynich manuscript:

PREFIX-1ST  pW.W
PREFIX-2ND  W.pW
SUFFIX-1ST  Ws.W
SUFFIX-2ND  W.Ws

            COUNT
EXACT         262
PREFIX-1ST    216
PREFIX-2ND    182
SUFFIX-1ST     38
SUFFIX-2ND     63

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I discussed this histogram, that details the prefixes and suffixes involved in quasi-reduplication).

"pre" refers to an alteration of the 1st word
"post" refers to an alteration of the 2nd word

Clearly, q- correlates with quasi-reduplication.

An analysis of exact reduplication I posted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. points out that qo- also correlates with exact repetition: it is twice as frequent in exact reduplication than it typically is!



If I understood correctly Zhe's discussion of Chinese reduplication and pseudo-reduplication, my impression is that Chinese is not compatible with what we can observe in Voynichese. For instance:

• q- does not behave as a syllable, but as a modifier of 'o': it almost exclusively occurs as 'qo-'. But quasi reduplication in Chinese involves the addition of a whole syllable.
  
• q- almost appears to be a "reduplication marker". Whatever the reason for the correlation of q- with exact reduplication and quasi-reduplication, nothing similar happens in Chinese.
  

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One more question about Chinese. Voynichese also presents three or more exact or slightly altered repetitions of the same word. For instance:
<f89r2.P1.3;H>     toy.daiin.daiin.daiin.ody.qokeey.cheoldy.qody.cheor.s.ain.daiin.oky.cheody.cheoky=
<f95r1.P.8;H>      olkor.chdaiin.chol.kaiin.qokeedy.qoky.chedy.lchedy.chedy.alod-

I count 9 occurrences of a single word being exactly repeated three times and 1 occurrence of the same word repeated four times (the famous You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
If one allows for slight alterations (as in the f.95r1 example above), the numbers increase according to how loosely one defines "quasi-repetition". I think that significant quasi-repetitions with three consecutive occurrences averagely appear once in 1000 words (and possibly more).

Are word repetitions with 3 or more occurrences something that happens in Chinese too? If so, how frequent are they in comparison with exact reduplication?