Unexpected languages

[ChenZheChina]

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.
  

Yes, I think you got it. Unless we can say EVA-q is a syllable, there will be a huge gap between Chinese reduplication and Voynichese reduplication.  

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 examples above), the numbers increase according to how 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 is observed in Chinese too?

Yes, but it requires some intentional construction like the English sentence “I saw a saw saw a saw”, and probably won’t be common in daily usage.

Remember the “bǎ bǎ” phrase in the pinyin text? I thought it to be a reduplication at first, but later realized that those are two parts of different words. The first “bǎ” is a measure word, or noun classifier word, for some actions. The second “bǎ” is an object marker; the next word following it will be the object of the action. So if you do some action, expressing using an object marker, to an object whose name begins with a third “bǎ”, you will get this:

wǒ yī bǎ bǎ bǎ bǎ zhù le
我一把把把把住了。

把：(measure word for actions holding something)
把：(object marker)
把：(noun) handle of a bicycle or tricycle
把：(verb) to hold

And this sentence means: I quickly took the handle with one action and hold it still.

Other examples are:

guò jǐ tiān tiāntiān tiānqì bù hǎo
过几天天天天气不好。

天：(measure word for days)
天天：(adverb) everyday
天气：(noun) weather

Translation: The weather will be bad everyday in several days.

nǐ dà-dàda dà guò nǐ dà-gūgu
你大大大大过你大姑姑。

大 (first and last)：(adjacent) first-, elder-
大大：(noun) brother of father
大 (penultimate)：(adjacent) older

Translation: Your first paternal uncle is older than your first paternal aunt.

But I think, generally speaking, people will try to avoid clusters with 3 same characters when writing, because it might cause some confusion and lower reading speed of the reader. Sentences above could be rewritten into:

wǒ yī bǎ jiù bǎ bǎ gěi bǎ zhù le
我一把就把把给把住了。← 就 jiù “cause-effect marker” 给 gěi “verb marker”

guò jǐ tiān měitiān dōu tiānqì bù hǎo
过几天每天都天气不好。← 每 měi “per, each” 都 dōu “all”

nǐ dà-bóbo dà guò nǐ dà-gūgu
你大伯伯大过你大姑姑。← 伯伯 “another word for brother of father”

with various techniques.