The Textual Work of August Walla, mentally disabled artist

[Ben Trovato]

My thinking is that this makes both texts quite different. For Wallas use of reduplication, we can assume three reasons:

1) In some (proven) cases, it substitutes the comparative degree. This happens frequently in many languages, where "big big" simply means "bigger". 

2) On a psychological level, repetition is a technique to ease tension. So Walla, when agitated, can use this in his art to cope with his mental disorder.

3) As Walla sees his work (at least in part) as spiritual practice, repetition here is the basis of ritualization. This is how chants, incantations, prayers etc. are being made.

For (2) and (3), this is of course a brutally shortened summary that should (and could) be explained much more carefully. But my point is: all these goals are met better when using reduplication, than when using quasi-reduplication. So, unless we assume that the VMS author(s) were unable to perform perfect reduplication (and why should we assume that?), it seems that the underlying principle in text generation is really different here.

I'd love to your comments on this!