Reduplication, Expressives, and Echo-Formation in Hajong

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to document and investigate the reduplication in Hajong. Hajong is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Bangladesh and Indian northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. The present study is based on the data collected from 12 Hajong speakers of the Goalpara district of Assam. Reduplication is a widespread phenomenon that is common in the languages of Southeast Asia. However, grammarians have ignored this phenomenon primarily because they follow the Western grammar description model, where reduplicated structures do not exist or are rare (Abbi, 1992). The aim is to study the reduplicated structures, expressive and echo-formation and its semantic aspects in Hajong. There are mainly two types of reduplicated structures in Hajong: Morphological reduplication and Lexical reduplication. The morphological reduplication is expressed through expressive. “Expressive behave and function like regular words and thus form a part of the lexicons of Indian languages” (Abbi, 2018). The semantics of expressive morphology in Hajong represent five senses of perception, states of mind and manner of an action, and kinship terminology. However, lexical reduplication is constructed through the process of echo-formation (partial reduplication), compound, and complete word reduplication. Echo-word Formation acquires the status of a meaningful element only after it is attached to a word (Abbi, 1992). Echo formation is formed by replacing the initial consonant sound in the reduplicant. The common replacer sounds in Hajong are /ʧ͡/, /t/, /tʰ/ /m/, and /s/. The semantics of Hajong's echo formation represent generality, plurality, intensity, and sets or types.