Ways of coining reduplicated idioms

Abstract

The article focuses on the phenomenon of reduplication on the idiomatic level. Reduplicated idioms are characterized by emotional coloring, expressiveness and peculiar rhythmic melodies, they serve as a means of creating emotional expressions by giving some stylistic coloring to the context in which they are used. The groups of reduplicated idioms have been chosen from lexicographical sources, created by means of onomatopoeia, lexical repetitions in singular and plural, with linking elements (conjunctions, particles) or without them. Their belonging to the morphological class of nouns, verbs, adjectives in the comparative and superlative degree of comparison, numerals, pronouns and exclamations has been established. Their inherent positive and negative connotations, the correlation with various spheres of human activity have been proved. The way of creating reduplicated idioms has been demonstrated to be productive – the alternation of vowels and consonants at the beginning and at the end of the repetition. Such wordforming processes as conversion, affixation and reduplication have taken an active part in the creation of reduplicated idioms, and in most cases transformations of forms are accompanied by semantic derivation. It has been confirmed that the practical value of the study is, first of all, that the selected examples of reduplicated idioms can be used in classes on lexicology, stylistics and serve as material for further research. We see the prospect of further research in the study of the effectiveness of the affix potential for the creation of reduplicated idioms, particularly the use of ablaut reduplication, rhyming compounds, fully reduplicated echoic expressions in different discourses.