matter puts a smaller out of sight.' Language is, in fact, full of phonetic modifications which justify a suspicion that symbolic sound had to do with their production, though it may be hard to say exactly how.
Again, there is the familiar process of reduplication, simple or modified, which produces such forms as murmur, pitpat, helterskelter. This action, though much restricted in literary dialects, has such immense scope in the talk of children and savages that Professor Pott's treatise on it[1] has become incidentally one of the most valuable collections of facts ever made with relation to early stages of language. Now up to a certain point any child can see how and why such doubling is done, and how it always adds something to the original idea. It may make superlatives or otherwise intensify words, as in Polynesia loa 'long,' lololoa 'very long'; Mandingo ding 'a child,' dingding 'a very little child.' It makes plurals, as Malay raja-raja 'princes,' orang-orang 'people.' It adds numerals, as Mosquito walwal 'four' (two-two), or distributes them, as Coptic ouai ouai 'singly' (one-one). These are cases where the motive of doubling is comparatively easy to make out. As an example of cases much more difficult to comprehend may be taken the familiar reduplication of the perfect tense, Greek γέγραφα from γράφω, Latin momordi from mordeo, Gothic haihald from haldan, 'to hold.' Reduplication is habitually used in imitative words to intensify them, and still more, to show that the sound is repeated or continuous. From, the immense mass of such words we may take as instances the Botocudo hou-hou-hou-gitcha 'to suck' (compare Tongan hūhū 'breast'), kiaku-käck-käck, 'a butterfly'; Quichua chiuiuiuiñichi 'wind whistling in the trees'; Maori haruru 'noise of wind'; hohoro 'hurry'; Dayak kakakkaka 'to go on laughing loud'; Aino shiriushiriukanni 'a rasp'; Tamil murumuru 'to murmur'; Akra ewiewiewiewie 'he spoke repeatedly
- ↑ Pott, 'Doppelung (Reduplication, Gemination) als eines der wichtigsten Bildungsmittel der Sprache,' 1862. Frequent use has been here made of this work.
