Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 38:2 (2023) ► pp.263–289

Morphopragmatic analysis of reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin (Naija)

ORCID logo | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
 | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Reduplication has a strong presence in creoles and expanded Pidgins. It has been studied for the several grammatical functions it performs in these languages. The present study is based on morphopragmatics theory, and explores reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin with the goal of identifying the pragmatic meanings it conveys. To achieve this, we analysed data from Wazobia FM, a Nigerian Pidgin-based radio station in Nigeria. The analysis process involved interviews and a focus group discussion with native informants. Our results show that in addition to more prototypical iconic meanings, some categories of reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin convey secondary meanings that are often heavily pragmatically and pejoratively charged, and which speakers strategically use to mark in-group and out-group associations, as well as to neutralize or attenuate the inherent negative meanings of the simplex forms.
Keywords: reduplication, morphopragmatics, Nigerian Pidgin, creoles, Naija, iconicity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphopragmatics
  • 3.Methodology and data
  • 4.Reduplication
    • 4.1Reduplication and repetition
    • 4.2Reduplication in pidgins and creoles
    • 4.3Reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin
  • 5.The morphopragmatic functions of reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin
    • 5.1In-group affiliation and otherization via reduplication of pronominal simplex forms
    • 5.2Verbal and deverbal reduplicatives
      • 5.2.1Intensification of the negative readings of deverbal reduplication of ‘negative’ simplex forms
      • 5.2.2Pejoration via reduplication of deverbal ‘non-negative’ simplex forms
      • 5.2.3Attenuation and jocularity
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 1 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.22013.odi
References (57)
References
Adamson, Lilian & Norval Smith. 2003. Productive derivational predicate reduplication in Sranan. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 83–92. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Akande, Akinmade. 2010. Is Nigerian Pidgin English English? Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 181. 3–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akande, Akinmade T. & Okesola, Saheed. 2021. Morpho-syntacytic features of Nigerian Pidgin on radio programmes rendered in Naija. In Akinmade. T. Akande & Oladipo Salami (eds.), Current trends in Nigerian Pidgin English. A sociolinguistic perspective, 201–220. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakker, Peter. 2003. The absence of reduplication in pidgins. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 37–46. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter & Mikael Parkvall. 2005. Reduplication in pidgins and creoles. In Bernhard Hurch (ed.), Studies on reduplication, 511–531. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baptista, Marlyse. 2003. Reduplication in Cape Verdean Creole. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 177–184. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert. 2013. Morphology in construction grammar. In Hoffmann, Thomas & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar, 255–273. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Deuber, Dagmar. 2005. Nigerian Pidgin in Lagos. Language contact, variation and change in an African urban setting. London: Battlebridge publications.Google Scholar
Dijkhoff, Marta B. 1993. Papiamentu word formation. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam dissertation.
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia Merlini-Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas G. 1996. Nigerian Pidgin. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2021. Naija: A language of the future. In Akinmade. T. Akande & Oladipo Salami (eds.), Current trends in Nigerian Pidgin English. A sociolinguistic perspective, 9–38. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter, Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gil, David. 2005. From repetition to reduplication in Riau Indonesia. In Bernhard Hurch (ed.), Studies on reduplication, 31–64. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gooden, Shelom. 2003. Reduplication in Jamaican Creole. Semantic functions and prosodic constraints. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 93–104. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath, & Sebastian Bank. 2022. Glottolog 4.6. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at [URL], Accessed on 23-09-2022.)
Huber, Magnus. 2003. Verbal reduplication in Ghanian Pidgin English. Origins, forms and functions. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 139–154. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Inkelas, S. 2017. Non-concatenative derivation. Reduplication. In, Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology, 169–189. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. 2003. Reduplication in Indo-Portuguese, Malayo-Portuguese, and Sino-Portuguese. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 185–191. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Jufrasky, Daniel. 1996. Universal tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive. Language 72(3). 533–578. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Körtvélyessy, Lívia. 2016. Reduplication from a cross-linguistic perspective. In Hortensia Pârlog (ed.) B.A.S. British and American Studies 22. România: Editura Diacritic. 153–164.Google Scholar
Körtvélyessi, Lívia. 2017. Evaluative derivation. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology, 296–316. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia (ed.). 2003. Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
. 2003. Papiamentu reduplication. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 161–164. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia & Darlene LaCharité. 2005. Less is more: Evidence from diminutive reduplication in Caribbean Creole languages. In Bernhard Hurch (ed.), Studies on reduplication, 533–545. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. The typology of the Caribbean Creole reduplication. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Creoles, and Typology 26(1). 194–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Arbitrariness and iconicity in total reduplication. Evidence from Caribbean Creoles. Studies in Language 39(4). 971–991. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laalo, Klaus. 2001. Diminutives in Finnish child-directed and child speech: Morphopragmatic and morphophonemic aspects. Psychology of Language and Communication 51. 72–80.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. The invariance hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas? Cognitive Linguistics 1(1). 39–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle. 2004. Morphology and lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mattiello, Elisa. 2009. A morphopragmatic analysis of English and Italian negative prefixes. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 471. 125–156.Google Scholar
Matiello, Elisa. 2013. Extra-grammatical morphology in English. Abbreviations, blends, reduplicatives, and related phenomena. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McGregor, William. 2005. Quantifying depictive secondary predicates in Australian languages. In Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Eva. F. Schultze-Berndt (eds.), Secondary predication and adverbial modification: The typology of depictives, 173–200. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mensah, Eyo Offiong. 2011. Lexicalization in Nigerian Pidgin. Studies in Linguistics 37(2). 209–240.Google Scholar
Mensah, Eyo & Roseline Ndimele. 2013. Linguistic creativity in Nigerian Pidgin advertising. Sociolinguistic studies 7(3). 321–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mensah, Eyo, Eunice Ukaegu & Benjamin Nyong. 2021. Towards a working orthography of Nigerian Pidgin. In Akinmade. T. Akande & Oladipo Salami (eds.), Current trends in Nigerian Pidgin English. A sociolinguistic perspective, 177–199. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merlini-Barbaresi, Lavinia. 2015. English evaluative suffixes: A preference for pragmatics over semantics. In Alison Duguid, Anna Marchi, Alan Partington & Charlotte Taylor (eds.), Gentle obsession. Literature, linguistics, and learning in honour of John Morley, 33–44. Roma: Editoriale Artemide.Google Scholar
. 2008. Extra-grammatical morphology: English reduplicatives. In Ermanno Barisone, John Douthwaite & Domenico Pezzini (eds.), Words in action: Diachronic and synchronic approaches to English discourse: Studies in honour of Ermanno Barisone, 228–241. Genova: ECIG.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2003. Reduplication in Bislama. An overview of phonological and semantic factors. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 231–238. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Moravscik, Edith. A. 1978. Reduplicative constructions. In Joseph Greenberg (ed.), Universals of human language, 297–334. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Nordlander, Johan & Neville Shrimpton. 2003. Reduplication in the Krio New Testament. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 121–132. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Obeng, Samuel Gyasi & Elizabeth Winkler. 2003. A comparison of reduplication in Limonese Creole and Akan. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 111–119. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Odiegwu, Nancy Chiagolum. Forthcoming. Radial representations of the semantics of reduplicative constructions in Nigerian Pidgin (Naija). Cognitive Semantics. DOI logo
Odiegwu, Nancy Chiagolum & Jesús Romero-Trillo. Forthcoming. Gradience in iconicity: Evidence from total reduplicative constructions in Nigerian pidgin. Review of Cognitive Linguistics. DOI logo
Parkvall, Mikael. 2003. Reduplication in Atlantic Creoles. In Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, 19–36. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Ponsonnet, Maïa. 2018a. Expressive values of reduplication in Barunga Kriol (northern Australia). Studies in Language 42(1). 226–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rubino, Carl. 2005. Reduplication: Form, function and distribution. In Bernhard Hurch (ed.), Studies on reduplication, 11–29. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.Google Scholar
Scalise, Sergio. 1986. Generative morphology 2nd edition. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stump, Gregory. 1993. How peculiar is evaluative morphology? Journal of Linguistics 291. 1–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ten Hacken, Pius. 2017. Delineating derivation and inflection. In Rochelle Lieber and Pavol Stekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology, 10–25. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thun, Nils. 1963. Reduplicative words in English. A Study of formations of the types tick-tick, hurly-burly, and shilly-shally. Uppsala: Carl Bloms.Google Scholar
Ugot, Mercy & Afolabi Ogundipe. 2011. Reduplication in Nigerian Pidgin. A versatile communication tool. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences 8(4). 227–233.Google Scholar
van Langendonck, Willy. 2007. Iconicity. In Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, 394–418. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1986. Italian reduplication: Cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary semantics. Linguistics 24(2). DOI logoGoogle Scholar