140 Chapter 5 Reduplication
the adverbial clause sambi dang-tandang ‘while they were dancing’ indicates
that the act of dancing (as well as drumming) is in progress. In (33), the addres-
see is cautioned not to interrupt if the speaker is in the middle of a successful
but incomplete act of writing. And in (34), reduplication emphasizes the fact
that the speaker is talking about the fact that the period of persons not cultivat-
ing the land was ongoing during a drought.
Related to this is the use of reduplication to indicate habitual action. An
action which is repeated as a habit clearly involves plural actions, actions that
are not completed (imperfective). The sentences in (35) and (36) illustrate the
interpretation of reduplication as habitual.
(35) mon ca’-ng-oca’ dha’ oreng...
if RED-AV-talk to person
‘whenever he talked to people’
(36) oreng se dujan sak-ng-rosak
person REL like RED-AV-ruin
‘people who like to terrorize’
In (35), the notion of the habitual nature of the activity is expressed through the
reduplication of the predicate in the subordinate clause. The reduplication of the
predicate ngrosak ‘ruin’ in combination with the verb dujan ‘like’ in the relative
clause in (36) indicates an activity that the people in question enjoy, and thus
perform habitually.
The imperfect function of reduplication can be considered a series of
events, making this an instance of plural events. For many types of activities, an
ongoing event of that activity will be made up of multiple subevents of that
activity until the activity is completed. These subevents then make up the plu-
rality of events that one finds in habitual or iterated activity.
3.1.3 Emphasis
Reduplication of verbal predicates can denote emphasis in the same way that it
denotes emphasis with adjectival predicates (as is discussed in section 3.1.4).
For example, in (37), the reduplication of the verb tolong ‘help’ emphasizes the
importance of the help of the addressee to the speaker. (This is the hero of the
story Aryo Mena' Senoyo speaking to the giant fish who took him from Sumatra
to Madura.
(37) Sakalangkong, aba’eng se ella a-ta-tolong dha' engko'.
thank you you REL already AV-RED-help to me
‘Thank you, you are the one who really has helped me.’