Hindi-Vindi and Pashto-Mashto : Comments on Various Types of Lexical Reduplication in Hindi and Pashto

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine potential similarities in Hindi1 and Pashto grammar as regards to the arial feature of lexical reduplication, and to give a brief explanation of the phenomenon. It is my belief that this feature appears in both languages and that it functions in a similar way when it comes to: full reduplication, distribution and partial reduplication, so called echo-words. I will try to explain how these features function in Pashto based on the research already done in Hindi and the limited amount of description found in Pashto grammars that discuss this subject. The object of the paper is to prove that reduplication in Pashto takes similar form with similar meaning to the reduplications found in Hindi. To analyse this I will look at literary language in Hindi and Pashto using examples found in books, grammars, papers of other researchers, as well as examples found online in blogs and on newspaper sites. The first section of this paper will deal with full reduplication of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbials, numerals and participles. It will show that various types of semantic meanings can be derived from reduplication such as intensification, attenuation, continuation or distribution. The second section will deal with partial reduplication and it will show that these also appears in the different word categories mentioned (though apparently not in both languages) and it aims to give an explanation as to what forms these partial reduplications can take, that is, how they are constructed, as well as how they may function.