2

I notice that French hypocorisms are often formed using a repetition when they are common nouns. Examples: chienchien, maîmaître, fifille, pépère, mémère. Why?

Improve this question
9
  • 3
    Because French can! Commented Aug 6, 2024 at 7:39
  • I would not say often, it's just one of the ways. Hypocorisms often are diminutives (fillette, frérot...), phrases (mon petit loup, ma petite chatte...) I wager hypocorisms using reduplication are those used by children when they only have a limited capacity of expressing themselves , and just repeat what they are fond of, but this is just a psycholinguistic remark and has nothing to do with French. English babies also start saying "mama" an "dada "before they can move on to more elaborate language.(By the way, I don't get why the étymologie tag) Commented Aug 6, 2024 at 8:33
  • @jlliagre English would be so cuddly-cutie if it could; too bad it's just a few teeny-weeny, tiny thingys away from it. Commented Aug 6, 2024 at 9:45
  • 1
    First names are not common nouns but are anyway often truncated and reduplicated:. For example popaul, fifi, gégé, jojo, lulu, loulou, lolo, kiki, zaza, mimi and many many others. Commented Aug 6, 2024 at 22:13
  • 1
    Some of the examples have a pejorative meaning - pepere / memere especially . Memere : usually associated to a little grumpy old granny. The others can maybe be used in a more affectionate context but still denote a condescending / patronizing tone from the person using those terms. Commented Feb 15, 2025 at 21:59

0

Reset to default

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.