1. Introduction
Norwegian speakers on occasion use forms like guttelutt (1b) and vovvelovven (1b). These forms are modified from the lexical roots gutt ‘boy’ and vovv ‘woof’. The systematic use, meaning and distribution of the modified forms are the object of study in this article. In a nutshell, I argue that such forms are best analyzed as diminutives (dim).
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Norwegian is untypical among Indo-European languages because it is traditionally described as not having any productive morphological diminutive suffix. As a counter to this claim, this paper documents that one such process, making use of reduplication, has been present in Norwegian for at least 130 years (18a). Within the Indo-European language family, this strategy of forming diminutives through reduplication is typologically rare and more restricted than in Norwegian.
The phonological process by which gutt is modified to guttelutt and vovv to vovvelovven reduplicates the rhyme of the syllable that bears primary stress. The rhyming segment is re-added following a medial -el [əl], e.g. for guttelutt as given in (2). The diminutivizing morpheme can be formulated as -elV́C
$_{1}$
, composed of the invariant segment el and a reduplicative segment whose realization is conditioned by the rule reduplicate V́C
$_{1}+$
(read as: reduplicate the stressed vowel and one or more consonants until the next morpheme boundary). Because the consonant cluster that precedes the reduplicate vowel is seemingly ‘exchanged’ for [l], I refer to the phenomenon as L-reduplication.
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Norwegian speakers often report that they intuitively associate L-reduplicate forms like guttelutt with child or animal-directed speech – ‘isn’t that how you would talk to a baby?’. This intuition might have some merit, but as this paper documents, L-reduplication is attested outside of these domains. The most straightforward evidence for this claim lies in the examples given in this article (appendix A is a list of every attestion of L-reduplication), which is found in exchanges on online forums that should not be understood as child-directed speech (3), or between adults in real-life unelicited contexts (4).
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No previous work describes L-reduplication. On the contrary, a productive morphological diminutive is claimed not to exist for Norwegian. Faarlund, Lie & Vannebo (Reference Faarlund, Lie and Vannebo1997, p. 113) note explicitly that there are are no diminutive suffixes in Norwegian. The same claim is made in the first sentence of Skommer (Reference Skommer2016, p. 1), which reads ‘mangler språket suffikser med diminutiv betydning.’ ‘the language [Norwegian] lacks suffixes with diminutive meaning’. Fløgstad & Eiesland (Reference Fløgstad and Eiesland2019, p. 66) express the sentiment that there are no evaluative morphological markers that express diminutive meaning in Norwegian.
The present article presents a counterclaim: a productive morphological diminutive exists in Norwegian. The reader is encouraged not to take the claim of productivity as a claim of frequency; while L-reduplication is a phonologically regular and morphosyntactically productive phenomenon, its frequency is hard to ascertain and is intuitively lower than that of diminutives in languages where diminutives are frequently used, e.g. Dutch (see e.g. Gillis (Reference Gillis and Dressler1997, p. 8) for an impression of frequency) or Spanish (Montrul et al. Reference Montrul, De La Fuente, Davidson and Foote2013, p. 96). The aim of the article is to give a broad phonological and morphosyntactic overview of L-reduplication and provide examples of its usage.
The article is structured as follows. Chapter 2 discusses how Norwegian L-reduplication fits into the notion of diminutives (2.1) and then outlines crosslinguistic tendencies in reduplication used in diminution (2.2), the previous literature on Norwegian diminutives (2.3) and the history of L-reduplication (2.4) in Norwegian. Chapter 3 outlines the distribution of L-reduplication. I first discuss the frequency of L-reduplication (3.1). In section 3.2, I outline its diminutivizing properties in comparison with other rhyming strategies (3.2.1), how it is constrained phonologically (3.2.2 and 3.2.3) and how to best formalize the morphophonological rule that derives L-reduplication (3.2.4). Subsection (3.2.5) shows how certain lexical classes deviate somewhat from the most common L-reduplicative rule. Subsection 3.2.6 outlines variation in stress assignment in L-reduplicate forms across Norwegian dialects. In section 3.3, to underline the productivity of L-reduplication, I illustrate how L-reduplicated is found across various parts of speech and inflectional categories. Section 3.4 briefly discusses the distribution of L-reduplication in Danish and Swedish. Chapter 4 evaluates the place of L-reduplication in the morphological derivation (4.1) and the internal morphological structure of L-reduplicates (4.2). Chapter 5 summarizes the article.
2. Background
This section provides a context for the notion of diminutives and how Norwegian L-reduplication should be taken to be a diminutive (2.1). I then (2.2) discuss reduplication as a diminutivizing process crosslinguistically in a local, i.e. North Germanic, and global context. Lastly I give an outline of the literature on Norwegian diminutivization strategies (2.3) and of the history of Norwegian L-reduplication (2.4).
2.1. Diminutive semantics
A range of semantic functions are included under the umbrella term diminutive. Jurafsky (Reference Jurafsky1996, p. 534) describes the variety of notions associated with diminutive exponents. The variety is well illustrated by the diachrony of the Spanish suffix -ita, which attached to ahor ‘now’ adds an intensifying component in Mexican Spanish and an attenuating force in Dominican Spanish. Jurafsky, by use of metaphor, justifies classifying both senses, although functionally different, under the umbrella term diminutive.
Certain functions are very commonly described across languages as diminutives. Among these are semantic concepts, e.g. smallness (5a), approximation (5b) and partitative semantics (5c), as well as pragmatic functions such as affection (5a), intimacy (5d) or derogation (5e). More thorough discussions of these categories and their subcategories are given by Jurafsky (Reference Jurafsky1996), Rubino (Reference Rubino and Hurch2005) and Dressler & Barbaresi (Reference Dressler and Barbaresi1994).
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The meaning of the Norwegian L-reduplicated diminutive is varied, but overlaps with the concepts outlined above: there are denotational associations with smallness or attenuation and force-modifying senses that may be broadly described as affective, cutesy, intimate, mocking or joking.
2.1.1. Smallness or youth
A Google search hints towards the smallness component. The lexeme guttelutt ‘boy.dim’Footnote
1
yields 56 results in Norwegian, 28 of which are part of a Norwegian utterance (rather than online usernames, single-word utterances, non-Norwegian contexts or contexts that pertain to an academic talk based on the present topic). Of these 28 sentences which contain variants of the lexeme guttelutt, 10 (
$\sim$
36%) are preceded by (inflectional variants of) the adjective liten ‘little’. None are preceded by adjectives that denoate large size as ‘big’, ‘huge’ or ‘gigantic’.
Compare then a search for the un-reduplicated form gutt ‘boy’. The web-based corpus of Norwegian NoWaC (Guevara Reference Guevara2010) contains 114720 instances of the un-reduplicated lexeme gutt. 3010 (
$\sim$
2.6%) of these are preceded by the adjective liten or its inflected variants. Things which are thought of as smaller might plausibly be understood to more often be described as small, compared with things which are not thought of as small. The difference in frequency of how often little precedes guttelutt compared to how seldom it precedes gutt may indicate that the former is usually thought of as smaller. Alternatively, because the Norwegian adjective liten is also used in reference to age, the finding indicates that a guttelutt is often thought of as younger.
2.1.2. Affection
The emotional component of endearment is similarly visible; 13 of the Norwegian 28 hits (
$\sim$
46%) for guttelutt variants are preceded by affectional adjectives like sweet, adorable, perfect or cute. The only adjective with a negative connotation which is found together with guttelutt is stakkars ‘poor/pitiable’, which is used for pity rather than as a display of negative sentiment from the speaker.
2.1.3. Attenuation
The attenuating force of L-reduplicated forms may be read from (6). The author reduplicates the verbal infinitive jobbe to form jobbelobbe.Footnote 2 A possible reading of (6) is that the writer intends not to work a full day or perform less intensive work-related tasks. A different but similar interpretation of diminutives is given for Greek by Sifianou (Reference Sifianou1992, p. 159) as markers of humility. Sifianou’s interpretation yields a similar and plausible reading of (6) where the writer tries to hedge their act of working in order to avoid the possibly self-aggrandizing label of someone who a. enjoys work or b. is willing to work even during the weekend.
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2.1.4. Derogation
L-reduplication may yield derogatory readings. In (7a), the writer disparages the attitude of a previous forum poster and refers to them as a gubbelubbe, reduplicated from gubbe ‘old man’, which may itself be used derogatorily. The context makes a cutesy or affectionate interpretation unlikely. The use of L-reduplication to subvert the meaning of the adjective tøff ‘tough’ in (7b) is accompanied by other sarcastic devices – the quotation marks around oppdrag ‘mission’, as well as the compound form mannemenn ‘man’s men’. The passage elicits a reading where the two characters in question are not really tough, but rather pretend to be tough or falsely think of themselves as tough.
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2.1.5. Child and animal directed speech
Diminutives are frequently used in child-directed speech. This tendency has also been observed in animal-directed speech (Dressler & Barbaresi Reference Dressler and Barbaresi1994, p. 190-197). Native speakers indeed report, unprompted, that using L-reduplication feels natural when speaking to pets. One such instance of L-reduplication in animal-directed speech was observed (8). In (8), it is not the address form itself that is diminutivized, but rather the goal of an activity involving the pet. The association between L-reduplication and child- and animal-directed speech is also reflected in the internet domain names that accompany the examples in Appendix A. 52 out of 261 hits (
$\sim$
20%) for L-reduplication are found in web domains which contain the names of animals, parent or baby in the name, e.g. hundesonen ‘the dog zone’ or babyeverden ‘the baby world’.
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2.1.6. Constituent modification vs. force modification
Note about (8) that the different meaning contributions of diminutives vary according to what aspect of the utterance they modify. Norwegian L-reduplication often does not semantically modify its lexical base, the constituent that the morpheme attaches to. Rather, it adds a component of intimacy (or derogation, cuteness or humility) to the force of the utterance. The speaker in (8) does not intend to drive to a small location, but rather communicates affection. Similarly, the author of (9a) does not necessarily imply that their body is physically small or cute. Such a reading is in fact difficult to infer from the given quote. Rather, a joking or cutesy reading is inferred where the speaker expresses that they are not unbearably uncomfortable. The author of (9b) refers to a diger vofselofs, a ‘huge woofie’. In this example, the diminutive is used together with the modifier diger ‘huge’. The modification of the same constituent as both huge and small is counter-intuitive. Instead of a large version of a small dog or a small version or a large dog, (9b) rather evokes the image of a big but affectionate, cute or friendly dog.
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Likewise, the force-modifying aspect of L-reduplicated forms is also clear when the reduplicated form is an adjective. The diminutivized adjective in (10a) does not read as a less-cool variant of tøff ‘cool’, but rather as a cutesy way of describing something as cool – the speaker modifies the force of the utterance rather than the adjective itself. A similar case is made by (10b), where the speaker simultaneously makes use of the intensifier skikkelig ‘really’ and the L-reduplicated adjective trøtteløtt ‘tired.dim’. There is a semantic clash between simultaneously attenuating and intensifying the same form. In practice, only an emotive component is inferred from (10b). Under this reading, the writer communicates not a smaller degree of tiredness, but rather an emphasis on the childlike or cute qualities of the tired child, or an expression of affection towards them. Both readings involve modification at a level that is not the adjectival base of L-reduplication.
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The attested examples of L-reduplication aligns with the different senses captured by diminutives as outlined by Jurafsky (Reference Jurafsky1996). These senses include smallness, affection, cuteness, attenuation, derogation and its use in child- and animal directed speech.
2.2. Reduplication
Following the terminology of Velupillai (2012, p. 101-102) and Rubino (Reference Rubino and Hurch2005, p. 15-18), Norwegian diminutive L-reduplication is an instance of complex discontinuous reduplication. (2), restated as (11), shows the decomposition of the morphological process. The process is complex because the base gutt is not copied in its entirety; the copying process starts at the vowel [ʉ] <u>. The process is discontinuous because -el- intercedes between the root and its reduplicate. The derived diminutive may be inflected according to the part of speech of the base, e.g. for definiteness in the case of a noun for kroppeloppen (12).
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I give an analysis where the base form is followed by an affix -elVC
$_{1}$
that expresses the diminutive semantics. Following the standard definition of a morpheme (see e.g. Booij (Reference Booij2012, p. 8) or Haspelmath & Sims (2013, p. 16)) as the smallest linguistic unit that conveys a lexical or grammatical meaning, the Norwegian diminutive morpheme consists of the ‘characteristic’ part -el and the reduplicated part VC
$_{1}$
, copied from the base by means of a morphophonological rule copy V́C
$_{1}+$
. The rule copies a stressed vowel and any consonants that follow until a morpheme boundary is reached. The characteristic part and the reduplicate part together make up the smallest unit that conveys diminutive meaning. The nature of the invariant part of the diminutive morpheme, el
$\sim$
[əl], is discussed in 4. Throughout this paper, for ease of reading, the base form and its L-reduplicate is glossed as a single unit. This unit, e.g. guttelutt is implicitly understood as multimorphemic and diminutivized.
In a Scandinavian context, L-reduplication is also attested for Danish (13) and Swedish (14). Phonologically and semantically, all details of the reduplicative process appear near identical to Norwegian. While the present paper is focused on Norwegian, section 3.4 provides a brief look at L-reduplication in Danish and Swedish. Especially the latter language contains certain patterns for L-reduplication not thoroughly attested for Norwegian.
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L-reduplication is absent from the other West Scandinavian languages: it is present in neither Icelandic (Marc Daniel Skibsted Volhardt, p.c.) nor Faroese (as evaluated by the Facebook group Føroyskt rættstaving, a group of Faroese language enthusiasts).
Typologically, reduplication as a productive diminutive process is attested for several languages. Most of them are only extremely distantly related to Norwegian. Six examples are given in (16). The last two (15d, 15e) are worthy of some mention because of genetic proximity or structural similarities.
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Of the languages listed in (15), only French (15e) is somewhat genetically and geographically close to Norwegian. While both Norwegian and French are Indo-European, Norwegian L-reduplication differs from French reduplication in that the phonological process is complex rather than full. The nature of /əl/ as the unchanging initial sequence of the Norwegian reduplicate makes a relationship with French reduplication unlikely. In other words, French reduplication full reduplication rather than l-reduplication.
The Tuvan process of ‘S’reduplication (Harrison Reference Harrison2000, p. 157) is, /s/ swapped for /el/, at a glance identical to Norwegian L-reduplication. However, as discussed below, Norwegian restricts L-reduplication in ways that are not described for Tuvan S-reduplication.
In English, diminutivizing reduplication is present in a select few lexical items, e.g. the ones in (16a–16d).Footnote 3 For English, contra Norwegian and Tuvan, diminutive reduplication is applicable only to a number of adjectives, many lexicalized to the point that their initial component is hardly recognizable as an expression on its own (16c, 16d). For an even smaller set of lexemes, a rhyming strategy nearly identical to Norwegian is identified for English, e.g. as in famalam (17), where fam, shortened from family, is L-reduplicated.
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2.3. Diminutivizes in Norwegian
The literature on Norwegian and Norwegian diminutives is characterized by an emphasis on analytic diminution as the most common way to express diminutive meaning. Several authors comment on the lack of productive morphological diminutive suffixes in Norwegian. Faarlund, Lie & Vannebo (Reference Faarlund, Lie and Vannebo1997, p. 113) remark det har vi ikke i norsk ‘we do not have that [diminutive suffixes that can be added to a noun] in Norwegian’. Skommer (Reference Skommer2016, p. 1) similarly observes that Til tross for at avledning med suffiks er en produktiv orddanningsmåte i norsk, mangler språket suffikser med diminutiv betydning ‘In spite of derivation by suffix being a productive word formation strategy in Norwegian, the language lacks suffixes with diminutive meaning’. Fløgstad & Eiesland (Reference Fløgstad and Eiesland2019, p. 65) remark that ‘Norwegian has no productive evaluative morphological markers expressing diminutive’.
In a historical perspective, Beito (Reference Beito1970, p. 116; 123; 124; 136) notes four derivational morphemes used to convey diminutive meaning: -ung (grunnung, kroppung ‘kinds of cod’), -le (kringle ‘kind of cake’ < kring, strimle ‘small strip’ < strime), -e (stykke ‘piece’ < stokk) and -l- (drople ‘drip a little’ < drope). The first and second strategies are noted to be less productive and unproductive, respectively. The synchronic productivity of the latter two strategies is not commented on. Because no synchronic description of Norwegian mentions these diminutivization strategies, it is reasonable to assume they are not present in contemporary Norwegian.
Skommer (Reference Skommer2016, p. 220–221), in his paper on Norwegian diminutives, describes the diminutivizing suffix -ling as lexicalized, and words ending in the diminutive -ett as loanwords from French. Skommer (Reference Skommer2016) mentions that the suffixes -as and -is, loaned from Swedish, may carry diminutive meaning, but describes them as not very productive.
The most common morphological diminutivizing strategy mentioned by Skommer (Reference Skommer2016) is the use of a prefix or prefixoid form små- to convey smallness or attenuation as in småskitten ‘a little dirty’ or småfjell ‘small mountains’ or småjogge ‘jog slowly’. Commenting on diminutivizing strategies in general, Fløgstad & Eiesland (Reference Fløgstad and Eiesland2019, p. 65) claim that ‘the standard Norwegian way of expressing diminution is analytical’, e.g. by use of adjectives that express diminutive semantics. In particular, Fløgstad & Eiesland describe a type of analytic diminution which involves reanalysis of an indefinite female inflectional form, ei lita ‘a little.f’ as a diminutive rather than a gendered inflection. Especially with regards to Skommer’s claim about prefixoidal diminution being possible and common, and the quote by Fløgstad & Eiesland about analytic diminution, I will make no counterargument. L-reduplication, although thoroughly attested, yields one hit for turelur ‘trip.dim’ on Google. Ei lit-a tur ‘a little-f/dim trip’ yields 2620 hits. Småtur ‘small/dim trip’ yields 6020 hits.
2.4. History
The earliest attested instances of L-reduplication in Norwegian are onomatopoeia (18a) and rhymes used in songs (18b) and poetry (18c) in the late 19th and early 20th century. The examples given in this section are downloaded from the National Library of Norway (nb.no).
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Early non-onomatopoetic and non-rhyme cases of L-reduplication date back to at least 1905. In (19) found in a humorous newspaper column, the derived form basselasse-n ‘big.guy.def’ is inflected for definiteness, the first attested occurrence of inflection in an L-reduplicate.
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While difficult to ascertain with a high degree of confidence, the origin of L-reduplication may be thought to be a phonological analogy of the lexical item bittelitt ‘very little’, made up of the Low German loan bitte ‘bite/small amount’ and litt ‘little’ (‘bitte’, ‘bittelite’ in Ordbok over det norske folkemålet og det nynorske skriftmålet). Bitte litt is an intensified diminutive, i.e. very little. It is semantically similar and phonologically almost identical to L-reduplication. The origin of L-reduplication may be the extension of the L-rhyming pattern in bittelitt to other parts of the lexicon.Footnote 4 This explanation reconstructs a form bitt as the base for reduplication, as the true loanword bitte would yield the L-reduplicate bittelitte. A way to account this inaccuracy is to postulate that L-reduplication emerged after bitte was no longer in use outside of the expression bittelitt.
At least one L-reduplicate form, muffeluff has lexicalized. In certain speakers from Eastern Norway, muffeluff is used about a particular kind of small pancake.Footnote 5
This section has situated Norwegian L-reduplication crosslinguistically and historically. The next section characterizes the distribution of L-reduplication in Norwegian.
3. Distribution and Analysis
3.1. Frequency and dataset
Before outlining the distribution of L-reduplicate diminutives proper, I comment on its frequency. Some languages employ diminutive morphemes very productively and frequently (e.g Dutch; Gillis Reference Gillis and Dressler1997, p. 8; Polish; Haman Reference Haman2003, p. 38-40; Spanish; Montrul et al. Reference Montrul, De La Fuente, Davidson and Foote2013, p. 96). Norwegian L-reduplication, on the other hand, cannot be said to occur quite so frequently. The spoken corpora of Norwegian at the University of OsloFootnote 6 attest to this observation. A search using the regular expression [word=″.*([aeiouyæøå]{1,2}[̂e]+)el∖1″ %c] results in 4 hits for L-reduplication across the spoken corpora. The expression should be read as ‘(1 or 2 of the Norwegian vowels followed by zero or more non-<e> segments) until the sequence <el> followed by the parenthesized group again’. The 4 possible candidates spread across two lexemes: bittelitt ‘a very small amount’ (CANS; LIA; NDC) and Tingeling (NOTA). Bittelitt, as discussed above, is a false positive which rather should be analyzed as a lexicalized form compounded from a Low German loan bitte. Tingeling is the Norwegian translation of the character Tinker Bell from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Both hits are associated with L-reduplication, bittelitt as perhaps the origin of the phenomenon and Tingeling as L-reduplication applied in naming a fictional (and small) fairy. Except these two forms, the UiO spoken corpora contain no L-reduplication. One could attribute this scarcity to the nature of the corpus material, which is for the most part interview-style conversation between adults, a situation which does not invite the especially intimate or affectionate language.
One of the corpora, the BigBrother corpus, is to a greater extent a corpus of casual spoken Norwegian. This corpus consists of the entirety of the first season of the Norwegian version of the reality show Big Brother in 2001. This setting is less institutional and a more plausible arena for the pragmatic usage of diminutives. The lack of any L-reduplicate, even in the BigBrother corpus, speaks to its rarity.
Written Norwegian is documented to a greater extent and is a far more abundant source of L-reduplication. The written corpus NoWaC (Guevara Reference Guevara2010; 800 million tokens) yields 4722 matches for the regular expression used to identify L-reduplication. Sorting out false positives (words that match the orthographical pattern without being L-reduplicate forms, e.g. usigelig ‘indescribable’ and spelling errors, e.g. badelad, contextually determined to be a misspelling of badeland ‘water park’) and proper nouns (e.g. Tingeling), 23 different tokens of L-reduplication were found. These are given in appendix A. The institutional corpora aside, a substantially larger amount of data was gathered using manual Google queries on a lexeme-to-lexeme basis for a range of different words. Among the domains that were searched particularly in-depth were animals, foods, fruits, vegetables, body parts and onomatopoeia. A small number of examples (4, 8, 39) have further been attested in person in unelicited contexts.
Norwegian has two standardized orthographies: Bokmål and Nynorsk, which differ with regards to the varieties of spoken Norwegian that they aim to represent. Although almost all attested examples in this paper are from Bokmål (see fuskelusk, naiselais and turelur in appendix A for exceptions in Nynorsk, non-standardized Northern Norwegian and non-standardized Southwestern Norwegian), no substantial differences are noted between for L-reduplication between the two official orthographies. The phonological and morphological claims made in this article are taken to hold across the Norwegian dialect continuum and for any orthographic representations of it.
In spite of the evident rarity of L-reduplication, the phonological regularity and the morphosyntactic productivity of L-reduplication, provide evidence towards of its undeniable place in the grammar of many Norwegian speakers.
3.2. Phonology
A prototypical instance of L-reduplication is given in (20) for base takk ‘thanks’. Beginning with the stressed vowel a, all content until the end of the word is copied and re-inserted following -el.
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This section describes how the L-reduplication is conditioned phonologically. I then discuss bases which are phonologically more elaborate than (20) and derive the copying rule reduplicate V́C
$_{1}+$
. Lastly, I outline two patterns of stress assignment in L-reduplicate forms across Norwegian dialects. First, however, I show that L-reduplication more often elicits a diminutive reading than other echo formation strategies in Norwegian.
3.2.1. Uniqueness among other reduplicative strategies
A Google search in the Norwegian .no domain, using different onset phonemes, reveals that processes similar to L-reduplication exist in Norwegian: guttedutt (21a; D-reduplication) guttefutt (21b; F-reduplication) gutteputt (21c; P-reduplication) and guttetutt (21d; T-reduplication). These items yield a similar diminutive reading and by doing so raise the question of whether any reduplicative rhyming strategy can successfully be used to create diminutive meaning in Norwegian. To investigate this question, a self-report study was conducted with the aim of determining which reduplicative strategies most consistently elicit diminutive readings.
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3.2.1.1. Survey design
The self-report study tests every possible single-consonant-onset reduplicative strategy 7 items where L-reduplication is attested. The base forms of the items and their translations are given in (22). The survey prompts the participant, for every of the 17 single-consonantFootnote 7 phoneme onsets in Norwegian, to report onsets that yields a diminutive reading. The participant is presented with a random Norwegian sentence, e.g. (23) for dust ‘fool’. They are then asked which out of the 17 possible reduplicate forms that makes sense to them as a cute or little variant of the base form, a cutesy way of saying the base form, or a way of uttering the base form when speaking to a very young child or infant. This is taken to indicate that the speaker associates diminutive meaning with the form. To test intuitions also in morphologically more complex forms, the multimorphemic forms fot-en ‘foot-def’, dumm-ing ‘stupid-nom’ and klump-en ‘nugget-def’ are included. Every reduplicate form appears below the question and the participants may select as many as they want. To compensate for fatigue effects over the course of the survey, the order that each question appears in is randomized for each question. In other words, one participant might see the N-reduplicate form sokkenokk first, while another sees the L-reduplicate sokkelokk first. Participants were sourced from online forums and chat channels with a demographic bias towards university students.
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3.2.1.2. Survey results
The survey was completed by 55 participants. 3 participants reported having earned more than 30 credits in linguistics or language-specific study programme. The results of the survey are presented in a simplified format in table 1. In table 1, a checkmark is assigned to every form that was reported to yield a diminutive-aligned reading by more than 40% of participants. The complete numerical data, along with the prompt sentences, are given in Appendix B.
Every reduplicative strategy for 7 base forms. a checkmark indicates that more than 40% of respondees associated it with typical diminutive readings
Table 1 shows how L-reduplication, to a greater extent and more consistently than other reduplication strategies, elicits diminutive readings across the tested items. For every checkmark in the L-column, more than 75% of participants reported a diminutive reading. Consider now the individual items that elicit a diminutive interpretation but are not L-reduplicate forms. Some of these can be explained independently. Tøffetøff and dummedumming are both accepted when the onsets [t] and [d] are copied. This might be indicative of diminutive readings when not only V́C
$_{1}$
, but also the preceding consonant is copied from the base. For fotepoten, pote is an separate lexeme ‘paw’ with semantic ties to base form foot. The semantic similarity between a foot and a paw might suggest that speakers associate rhyming pairs with a diminutive meaning more often if there is a semantic relationship between the base form and the reduplicate/rhyme. The D-reduplicating pattern found in klumpedumpen might be productive across a limited set of lexical bases, with e.g. for gutt, snuppe, knupp being other candidate lexemes. The survey indicates that D-reduplication is restricted in the other trial items. For all non-L-reduplicative strategies, note that they are not productive across more than 2 of the 7 base forms, and that no strategy (except L-reduplication) was evaluated as successfully contributing diminutive meaning by more than 50% of respondees. Rephrasing this crucial point – every accepted item that is not in the L-column is scored lower than 50%. All L-column items are scored higher than 75%. Compared to other reduplicative patterns, speakers infer a diminutive reading from L-reduplication more often and more consistently. I take this as evidence that L-reduplication is a systematic feature of Norwegian grammar that applies more broadly across the lexicon than other reduplicative strategies.
3.2.2. Onsets and codas
Norwegian L-reduplication is conditioned in terms of onset and coda phonemes. No onset is required in L-reduplication (24). Onsets are, however, restricted. L-reduplication disfavours base forms beginning with /l/. Consider (25a) vs. (25b) and (25c), where native speakers disfavour the latter two.
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L-initial L-reduplicates may be disfavoured because L-initial base forms are identical to the L-reduplicate, obscuring the L-reduplicative process. A contrastive focus reduplication (Ghomeshi et al, Reference Ghomeshi, Jackendoff, Rosen and Russell2004) strategy exists in Norwegian where a lexeme is compounded with itself to express a prototypical version of the lexeme. In L-onsets, the interpretation of forms like landeland and larvelarve would be ambiguous between L-reduplication and contrastive focus reduplication. Because the two are phonologically identical, the semantic ambiguity – diminutive vs. prototypicality – may explain the dispreference for L-onsets in L-reduplication.
While my informants question L-onsets in L-reduplicated forms, such forms are not ruled out a fortiori. The presumably intentionally childlike, cutesy or jestful style of the L-onset L-reduplicate (26) is consistent with the usage of diminutives to evoke such readings.Footnote 9 A dispreference for /l/ is not found in consonant cluster onsets (27a) and (27b), which are both universally judged as acceptable by my informants.
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The same argument made for onsets applies to codas. Some speakers express a dispreference for L-reduplicates when the base form contains any allophone of the coda /l/, e.g. the forms in (28a–28c). As with L-onsets, L-codas exhibit only a dispreference towards /l/. While L-codas are described as marked when compared to non-L codas by some speakers, (29a–29c) attest their existence. L-codas overall are attested more often than L-onsets, and do not suffer from the obscuring effect, i.e. that the lexeme is repeated rather than L-reduplicated, of L-onsets. As with onsets, codas that contain /l/ as part of a consonant cluster (29d) are attested and not questioned by native speakers.
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There is, then, a dispreference towards /l/ as the sole element of onsetsFootnote 10 and to a lesser extent codas. A coda is, however, necessarily present. Forms with no coda (30a–30d) following the stressed vowel are not attesteed and unanimously rejected by native speakers.
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Stressed monophthongs with no coda cannot be reduplicated. However, L-reduplicate forms based on a diphthong-final base form are attested (31).Footnote 11 Analyzing Norwegian diphthongs as a sequence of a vowel and a consonantal glide (Kristoffersen, Reference Kristoffersen2000), L-reduplication in diphthong-final roots satisfy the coda requirement.
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3.2.3. L-reduplication in bases with multiple vowels
L-reduplication of monosyllabic bases, discussed in detail above, is appropriately accounted for by the phonological rules outlined so far. In monosyllabic bases, the vowel and all following content is copied and -el intercedes between the base and its L-copy. L-reduplicates where the stressed vowel is not the final vowel of the base form challenge this simple rule. L-reduplication, when applied to the base forms pose ‘bag’ (32a) and sove ‘sleep’ (32b), which both assign stress to the first vowel, appears to copy the entire base form, replacing the initial consonant with /l/.
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Two forms were attested where L-reduplication is applied to base forms that carry final stress: agurkelurken ‘the cucumber’ (33a) and sjiraffelaffen ‘the giraffe’ (33b). Both roots agurk and sjiraff are monomorphemic loanwords with final stress.
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In L-reduplicated forms based on roots that contain multiple vowels, such as poselose, or which are inflected, such as sjiraffelaff-en, the position of L-reduplication in the morphological derivation is less trivial than with guttelutt. The next section looks at how multi-vowel bases and inflected forms inform the most general formulation of L-reduplication.
3.2.4. Deriving L-reduplication
L-reduplication is performed by copying the morphophonological sequence V́C
$_{1}+$
– in plainer terms: reduplicate the stressed vowel and one or more consonants that follow it until a morpheme boundary. The copied content is re-added following the characteristic sequence -el. Different analyses could however be imagined. In this section I show how only the above rule holds for every attested example.
How does L-reduplication derive poselose (32a) and sovelove (32b)? Two analyses are immediately apparent. Under a full reduplication analysis, pose is L-reduplicated in its entirety to sove-elove. Then, the sequence <ee> is reduced to a single vowel [ə]. Alternatively, the base form is affixed only by -lV́C
$_{1}$
. Under a root reduplication analysis, copying happens at the lexical root level. For the form sovelove, this would mean that the verbal root sov is L-reduplicated to sov-elov. The reduplicative morpheme -elV́C
$_{1}$
is inserted and the resultant form sovelov is suffixed by the infinitive marker -e. I will present two arguments in favour of the latter analysis.
Consider first dialects of Norwegian where the infinitival marker is realized differently from the e in -el. For the author’s Vikværsk dialect, the latter is realized as [ə], while the former is realizedFootnote 12 as [ɑ]. The full reduplication analysis wrongly predicts copying of the infinitival suffix [ɑ] (34a). The root reduplication analysis correctly predicts that L-reduplication inserts [ə] between the lexical root and the copied content (34b) and that the compound is suffixed by a final infinitival marker [ɑ].
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Consider next the inflection of L-reduplicate nouns and verbs. When an L-reduplicate is inflected, inflectional suffixes are applied to the derived stem
$[[$
base] + [-el + reduplicated base
$]_{\rm\small {DIM}}]$
. That is, an inflected form gutt-en ‘boy-def’ is not attested to L-reduplicate to *gutt-en-lutt-en. Inflection is only applied once: after reduplication. A root-based reduplication analysis should therefore be prioritized over full reduplication.
While the rule reduplicate V́C
$_{1}+$
is phonological in nature, L-reduplication is seemingly sensitive to morphological boundaries. Native speakers, asked about the multimorphemic form forsk-ning ‘research; morphologically research-nom’, unanimously prefer the morpheme-sensitive L-reduplicated form forsk-el-orsk-ning over the morpheme-ignorant *forskn-el-orskn-ing, which would copy consonants across morpheme boundary. This principle applies also to multimorphemes with fewer consonants following the stressed content: for frys-ning ‘shiver; morphologically freeze-nom’, native speakers prefer frys-el-ys-ning over *frysn-el-ys-ning. One might propose a syllable-based analysis, reduplicate V́C
$_{1}.$
– copying stops at syllable boundaries – for forskning and frysning, but such an analysis fails to account for single-syllable forms with multiple morphemes.
Consider monosyllabic lexeme pairs with morphologically different codas that surface as the same phonological form. The coda of both grøft ‘ditch’ and tøf-t ‘cool-n’ is /ft/. The coda of grøft is part of the root, while in tøft, /f/ is part of the root and /t/ is the neutrum inflection of an adjective. Asked to L-reduplicate grøft, native speakers include both segments of the coda to form grøft-eløft. L-reduplicating tøft, my informants consistently produce tøff-eløf-t. The full coda is not reduplicated, only the part that belongs to the lexical root. Based on these preferences, the reduplicating process should be understood to stop at the morpheme boundary +.
reduplicate V́C
$_{1}+$
accounts for the vast majority of Norwegian inflected L-reduplicates. There are, however, a small number of exceptions.
3.2.5. Deviant reduplicative patterns
In the Norwegian dataset, two classes of words align with a full reduplication analysis rather than a root-based one: certain multi-vowel roots (a single lexeme mammalamma ‘mummy.dim’ (35a) attested), along with proper nouns (35b). Recall that for most forms, the full reduplication analysis does not predict the correct output. For proper names and mummy lexeme, however, it is still dominant.
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There is a tendency for full reduplication rather than root reduplication to occur in forms used to address others, such as proper names and the lexeme mummy. The preference for full reduplication might be explained by a reluctance to modify or ‘tamper with’ an address form. This is clearly not the case in general, as elaborate paradigms for nickname formation exist in e.g. Swedish (Riad Reference Riad2002), where L-reduplication of proper names is also present (see section 3.4). Like Norwegian, the same tendency towards full reduplication is found in L-reduplicated proper names in Swedish. The question would then be why L-reduplication would be less inclined to modify proper noun bases, while more elaborate modification is permitted in nickname formation. More could certainly be said about the matter, but a truly explanatory relationship is beyond the scope of this paper.
3.2.6. Stress assignment variation and pitch accent interactions
There are two main ways of realizing L-reduplicated forms across the Norwegian dialect continuum. The first way is to preserve stress from the base form, the root that is copied, for guttelutten transcribed as /ˈgʉtəlʉtnˌ /. The second way is to stress the L-reduplicate: /gʉtəˈlʉtnˌ /.Footnote 13 A self-report study was conducted to investigate the geographical distribution of the two variants.
3.2.6.1. Survey design
The survey design is extremely simple: the participant is asked to read each of the two sentences in (36). They are then asked to report whether they assign stress to gutt or lutt and to sokk or lokk when pronouncing these forms. The participant is given the possibility to indicate that both options sound equally good to them.
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Participants were further asked about their home region in Norway, given 5 choices: Eastern Norway (Includes the regions Innlandet, Oslo, Vestfold og Telemark, Viken), Southern Norway (Agder), Western Norway (Møre og Romsdal, Rogaland, Vestland), Middle Norway (Trøndelag), Northern Norway (Nordland, Troms og Finnmark). These regions correspond closely, although not perfectly, with the main dialects of Norwegian as given in e.g. Mæhlum & Røyneland (Reference Mæhlum and Røyneland2012, p. 25) or Jahr (Reference Jahr1990, p. 10). Notably, Southern Norway was given as an option because of its distinct cultural identity, although Southern Norwegian is grouped together linguistically with Western Norwegian. Participants were sourced from the Facebook group Språkspalta ‘the language column’, a group that caters to people interested in topics on Norwegian language. Some participants reported having formal training in linguistics.
3.2.6.2. Survey results
The results of the survey are given in table 2. 244 responses were given, distributed by region according to the region column. The relative distribution of preferred stress assignment is given in the the remaining three columns.
Distribution of primary stress assignment in L-reduplicate forms across dialectal Norwegian regions
Table 2 indicates that Western Norwegian speakers favour stressing the L-redup-licate. In southern varieties, the distribution is roughly equal, but note a low number of respondents. For eastern, middle and northern varieties, stressing the base form is favoured, overwhelmingly so in eastern Norwegian.
L-reduplication interacts with the Norwegian pitch accent system. In speakers that stress the root lexeme, L-reduplication imposes pitch accent type 2Footnote 14 on the root lexeme. For base forms that already are specified as lexical pitch type 2, imposing pitch accent type 2 has no impact. For base forms with lexical pitch type 1, however, the pitch accent changes to type 2. The phonetic effect of the change is that the tone of the stressed vowel is modified. The exact phonetic difference in tone varies across dialects. My native speaker informants evaluate the pitch accent-modifying effects of L-reduplication as described below.
The pitch accent that L-reduplication imposes depends on the stress assignment of the speaker. L-reduplication, when it occurs in speakers who assign primary stress to the root, imposes pitch accent type 2. Base forms which are specified for pitch accent 1, e.g. the loanword
$^1$
kaffe ‘coffee’, yield pitch accent type 2 when they undergo L-reduplication:
$^2$
kaffelaffe ‘coffee.dim’. In general terms, the effect of L-reduplication on pitch accent in root stress-assigning speakers can be formulated as
$^x$
$\rightarrow$
$^2$
, or as part of the whole derivation as
$^x$
base
$\rightarrow$
$^2$
base-elV́C
$_{1}+$
. In speakers who assign stress to the L-reduplicate, the pitch accent of the root is retained:
$^x$
$\rightarrow$
$^x$
. As a consequence, this group of speakers produce gutte
$^1$
lutten (pitch accent class 1 retained) rather than *gutte
$^2$
lutten, but sove
$^2$
love (pitch accent class 2 retained) rather than *sove
$^1$
love.
3.3. Morphosyntactic variation
L-reduplication is used productively across several parts of speech. To demonstrate morphosyntactic variety, this section presents data from every attested part of speech and sub-classes and inflections of these. Because of the general productivity of L-reduplication across inflectional forms, one should attribute the rarity of particular inflections to the low frequency of L-reduplicate forms rather than inflectional restrictions on L-reduplication.
3.3.1. Nouns
A wide range of nouns are attested to exhibit L-reduplication. Norwegian nouns inflect for number and definiteness, giving a total of four combinations. For the noun gubbe ‘old guy/husband’, also used endearingly, all four combinations of number {sg, pl} and definiteness {def, indef} are attested (36a–36d).
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Both countable nouns and mass nouns are attested as bases for L-reduplication. (36a–36d) are countable. A mass noun L-reduplicate form pakkelakk is shown in (38).
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Proper nouns may be L-reduplicated. Searching for a number of names, a tentative observation is that monosyllabic names are more frequently L-reduplicated than polysyllabic ones. (39) shows a selection of single-vowel (38a–38d) and multi-vowel (38f–38f) names found in text or as forum or blog usernames. As noted above for majalaja (35b), multi-vowel names often make use of full reduplication, preserving base forms rather than making use of reduplicate V́C
$_{1}+$
(39g– 39i). L-reduplication is also noted used with certain foreign names (39j).
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Note especially about (39f), that the L-reduplicates based on the pet form Henke are attested, but none are attested for the non-nickname Henrik. The L-reduplicates Henr-el-enrik or Hen-el-enrik, based on the original name Henrik are described by my informants as cumbersome. For many names, the pet name formation rules described by Riad (Reference Riad2002) for Swedish yield forms that are notably more amenable to L-reduplication than the original name, compare e.g. Albert
$\rightarrow$
Abbe
$\rightarrow$
Abbelabbe, contra the predicted Alb-el-albert, also described as cumbersome or infelicitious. It is likely that there are additional phonological constraints on the consonant clusters in the lexical base, that determine the well-formedness of L-reduplication.
In the curious multilingual example in (40), a native Norwegian speaker inserts an L-reduplicate nominal form in a mixed Norwegian/English sentence.
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3.3.2. Adjectives
Norwegian adjectives inflect for degree. Only the unmarked positive degree is attested for Norwegian (diggeligg: (3); tøffeløff: (10a); trøtteløtt: (10b)). The positive forms of some adjectives further inflect for grammatical gender, and many inflect for number. No gender-inflected forms were found. For number, a plural inflection tøffeløff-e ‘tough/cool-pl’ was attested (41a). A form bearing the adjectivizer -ete is attested in (41b). Note additionally how that the loanword nais ‘nice’ (from English) undergoes L-reduplication in (41c). Another interesting case is found for the relatively newFootnote 15 adjective konge ‘awesome’ (lit. ‘king’) in (41d).
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3.3.3. Verbs
Norwegian verbs conjugate for tense and are in general rare in my material, but different inflections are found. Infinitival forms are documented, presented previously as (6) and (32b). Present tense forms (41a–41b) and perfect forms are attested (42c) below. An imperative, i.e. uninflected verbal form, making use of L-reduplication is attested as (42d). The function of L-reduplication in verbs could be interpreted as a pragmatic hedge, for example to downplay the seriousness of working (42a), of (often illegally) modifying your vehicle to drive faster (41b–41c) or of using imperative force (42d).
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3.3.4. Interjections
Norwegian interjections may undergo L-reduplication (24a–24c). For negatively charged expressions, e.g. (43a), native speakers report that L-reduplications yields a reading where the negative sentiment are not as strong or stated in jest. For takk ‘thanks’ (43b), my informants report a reading that is cutesy or less formal than the base form.
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3.3.5. Adverbs
Two instances of L-reduplication used in adverbial forms were attested for Norwegian (43a–43b). The L-reduplication of the intensifying kjempelempe ‘giant; very’ contributes a humorous or childlike component to the force of the declarative utterance. The effect of L-reduplication puse in remains somewhat unclear, but might seem to align with a pragmatic hedge or force-modifier that softens the request for a Christmas present.
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3.4. L-reduplication in Danish and Swedish
As noted in section 2.2, L-reduplication is likely best described as a Mainland Scandinavian phenomenon, as it found in Danish and Swedish in addition to Norwegian. (44a–44d) demonstrate the usage of L-reduplication in nominal and verbal forms as well as in interjections in Danish and Swedish. L-reduplication to a great extent appears to be a structurally similar phenomenon across the three languages, but some prosodic realizations appear unique to Swedish.
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Swedish L-reduplication exhibits patterns of full L-reduplication that are not found in Norwegian. Native speakers of Swedish indicate that L-reduplication may surface both as root reduplication (45a) and as full reduplication (46a). The latter strategy is found also in a limited number of Norwegian bases, but in Swedish, two subvariants of full reduplication should be thought to exist that are accompanied by different intonational patterns.Footnote 16 The first assigns primary stress to both the root and the L-reduplicate (46a). The written source corroborates this view: the L-reduplication found in (46a) is represented in text with a space present between the base form and the L-reduplicate. This may be taken to reflect the prosodic break between primary stresses, and has not been attested in Norwegian. The other strategy of full reduplication assigns only a single instance of primary stress for the entire L-reduplicated form (45b–45c).
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Both strategies of full reduplication in Swedish appear to be rare. For each form that results from these operations, the corresponding forms derived by root reduplication (46a–46c) occur more frequently. For both Danish and Swedish, a more comprehensive description of the phenomenon is desired.
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4. L-Reduplication in the Morphological Derivation
This section looks at two structural aspects of L-reduplication that follow from the distribution outlined in the previous chapter. First, I show how the phonologically determined position of L-reduplicate affixes caused it to surface as both a suffix and as an infix according to the phonological structure of the base form. In the morphological derivation, there is some evidence that L-reduplicate takes place before inflection. Secondly I discuss the internal structure of L-reduplicate affixes and explain why L-reduplication should be analyzed as a single morpheme.
4.1. Suffix and/or infix?
L-reduplicate forms have been described so far as affixes. The overwhelmingly most common realization of the affix is as a suffix that attaches to the nominal root, e.g. in gutt-elutt. Inflected forms like gutt-elutt-ene ‘boy-dim-pl.def’ raise the question of whether L-reduplication occurs as an infix on an inflected form guttene ‘boy-pl.def’ or as a suffix on the root gutt ‘boy’. The former analysis predicts a structure gutt<elutt>ene, while the latter predicts gutt-elutt-ene. There is some evidence in favour of the latter analysis, or at the very least that both formation processes are at play.
To investigate the question of whether the general case of L-reduplication targets the lexical root or an inflected stem, consider singular to plural alternations that make use of umlaut, such as fot
$\rightarrow$
føtter ‘foot
$\rightarrow$
feet’ and bok
$\rightarrow$
bøker ‘book
$\rightarrow$
books’. The alternation fot
$\rightarrow$
føtter modifies the root vowel /u:/ to /œ/. There is some evidence that L-reduplicate forms ignore the umlaut alternation. In (48), the /u:/
$\rightarrow$
/œ/ umlaut is not present. The root vowel /u:/ is retained both in the base form fot and reduplicate -elot. The form is inflected for definiteness and number by the suffix -ene.
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The absence of umlaut in (48) is important to understand the place of L-reduplication in the morphological derivation. In contemporary Norwegian, umlaut is not a productive phenomenon.Footnote
17
Because umlaut alternations are not productive, the output form fotelotene hints that the input form is fot rather than the inflected form føtt-ene. If the input for L-reduplication were the inflected form føtt-ene, the rule reduplicate -V́C
$_{1}+$
would predict the output form føtt-eløtt-ene. This form, and similar umlauting forms, are not attested. I take this as tentative evidence that the root fot is the input for L-reduplication. The order of operations in the derivation, then, is that a root is L-reduplicated to form a stem, e.g. fotelot, which is then inflected.
Whether this order of operations is universal to every instance of L-reduplication is difficult to ascertain, and is complicated by the scarcity of umlauting forms in the dataset. The data that is attested, however, should be taken as a careful indicator that L-reduplication targets, or at least sometimes targets, roots rather than inflected forms.
If it is indeed the case that L-reduplication uniformly works at the lexical root stage, the rule reduplicate -V́C
$_{1}+$
can be altered to reduplicate -V́C
$_{1}$
, that is, the constraint that reduplication does not work across morpheme boundaries can be omitted. While the evidence for this claim is scarce, the counterevidence, i.e. umlauted L-reduplicated plurals such as føtteløttene or bøkeløkene, are absent. With more data, a stronger case is made for a rule reduplicate -V́C
$_{1}$
.Footnote
18
4.2. Internal structure of the reduplicate morpheme
The internal structure of the reduplicative affix -elV́C
$_{1}$
is worthy of further discussion. A possible alternative analysis is that L-reduplicate forms, e.g. guttelutt, are composed of the base form gutt ‘boy’, a phonological linking element (ple) -e- and an L-reduplicate form lutt. It is worthwhile to consider, but ultimately reject, this analysis because such a structure is identical to that of many Norwegian compounds, i.e. compound
$_1$
+ -e- + compound
$_2$
, e.g. barn-e-mat ‘baby food, (lit. baby-e-food)’. The linking element -e- is phonologically identical to the first segment in the proposed diminutive morpheme -elV́C
$_{1}$
. Thus, L-reduplicates may be thought to be compounds with structure base + ple + lV́C
$_{1}$
, as in (49a), rather than the structure base + elV́C
$_{1}$
, as in (49b). The difference is the status of /e/ as a ple or as part of the diminutive morpheme. While I argue against the compound analysis, the structural similarities shared by compounds and L-reduplicates mean that it should be considered rather than rejected outright.
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The argument in favour of structure (49b), assumed in this paper, comes from the invariant nature of the segment elV́C
$_{1}$
in L-reduplicative forms. Put differently, in L-reduplication, the segment /e/ without exception follows the base form. In compounds, the ple element -e-, however, does not. Many base forms, such as biff ‘steak’, agurk ‘cucumber’ and fot ‘foot’, contain no ple in compounds (49a–49c). When lexemes of this class form the first part of a compound, the structure of the compound as a whole is simply compound
$_1$
+ compound
$_2$
, e.g. biff + kniv.
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The lack of a ple in the compounds in (49a–49c) is presumably a lexical feature of the base forms agurk, biff and fot. If L-reduplicate forms were indeed compounds, the lexical specification for the absence of a linking element would be expected to carry over to L-reduplicate forms. The analysis of -e- as a ple is, however, inconsistent with the lexemes in (49a–49c). If L-reduplicates were compound forms, and -e- a ple, biff, agurk and fot would be expected to behave the same way in L-reduplicates as they do in compounds – i.e. they would compound with no intermediate ple. The expected L-reduplicate forms would then be agurklurk, biffliff and fotlot. No forms of this pattern have been attested. The structural analysis in (49b), in which e is part of the diminutive morpheme, predicts agurkelurk, biffeliff and fotelot. This is exactly what is attested (33a, 50a, 50b).
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The analysis of internal structure of the reduplicate diminutive morpheme as a complex morpheme -elV́C
$_{1}$
, then, adequately accounts for its properties. The alternative account, where -e- is a ple, while structurally similar to Norwegian compounds, makes superfluous predictions about the relationship between L-reduplicate forms (e.g biffeliff) and other compounds based on the same root (biffkniv). The linking element is lexically specified for standard compounds, but in L-reduplicates, it is simply not needed; an account that treats ¡e¿ simply as part of the reduplicate morpheme accounts equally well for the data. Further, the stress assignment of L-reduplication also differs from that of compounding. L-reduplication exhibits dialectal variation between speakers who assign stress to the root or to the L-reduplicate. This stress assignment dichotomy is only marginally attested in standard compounds. Speakers who stress the L-reduplicate, e.g. many speakers of the Bergen, Stavanger or Tromsø varieties, would retain root stress in standard compounds. A speaker from Stavanger might produce the L-reduplicated form gutte
$^1$
lutten, but the standard compound
$^2$
guttebukse ‘boy trousers’, with the position of the primary stress differing between the two.
The Norwegian strategy of rhyming reduplication as a diminutivizing strategy is uncommon as a way of creating diminutives in the Indo-European language family, where the predominant diminutivizing strategy is the use of invariant diminutive morphemes. Yet, rhyming reduplication as a diminutive is found both in Indo-European (English; (16a, 17)) and in other language families (e.g. Turkic; Tuvan; (15f)). While Norwegian diminutivizing L-reduplication is phonologically different from the diminutivization strategies of many related languages, the claim that Norwegian has no morphological diminutive suffix is false.
5. Conclusion
I have given a broad overview of Norwegian (and to a lesser extent Swedish and Danish.) L-reduplication in this article. The semantic contribution of L-reduplication is a diminutive reading, often with a pragmatic usage domain used to express affection, downplay seriousness or to appear cutesy. This aligns with the usage of diminutives in other languages.
Other reduplicative strategies, e.g. F-reduplication and D-reduplication, are limited in terms of productivity across the Norwegian lexicon. L-reduplication, however, is productive across the lexicon and across multiple morphosyntactic categories. I have detailed its phonological properties and restrictions, and proposed that the phenomenon has grammaticalized from a lexical origin bitte litt. The phonological process is best characterized by a rule that inserts an affix (suffix in single-vowel bases, infix in multi-vowel bases) with two parts: the characteristic (constant) -el and a reduplicate form that copies V́C
$_{1}$
from the base until a morpheme boundary +. Certain divergent L-reduplicating strategies exist for Norwegian and Swedish, but are of limited lexical scope. L-reduplication is realized with different stress assignment in different dialectal areas of Norway; western and to a lesser extent southern variants of Norwegian assign primary stress to the L-reduplicate, while other dialects prefer initial stress assignment. To underline the productivity of L-reduplication, I have given various forms from different parts of speech and inflectional categories.
In the morphological derivation, there is some evidence that L-reduplication happens before inflection. While L-reduplication shares phonological properties with compounds, such as pitch accent modification, similarity with phonological linking elements, these properties of L-reduplication are, contra standard compounds, lexically uniform. This is taken as evidence that L-reduplication is independent from compounding.
The most central finding is that at least one productive morphological diminutive suffix exists in contemporary Norwegian.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Sverre Stausland Johnsen, Hans-Olav Enger, Donca Steriade, Helge Lødrup, Dag Haug, Ruth Eldbjørg Vatvedt-Fjeld, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Oddrun Grønvik, Piotr Garbacz, Åshild Næss, Anders Vaa, Eirik Tengesdal, Linn-Iren Sjånes Rødvand and Maria Evjen for helpful comments, discussion and inspiration with regards to various aspects of Norwegian L-reduplication. Thanks to Kristin Lorentzen for proofreading the needlessly large appendix A.
Appendix
Appendix A. List of attested examples in Norwegian
agurkelurken (root/stem: agurk; translation: the cucumber)
Banner agurkelurken til SVK av Roald Dahl (diskusjon.no)
I ban the cucumber of BFG [Big Friendly Giant] by Roald Dahl
bamselamsen (root/stem: bamse; translation: the bear, teddy bear, also used endearingly about men)
bamselamsen tåler det meste (foreldreportalen.no)
My boyfriend endures most things
biffeliff (root/stem: biff; translation: steak)
Slukt en biffeliff og ei flaske rødt med svirrebror. (twitter.com)
Devoured a steak and a bottle of red with my drinking buddy Tusj på gjeller og lim på et par øyne så er saken biffeliff. (fluefiskesiden.no)
Paint on gills and glue on a pair of eyes and then the case is beef [i.e. solved]
bimmelim (root/stem: bim; translation: pee-pee (formed analogously from bommelom))
du må spyle før både bimelim og bomelom er spylt hele veien (NoWaC: 5676897)
you have to flush until both pee-pee and poo-poo are flushed all the way
bommelom (root/stem: bom; translation: boom, onomatopoetic
$\rightarrow$
poo-poo)
du må spyle før både bimelim og bomelom er spylt hele veien (NoWaC: 5676897)
you have to flush until both pee-pee and poo-poo are flushed all the way
busselussen (root/stem: buss; translation: the bus)
ha det bra søte busselussen vår<3. (facebook.com)
goodbye our sweet bus <3
såååå, tok vi busselussen og jeg var på jobb fra 4 til 8 (maritapinky.blogspot.com)
theeeen, we took the bus and I was at work from 4 to 8
diggeligg (root/stem: digg; translation: very good/good looking)
Hadde vært diggeligg om Monobank kunne tilbudt brukskonto (finansavisen.no)
Had been very nice if Monobank could offer current account
Men konseptet er diggeligg. (diskusjon.no)
But the concept is very nice
måtte bare få sakt det
$\ldots$
Du er diggeligg (NoWaC: 147677)
just had to say it
$\ldots$
you are good looking
drammelam (root/stem: dram; translation: shot of alcohol)
Alt går bedre med en liten drammelam (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Everything is better with a little shot
Det måtte man ha for å få kald drammelam på verandaen (hufsa.no)
That’s what you had to have to get a cold shot on the porch
med boken min og en drammelam og ingen kan få gjort noe med det. (forum.flyprat.no)
with my book and a shot and nobody can do anything about it
drammelammen (root/stem: dram; translation: the shot of alcohol)
Det tror jeg nok det gjør, særlig hvis drammelammen taes på Notodden! (twitter.com)
That I think it does, especially if the shot is taken in Notodden!
duskelusken (root/stem: dusk; translation: the tassel)
de snodige folkene utfor slottet med duskelusken på hodet (rbkweb.no)
Those odd guys [guards] outside the castle with tassels on their heads
duskeluskene (root/stem: dusk; translation: the tassels)
Da har høsten servert disse deilige duskeluskene med løv (facebook.com)
And so autumn has served us these magnificent tassels [piles] of leaves
duskelusker (root/stem: dusk; translation: tassels, euphemism for breasts, term of endearment)
Vi må vel kunne innrømme at Salma Hayek’s duskelusker ikke er (diskusjon.no)
We have to be able to admit that Salma Hayek’s tassels aren’t
$[\ldots ]$
Søte små duskelusker (facebook.com)
Cute little tassels [rabbits]
dustelust (root/stem: dust; translation: fool)
Duste-Cpen min er Dustelust som gjør sånn at kroppen min ikke lystrer (forum.fitnessbloggen.no)
My fool of a CP [Cerebral palsy] is a fool that causes my body not to obey me
dustelusten (root/stem: dust; translation: the fool)
Sender noen ekstra dunk i hode til den lille dustelusten. (forum.klikk.no)
Sending some extra thuds to the head of that little fool
dummelumming (root/stem: dum; derivation: -ing (nominalizer); translation: stupid person)
formatet tenkte jeg din DUMMELUMMING! (diskusjon.no)
I was thinking about the format you stupid person
fantelant (root/stem: fant; translation: naughty/bad person, also used sympathetically)
stakkars lille sultne fantelant (caravanxavier.blogspot.com)
Poor little hungry guy
fiskelisk (root/stem: fisk; translation: fish)
Mmm, fiskelisk med potatis. (auntiesonaloft.blogspot.com)
Yummy, fish with potatoes.
fiskelisken (root/stem: fisk; translation: the fish)
Jeg tror fiskelisken min er syk (akvaforum.no)
I think my fish is sick. om en ser på fiskelisken sin som en koseloseklump som (akvaforum.no)
If one considers one’s fish as a cuddle nugget that [
$\ldots$
]
Æsj, ekle fiskelisken (deviantart.com)
Ew, nasty fish
fiskeliskene (root/stem: fisk; translation: the fishes)
Det må være litt rom rundt fiskeliskene (forum.klikk.no)
There ought to be some space between the fishes.
å være snill og human med søøøte lille fiskeliskene. (freak.no)
To be nice and humane with the cute little fishes
fiskelisker (root/stem: fisk; translation: fishes)
være pin-updame på plakat med mange fiskelisker på? (kosenemine.blogspot.com)
[Would you too like] to be a pin-up girl on a poster with lots of fishies on it?
fjompelomp (root/stem: fjomp; translation: fool/term of endearment)
du var en liten fjompelomp som knapt nok kunne gå (pappahjerte.blogg.no)
[It feels like only yesterday that] you were a little fool who could barely walk
fosselosser (root/stem: foss; translation: waterfalls)
En rekke søte små fosselosser (jon-leo.travellerspoint.com)
A row of cute little waterfalls
fotelot (root/stem: fot; translation: foot)
Fotelot (for anledningen uten sokkelokk) (enslagsmammablogg.no)
Foot (for the occasion without sock)
foteloten (root/stem: fot; translation: the foot)
Nå skal vi bare sette sokkelokken på foteloten (instagram.com)
Now let’s just put the sock on the foot
Agena har blitt verre i foteloten sin (hestemarked.no)
Agena’s foot has become worse
foteloter (root/stem: fot; translation: feet)
for å unngå iskalde foteloter (footway.com/no)
To avoid ice cold feet
fotelotene (root/stem: fot; translation: the feet)
er i ferd med å putte fotelotene våre nedi (morgenbladet.no)
[which we] are about to put our feet down into
når han stabber rundt på fotelotene sine ja! (forum.babyverden.no)
$[\ldots ]$
when he trudges around on his feet, yeah!
Godt å stelle fotelotene (kassima.bloghog.no)
[it is] nice to take care of my feet
froskelosker (root/stem: frosk; translation: frogs)
gjør hele kongeriket om til ”harepuser”, ”froskelosker” og ”pippelipper” (primevideo.com)
[The movie characters] transform the whole kingdom into ”bunnies”, ”frogs” and ”birdies”
fuskelusk (root/stem: fusk; mischief)
gjera noko fuskelusk med Lom Ungdomsskule (facebook.com)
do some mischief at Lom middle school
gampelamp (root/stem: gamp; translation: workhorse)
Må bare fortelle at jeg i går kveld hadde en stk gampelamp (tapatalk.com)
[I] just have to tell you that yesterday night I had a workhorse
gampelampen (root/stem: gamp; translation: the workhorse)
Litt stolt av gampelampen også. (facebook.com)
A bit proud of the workhorse too
gokkelokk (root/stem: gokk; translation: far away place/middle of nowhere)
i en liten fjell-landsby i gokkelokk (freak.no)
In a little mountain village in the middle of nowhere
grumselums (root/stem: grums; translation: sediment, mess)
Ellers kan det bli litt grumselums med ladinga av batteriene (bilforumet.no)
There might be some mess when charging the batteries otherwise
gråtelåte (root/stem: gråt; translation: cry)
Nå må jeg gråtelåte litt (diskusjon.no)
Now I have to cry a little
gubbelubbe (root/stem: gubb; translation: old man/male term of endearment)
Min amazing gubbelubbe (slagferdig.blogg.no)
My amazing old man I går kveld hadde æ selskap av min kjære gubbelubbe (slagferdig.blogg.no)
Yesterday night I was visited by my dear old man blir gaaaal når jeg skal prøve å si noe til gubbelubbe ved middagsbordet (forum.klikk.no)
I go nuts when I try to say something to my old man at the dinner table
gubbelubben (root/stem: gubb; translation: the old man/male term of endearment)
jeg hadde behov for kosetid med gubbelubben (forum.klikk.no)
I had the need for a cuddle with my guy
jeg knisa så høyt at jeg fikk gubbelubben til å våkne (forum.babyverden.no)
I giggled so loud I woke the old man up
Ikke meninga å svare for gubbelubben,men han er ikke hjemme (treningsforum.no)
I don’t mean to answer on behalf of my old man, but he is not at home
gubbelubbene (root/stem: gubb; translation: the old men/male term of endearment)
flott at du fikk satt gubbelubbene på plass (stilleben-stilleben.blogspot.com)
Great that you got to put the old men in their place
gubbelubber (root/stem: gubb; translation: old men/male term of endearment)
så lenge gubbelubber som deg har den holdningen (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
As long as old men like you have that attitude
guffeluffe (root/stem: guffe; translation: gunk)
Bør kanskje legge noe ”guffeluffe” i skjøtene (lrforum.com)
Maybe I should put some ”gunk” in the seals
gullelull (root/stem: gull; translation: gold [also: term of endearment; something great])
så det ikke blir katastrofe på dagen til gullelull (viforum.babyverden.no)
[I should practice a little] so there won’t be any catastrophies on gold’s day
Men det er gullelull det (olehoel.blogspot.com)
But that’s gold
gumselums (root/stem: gums?; translation: term of endearment (no instance of base form found))
det var pakke fra min kjæreste gumselums Linda (NoWaC: 17336864)
It was a package from my dearest poppet Linda
guttelutt (root/stem: gutt; translation: boy)
Jeg har ei jente fra før og får nå en litten guttelutt (forum.babyverden.no)
I have a girl already and now I am getting a tiny boy
det blir ei lita frøken og en liten guttelutt
$\ldots$
(foreldreportalen.no)
We’re getting a little missus and a little boy
du har fått en liten B-guttelutt du, heldig (forum.klikk.no)
You have gotten yourself a little B-boy. Lucky.
guttelutta (root/stem: gutt; translation: the boys; lexicalized as an informal adressal for male friends)
Noen som vet hvor jeg kan kjope en sånn cap :P ? Guttelutta! <3 (4chanarchives.com)
Anyone who knows where I can buy such a cap? Lads! <3
hestelest (root/stem: hest; translation: horse)
jeg skal ha hestelest igjen en gang i fremtiden (equiforum.no)
I will get myself a horse again sometime in the future
hestelest har fått en ny turvenn (christineurud.wordpress.com)
Horse has gotten a new hiking friend
hei
$\ldots$
.fiiin hestelest du hadde da (vip.hestemarked.no)
Hi
$\ldots$
. what a nice horse you have
hestelesten (root/stem: hest; translation: the horse)
spent på hva hestelesten synes om det (equiforum.no)
Excited to see what the horse thinks about it
hestelestene (root/stem: hest; translation: the horses)
Hjemme: hestelestene står i samme gjerde. (equiforum.no)
At home: the horses are in the same enclosure
hestelester (root/stem: hest; translation: horses)
Et større mysterium for meg er hvorfor tynnpelsa hestelester blir barbert. (equiforum.no)
A greater mystery to me is why horses with thin fur are shaved.
huffeluff (root/stem: huff; translation: oof, expression of minor horror or despair)
huffeluff han sliter max (freak.no)
oof he’s struggling hard
Huffeluff. — Mange av damene på skolen har fått veldig god hukommelse (torjusdolo.blogg.no)
Oof. Many of the women at my school have acquired a very good memory
nei huffeluff.. Krysser fingrene og sender gode tanker! (forum.babyverden.no)
no oof.. fingers crossed, sending happy thoughts
hundelunden (root/stem: hund; translation: the dog)
Denne vakre fine hundelunden skal bli mamma (instagram.com)
This beautiful nice dog is going to be a mummy
hyttelytten (root/stem: hytte; translation: the cabin)
vi hadde pakket to fulle biler og installert oss på hyttelytten. (livetleker.wordpress.com)
We had packed two full cars and settled into the cabin.
høneløne (root/stem: høne; translation: hen, colloquial/vulgar/noa form of female genitalia)
Det var opplæring i å knipe høneløne sammen. (forum.klikk.no)
There was training in how to clench your hen.
jobbelobb (root/stem: jobb; translation: work (noun))
nå er det bare å satse på jobbelobb (diskusjon.no)
now I can go full in on work
Nå er det jobbelobb på denne frøkenen!! (forum.klikk.no)
Now it’s time for work for this misses!
jobbelobbe (root/stem: jobb; translation: work (verb))
Jobbelobbe, og rydding og lekser på søndag (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Working and tidying up and homework on a Sunday
Jeg kunne seff ikke gå på konsert.. jobbelobbe osv. (norwegianpaws.org)
I could of course not attend concerts, work etc.
jobbelobben (root/stem: jobb; translation: the job)
Jeg må snart reise for skal på jobbelobben til litt over ett. (lisamarieborgman.blogg.no)
I have to go soon because I’m going to work until a little past one
jobbelobber (root/stem: jobb; translation: works/working)
Jobbelobber
$\ldots$
hva nå det er. (forum.klikk.no)
Working whatever that is.
joikeloik (root/stem: joik; translation: yoik)
Hva krever mest? Ildrev eller joikeloik? (freak.no)
What demands the most [of my computer]? [Mozilla] Firefox or yoik [Opera web browser]?
kaffelaffe (root/stem: kaffe; translation: coffee)
Jeg er et kaffelaffe monster (twitter.no)
I am a coffee monster
kaffelaffen (root/stem: kaffe; translation: the coffee)
Uendelige muligheter til å komme seg gjennom kaffelaffen her altså. (dinside.dagbladet.no)
Endless opportunities to get through your coffee here, really.
kattelatten (root/stem: katt; translation: the cat)
Den bortskjemte lille kattelatten (misemors-hobbyrom.blogspot.com)
That spoiled little cat
kattelattene (root/stem: katt; translation: the cats)
Kattelattene mine har sovet i h e l e dag (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
My cats have been sleeping the w h o l e day
kjempelempe (root/stem: kjempe; translation: very)
Jeg tror den er kjempelempe gammel. (vgd.no)
I think it is really old
klappelapp (root/stem: klapp; translation: clap)
dere fortjener et aldri så lite klappelapp (forum.babyverden.no)
You deserve an ever so little clap
klemmelem (root/stem: klem; translation: hug)
hva er trikset med å få de så tynne og at de ikke brekker når du bretter de? klemmelem (sprudlendesunn.no)
What’s the trick to get them so thin that they don’t crack when you fold them? hug
grattis med 31 uker[:D][:D] Klemmelem ? ? ? ? ? (forum.babyverden.no)
Congratulations on 31 weeks :D :D hug ? ? ? ? ?
Savner gullet mitt kjempemasse:) Klemmelem (vip.hundemarked.no)
I miss my gold a lot :) hug
klemmelemmer (root/stem: klem; translation: hugs)
Varmeste klemmelemmer i dag også.. Håper du har det så best som du kan (forum.klikk.no)
Warmest hugs today too.. I hope you have the best possible time
klikkelikk (root/stem: klikk; translation: clique)
stående invitasjon til å bli med i min sagnomsuste klikkelikk (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
[She has a] standing invitation to join my famous clique
klingeling (root/stem: kling; translation: clink (onomotapoetic))
Og når den sier klingeling, kommer Marianne fram (NoWaC: 21709472)
And when it says clink, Marianne appears
klingelingeling (root/stem: kling; translation: clink (double onomotapoeia))
Klingelingeling sa det over hodene på dem (NoWaC: 21709338)
clink it sounded from above their heads
klubbelubben (root/stem: klubb; translation: the club)
Arnfinn virrer rundt og danser i klubbelubben! (k-u-k.no)
Arnfinn is messing around and dancing in the club!
klumpelump (root/stem: klump; translation: lump [also: term of endearment])
Ååå for en liten klumpelump (hundesonen.no)
Ooh what a little lump
Min elskede klumpelump (instagram.com)
My beloved lump
Ingrid e mamma sin klumpelump, glad i deg (forum.babyverden.no)
Ingrid is mummy’s lump, love you
klumpelumpen (root/stem: klump; translation: the lump [also: term of endearment])
Lille klumpelumpen er fremdeles litt pjusk (junesdagbok.no)
The little lump is still a little ill
verdens søteste passbilde av klumpelumpen vår. (pilotfrue1.rssing.com)
the world’s cutest passport photo of our lump
Håpet om at den lille klumpelumpen fremdeles var i livet (maskros-barn.blogspot.com)
The hope that the little lump was still alive
knuffeluff (root/stem: knuff; translation: push, struggle, fight)
flott knuffeluff frå steinalderen dette.. (foto.no)
This [photo depicting animals fighting] is a great fight from the stone age
knuppelupp (root/stem: knupp; translation: excellent person)
du er en knuppelupp (NoWaC: 997591)
You are an excellent person
knuppeluppa (root/stem: knupp; translation: the female excellent person)
Og det hadde hun, knuppeluppa (forbipolene.blogg.no)
And that she had, excellent person.f
knuppeluppen (root/stem: knupp; translation: the male/female excellent person)
å være sikker på at en har rett, vet du, knuppeluppen. (matematikk.net)
[Nothing is better than] being sure you’re right, you know, excellent person
knuppeluppene (root/stem: knupp; translation: the excellent people)
levere fra seg knuppeluppene til mormor og morfar (tovestoogfirbeinte.blogspot.com)
to drop off the excellent people [author’s children] at grandma and grandpa’s
knuppelupper (root/stem: knupp; translation: excellent people)
Dere er noen knuppelupper alle mann! (forum.klanen.no)
You are such excellent people, all of you!
knurrelurr (root/stem: knurr; translation: Eutrigla gurnardus; grey gurnard)
1 liten torsk og ein knurrelurr (kystogfisk.blogspot.com)
1 small cod and one grey gurnad
konelone (root/stem: kone; translation: wife/woman)
da måtte selvfølgelig lille konelone blande seg inn (books.google.no)
Then, of course, [my] little wife had to get involved
kongelonge (root/stem: kong; translation: awesome [adjective derived from konge ‘king’])
Kongelonge hele gjengen der (vgd.no)
That whole gang is awesome
koselos (root/stem: kos; translation: hug)
er ikke noe gøy
$\ldots$
.Koselos fra meg (forum.babyverden.no)
That’s no fun
$\ldots$
hug from me
koseloseklump (root/stem 1: kos (see above); root/stem 2: klump (see above))
om en ser på fiskelisken sin som en koseloseklump (akvaforum.no)
If one considers one’s fish as a cuddle nugget
krabbelabben (root/stem: krabbe; translation: the crab)
krabbelabben her er litt av Siri sin fangst med håven (monicafoto.blogspot.com)
the crab here is part of Siri’s hand net catch
kroppelopp (root/stem: kropp; translation: body)
Jeg er jo en filosofusknott med tankefelt belte rundt min kroppelopp. (superjensern-diktsamling.blogspot.com)
I am, as you know, a philosopher with a belt of thoughts around my body
Hei og hopp, og beveg din kroppelopp. (aphotodogblog.wordpress.com)
Hi ho and move your body
kroppeloppen (root/stem: kropp; translation: the body)
Tror det er kroppeloppen som sier fra om at volumet må ned. (hifisentralen.no)
I think it is the body telling me that the volume has to go down.
Spysjuka høres ut som en skikkelig utfordring for sansene og kroppeloppen (livinger.no)
The vomiting sickness sounds like a real challenge for the feelings and for the body
da bruker jeg å aklimatisere kroppeloppen snart (pulverheks.blogspot.no)
Then I use to acclimatize the body
lakselaks (root/stem: laks; translation: salmon)
Laksen spiste herlig lakselaks i dag, laksenam laks laks. (diskusjon.no)
The salmon ate wonderful salmon today, salmon yummy salmon salmon
lallelall (root/stem: lall; translation: bedtime; nominalized from the verb lalle ‘go to bed’)
Nå er det uansett lallelall (NoWaC: 7448185)
It’s bedtime now anyway
magelagen (root/stem: mage; translation: the stomach)
Har vondt i magelagen (twitter.com)
My stomach hurts
mammalamma (root/stem: mamma; translation: mummy)
bor hjemme hos mammalamma enda (freak.no)
Still live at home with mummy
mannelannen (root/stem: mann; translation: the man)
HÅper du kaprer den mannelannen av en søt fyr. (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Hope you catch yourself that man of a sweet guy.
masselasse (root/stem: masse; translation: a lot of stuff [noun])
som kanskje har en liten masselasse å drasse (normog.blogspot.com)
that might have a little lot to carry
mjauelau (root/stem: mjau; translation: meow)
mjauelau (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
[What pet names do you have for your pet?] Meow
moppeloppen (root/stem: mopp; translation: (abbreviated form for) moped)
så nå står moppeloppen parkert til i morra (mopedportalen.com)
So now the moped is parked until tomorrow
museluser (root/stem: mus; translation: nonstandard inflection of mice
$\sim$
mouses)
Inspirasjonen til to museluser ble hentet fra en historie (facebook.com)
The inspiration for two mices was taken from a fairytale
naiselais (root/stem: nais; translation: nice [loanword from English])
Å ha kvælertak på hjærn nedpå nordkappbanken e fette naiselais (gramhir.com)
To have Kvelertak [musical band] stuck in your head on the North Cape bank is very nice
pakkelakk (root/stem: pakk; translation: bad people)
svensker og masse pakkelakk får komme hit til oss (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Swedes and a lot of bad people get to come here to us
pilselils (root/stem: pils; translation: pilsner)
Da ble det endelig en pilselils på meg også gitt. Klirr. (detailersclub.no)
It seems it finally came to me too getting a pint. Clink.
pippelipp (root/stem: pipp; translation: peep (sound made by baby bird))
Dakal liten pippelipp (NoWaC: 7448318)
Poor little peep.
Sony har skutt en liten pippelipp med forgyllete fjær. (diskusjon.no)
Sony has shot a little peep with golden feathers
pjuskelusk (root/stem: pjusk; translation: messy hair, term of endearment)
Så herlig lille Trolleri ser ut til å være, en riktig pjuskelusk (ullhedina.blogspot.com)
How lovely little Trolleri [cat] seems to be, a real messy hair.
Heisann pjuskelusk;) (bergen.mislykket.no)
Hey messy hair ;)
om du lurer på hva din pjuskelusk holder på med om dagen når du ikke er hjemme (alphageek.no)
If you’re wondering what your messy hair is doing when you’re not at home
pjuskelusken (root/stem: pjusk; translation: the messy hair, term of endearment)
Hvilket sekund som helst kan den vesle pjuskelusken miste taket og bli most til grøt (abcnyheter.com)
Any second now, little messy hair might lose their grip and be mashed to porridge Stakkars lille pjuskelusken min (akvaforum.com)
My poor little messy hair
$[dog]$
pjuskeluskene (root/stem: pjusk; translation: the messy hairs, term of endearment)
den store stygge nabokatta skal ta pjuskeluskene mine (katteprat.net)
[I am afraid that] the big ugly cat next door will kill my messy hairs Pjuskeluskene ble i hvert fall satt ned adskilt i små jordhauger (vedutten.wordpress.com)
The messy hairs [plants] were planted separately in small piles of dirt, anyway vær hjemme lørdagskveld da pjuskeluskene mine (twitter.com)
Be home by Saturday evening, my messy hairs
pjuskelusker (root/stem: pjusk; translation: messy hairs, term of endearment)
Bikkjene så ut som blaute pjuskelusker (cafrida.blogspot.com)
My dogs looked like wet messy-hairs OGS har overtatt et lag med sutrete, overbetalte pjuskelusker (twitter.com)
Ole Gunnar Solskjær has taken over a team of whiny, overpaid messy-hairs Åh herlighet for noen søte nusslige pjuskelusker! (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Oh deary me those are some sweet adorable messy-hairs
plantelanter (root/stem: plante; translation: plants)
mulig å dyrke plantelanter hele året. (kak-svoimi-rukami.com/no/)
[under such conditions it is] possible to grow plants all year kan klare plantelanter bli plantet (no.punchalo.com)
may prepared plants be planted
plingeling (root/stem: pling; translation: ding (onomatopoetic))
hvert plingeling eller digitalt hurra gir deg godfølelse (midtnorskdebatt.no)
Every ding or digital hurrah gives you a good feeling
plingelingeling (root/stem: pling; translation: ding (double onomatopoeia))
Julenissens bjeller sa plingeling. Plingelingeling (NoWaC: 34837235)
Santas bells said ding ding
poselose (root/stem: pos; translation: bag)
Pakkes det i vanntett poselose må du være svært forsiktig mtp. kondens (diskusjon.no)
If it is packed in a waterproof bag you have to be very careful with regards to condensation
poteloten (root/stem: pote; translation: the paw)
slik at jeg slipper å spise opp hele poteloten min! (facebook.com)
so that I won’t have to eat my whole paw!
prikkelikk (root/stem: pos; translation: dot) stemmer på en prikkelikk! (kvinneguiden.no)
That’s correct to the dot [entirely correct]
purkelurk (root/stem: purk; translation: sow, derogatory form of police officer)
Han samarbeider med en purkelurk (videowold.wordpress.com)
He is cooperating with a cop
puppelupp (root/stem: pupp; translation: breast)
Når budeia drar i kuas puppelupp fylles bøtta sakte opp (plopp.no)
When the milkmaid pulls on the cow’s breast the bucket slowly fills smerter i 1 puppelupp og biiitte litt i den andre (forum.klikk.no)
Pains in 1 breast and a tiny bit in the other Vil bare se puppelupp du! (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
You just want to see a breast!
puppeluppen (root/stem: pupp; translation: the breast)
han fikk den ene puppeluppen (jegoglillefamilie.blogspot.com)
He got the one breast
Ikke no melk i puppeluppen din jo. (forum.klikk.no)
There is, surprisingly, no milk in your breast. si at du har sølt litt på puppeluppen din (tcmn.blogg.no)
Say that you have spilled some on your breast.
puppeluppene (root/stem: pupp; translation: the breasts)
puppeluppene trenger all den støtte de kan få her i huset (forum.klikk.no)
The breasts in this house need all the support they can get håper puppeluppene blir mindre (forum.babyverden.no)
Hope my breasts become smaller Kaldt på puppeluppene mine! (tarasinside.wordpress.com)
My breasts are cold!
puppelupper (root/stem: pupp; translation: breasts)
så fine puppelupper det var her da (forum.klikk.no)
What nice breasts we have here Går fortsatt med ømme puppelupper (forum.onskebarn.no)
I still walk around with sore breasts der var vi fanga på ei øy, blandt snabler og puppelupper (livebands-buchen.ch)
We were there, trapped on an island, among willies and breasts
puselus (root/stem: pus; translation: pussycat/term of endearment))
Da har min kjære lille puselus blitt avlivd. (hunden.no)
So, my dear little pussycat has been euthanized Verdens vakreste puselus
$\ldots$
fyller 7 år i dag (vg.no)
The world’s most beautiful pussycat turns 7 today Gleder meg til daten vår, puselus ¡3 (biancc.wordpress.com)
I look forward to our date, pussycat ¡3
puseluse (root/stem: puse; translation: term of endearment/intensifier)
kunne du være så puseluse snill og gi en liten julegave(tegnebrett) til
$[\ldots ]$
(tegnehanne.no)
Could you be so pussycat nice and give a little christmas gift (drawing board) to
$[\ldots ]$
pysjelysj (root/stem: pysj; translation: pyjamas)
lørdagsmorgen pakket vi i pysjelysj og kjørte avgårde (thesspaoytun.blogspot.com)
Saturday morning we packed in our pyjamas and drove away
påskelåske (root/stem: påske; translation: easter)
God påskelåske til alles snille engel (chat.no)
Happy easter to everyone’s nice angel
påskelåsken (root/stem: påske; translation: the easter)
Sakki paliakki faen for et stress med det helverres ølsalget i påskelåsken? ? ? (facebook.com)
Holy moly fuck what a stress the fucking beer sale is during the [week of] easter? ? ?
rottelotta (root/stem: rotte; translation: the rat)
finne uteklærne og rottelotta (forum.onskebarn.no)
find my outdoors clothing and the rat [pet name for dog]
ruskelusk (root/stem: rusk; translation: mess)
fullstendig fri for vorter,alskens kjønnsykdommer og ruskelusk. (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
[my dog is] completely free of warts, all kinds of STDs and mess
sauelau (root/stem: sau; translation: sheep)
Dette er Sauelau. Han ligger i sengen til min sønn på 10 år. (facebook.com)
This is sheep. He is lying in my 10 year old son’s bed.
sauelauen (root/stem: sau; translation: the sheep)
og så må sauelauen som han heter få seg en kone (facebook.com)
And then the sheep, as he is known, has get a new wife
sengelenga (root/stem: seng; translation: the bed)
vil hjem til sengelenga (twitter.com)
[I] want [to go] home to my bed
sjefstuttelutt (root/stem: tutt; translation: term of endearment; compounded with sjef ‘boss’)
mvh Andreas, som er sjefstuttelutt (NoWaC: 5284527)
With kind regards, Andreas, who is the boss poppet
sjiraffelaffen (root/stem: sjiraff; translation: giraffe)
Sjiraffelaffen i Sør-Afrika (vg.no)
The giraffe in South Africa
skattelatt (root/stem: skatt; translation: treasure; term of endearment)
Vi elska dæ herifra t evigheten skattelatt (folk.blv.no)
We love you from here to eternity treasure det kan komme til nytte hos en annen liten skattelatt (uniktliv.blogspot.com)
It might be useful for another little treasure Til slutt vil jeg dedikere oppgaven til min lille skattelatt (duo.uio.no)
Finally I dedicate the thesis to my little treasure
skattelatten (root/stem: skatt; translation: the treasure; term of endearment)
Gratulerer så mye med dagen skattelatten vår!! (instagram.com)
Happy birthday our treasure!!
skattelattene (root/stem: skatt; translation: the treasures; term of endearment)
Heisann skattelattene til mamma. (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Hey there mummy’s treasures
skrottelott (root/stem: skrott; translation: the carcass; term of endearment)
Slektas sjarmør og nydelige skrottelott. (facebook.com)
The charmer of the family and a beautiful carcass
skrubbelubb (root/stem: skrubb; translation: scrub)
ta litt i vasken og skrubbelubb med oppvaskkosten (one-fiftyfour.blogspot.com)
Put some in your sink and scrub with the dish brush
skrubbelubb (root/stem: skrubbe; translation: Platichthys flesus; European flounder)
grattis med fin skrubbelubb (fiskersiden.no)
Congratulations on your nice European flounder
skuddeludd (root/stem: skudd; translation: shot)
Stjerneskudd er også kjent som Skuddis, Stjernis, Skuddeludd (NoWaC: 29562341)
Shooting star [lit. Star-shot; name of horse] is also know as Shottie, Starlet, Shot
skummelummel (root/stem: skummel; translation: scary)
En skummelummel rumlebrumle? (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
A scary rumble bear?
slappelappe (root/stem: slapp; translation: lazy)
Nei det blei en slappelappe syndag dette! (facebook.com)
No, it’s a lazy Sunday, this!
slaskelask (root/stem: slask; translation: sleazebag)
Du er min slaskelask (instagram.com)
You’re my sleazebag
smattelatt (root/stem: smatt; translation: smack [onomatopoeia])
mmmm nammenammenam :) smattelatt :) (kzsection.info)
yummy yumyumyum :) smack :)
smokkelokk (root/stem: smokk; translation: pacifier)
Koordinerer perfekt med mange bleievesker og smokkelokk! (no.beaufystorage.com)
[The product] Fits perfectly with a lot of nappies and pacifier!
smukkelukk (root/stem: smukk; translation: pretty)
en festdrakt til jentungen som jeg tenker hun blir smukkelukk i. (klikk.com)
a formal outfit for my daughter which I think she will look pretty in
småttelåtten (root/stem: smått-en; translation: small.nom)
Småttelåtten :) Tøffeste og søteste hunden som finnes! Elsk ¡3 (vg.no)
Small one :) Coolest and sweetest dog there is! Love ¡3
snippelipp (root/stem: snipp; translation: snip; onomatopeia for the sound made by scissors)
men.. *snippelipp* ..skal teste på (diskusjon.no)
[author quotes a user and uses asterisks to indicate cut content] but
$\ldots$
*snip* will test now
snufselufs (root/stem: snufs; translation: sniff)
får ei bittelita tåre i øyekroken (snufselufs) (vacn.no)
I am getting a tiny little tear in the corner of my eye. Sniff han er super farlig,, jøjjyee meg snufselufs (m.facebook.com)
He is super dangerous. Woah. Sniff
snufselufsete (root/stem: snufsete; translation: sniffly)
vår snufselufsete gutt (facebook.com)
Our sniffly boy
snurtelurt (root/stem: snurt; translation: offended)
Ikke være så snurtelurt da (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Don’t be so offended
snurtelurten (root/stem: snurt or snurten; translation: offended)
Jeg er ikke snurtelurten (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
I am not offended
snuskelusk (root/stem: snusk; translation: term of endearment)
En liten baby-snuskelusk (NoWaC: 2832954)
A little baby poppet
snuttelutt (root/stem: snutt; translation: small piece of something)
dagens filosofiske snuttelutt en søndags morgen (webforumet.no)
The philosophical small text of the day a Sunday morning Må skrive en snuttelutt snart da sjø (NoWaC: 8394341)
You know, I have to write a small text soon
sommelommer (root/stem: sommer; translation: summer)
ein komplett sommelommer! (nb-no.facebook.com)
a complete/fulfilling summer!
soppelopp (root/stem: sopp; translation: mushroom, also used as a term of endearment)
støpte bivokslys og en liten soppelopp støpt i bronse (lekent2.rssing.com)
Moulded candles of bee wax and a little mushroom cast in bronze
soppeloppen (root/stem: sopp; translation: the mushroom, also as a term of endearment)
Soppeloppen må stille med bilder (hundesonen.no)
The mushroom has to be present with pictures håper den soppeloppen forsvinner fort nå! (babyverden.no)
I hope the mushroom [fungal infection] goes away quickly!
soppelopper (root/stem: sopp; translation: mushrooms, also used as a term of endearment)
andre buskvekster eller soppelopper som var årsaken (vgd.no)
Other growths or mushrooms which were the cause
sovelove (root/stem: sov; translation: sleep)
Er du trøtt, lille vennen? Skal du og mamma sovelove litt (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Are you tired, little friend? Should you and mummy sleep a little?
sokkelokk (root/stem: sokk; translation: sock)
Fotelot (for anledningen uten sokkelokk) (enslagsmammablogg.no)
Foot (on this occasion with no sock)
sokkelokken (root/stem: sokk; translation: the sock)
Nå skal vi bare sette sokkelokken på foteloten (instagram.com)
Now let’s just put the sock on the foot
spurvelurv (root/stem: spurv; translation: sparrow)
Jeg er en liten spurvelurv som heter Pippip-Ola (garmann.info)
I’m a little sparrow named Birdie-Ola
stumpelump (root/stem: stump; translation: bum)
det er vanskelig å avgjøre hva som er rygg,stumpelump og hode (forum.klikk.no)
It is hard to decide what is the back, the bum and the head dessverre ikke så vennlig for rumpestumpen (martinehalvs.blogg.no)
[The night train is]not so easy on the bum Den lekreste der i gården er uten tvil DB9 sin stumpelump (vgd.no)
[Referring to a car] The snazziest around those parts is without doubt the bum of DB9 Du har så fin stumpelump vett du. (carolinebergeriksen.no)
You know, you have such a nice bum.
stumpelumpen (root/stem: stump; translation: the bum)
Kjeder som vanlig stumpelumpen av meg (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
As usual, I am bored out of my bum firebarns-mor som trenger å vaske stumpelumpen til et småtroll (diskusjon.no)
mother of four who needs to wash the bum of a tiny goblin jeg tror hun sikter til stumpelumpen (filterfilmogtv.no)
I think she is referring to the bum
stumpelumper (root/stem: stump; translation: bums)
som er helt super mot såre stumpelumper (forum.klikk.no)
[It is a lotion] which is great against sore bums om du ønsker rene stumpelumper. (forum.doktoronline.no)
if you want clean bums
sukkelukk (root/stem: sukk; translation: sigh)
Men vil jo at vi begge skal ville også.. sukkelukk (forum.klikk.no)
But I want us both to want to.. sigh jeg lengter etter sommeren jeg nå *sukkelukk* (hundesonen.no)
I long for the summer *sigh* Prøver igjen i morgen da..sukkelukk! (forum.greteroede.no)
I will try again tomorrow.. sigh!
svinelin (root/stem: svin; translation: pork)
Grillet svinelin servert med grønnsaker (no.depositphotos.com)
Grilled pork served with vegetables
susseluss (root/stem: suss; translation: peck [kiss])
susseluss fra Trine (vip.hestemarked.no)
peck from Trine
susselussen (root/stem: suss; translation: the peck [kiss. also: term of endearment])
litt deilig med fred og ro med den lille susselussen vår (forum.babyverden.no)
Some nice peace and quiet with our little peck
susselussene (root/stem: suss; translation: the peck [kiss. also: pretty girl?])
susselussene på værmeldingen (iselinguttormsen.blogg.no)
the pecks on the weather report
tafselafs (root/stem: tafs; translation: groping)
[Er det noen forskjell på klining og roting egentlig?] Tafselafs (diskusjon.no)
[Is there really a difference between making out and fooling around?] Groping
tafselafse (root/stem: tafse; translation: grope)
det er bedre ting å gjøre enn å kozemosze og tafselafse (forum.babyverden.no)
There are better things to do that to cuddle and grope
takkelakk (root/stem: takk; translation: thanks)
Søkte der men brukte åpenbart feil søkeparameter. Takkelakk! (foreldreportalen.no)
I did search there but obviously I used the wrong search parameter. Thanks!
takkelakken (root/stem: takk; translation: the thanks)
Tuusen takkelakken!
$\ldots$
og kanskje dere kan si meg noe om dette (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
The thanks very much! And maybe you could tell me something about this
tasselass (root/stem: tass; translation: little guy)
Men han føler seg som en sprek liten tasselass (ranablad.no)
But he feels like a fit young little.guy Nydelig liten tasselass (tamrotter.no)
Adorable little little.guy [squirrel] Det er ok å tru på julenissen når ein er liten tasselass. (knutroneid.blogspot.com)
It is okay to believe in Santa Claus when you are a small little.guy
tasselassen (root/stem: tass; translation: the little guy)
når tasselassen blir større (jegerbarejenny.bloggspot.com)
When the little guy gets bigger Ikkje drækk kaffe uten klæa. Det gjør ondt på tasselassen og pingpongan! (vgd.no)
Don’t drink coffee without clothes. It is painful for the little guy and the ping pongs Og til tider holder tasselassen et enormt turneshow inni der. (babyverden.no)
And sometimes the little guy performs an acrobatics show in there [the stomach].
teppeleppe (root/stem: teppe; translation: rug/rugs)
Reine golv. Reine teppeleppe. Lukta av grønsåpe. (jeanettesverden.blogspot.com)
Clean floors. Clean rugs. The smell of pine needle soap
tjukkelukka (root/stem: tjukk-a; translation: fat-nom.f [idiomatic: pregnant])
hadde vi vært menn, så hadde vi ikke vært schemlt på tjukkelukka. (forum.babyverden.no)
if we had been men, we had not been given a bun in the oven
torskelorsken (root/stem: torsk; translation: the cod)
Jamen, torskelorsken! (foreldreportalen.no)
But the cod! [Referring to a previous forum user by the name torsk ‘cod’]
tottelott (root/stem: tott; translation: thumb, finger)
Jeg har en slem tottelott na !!! Har fatt en SINNA infeksjon (NoWaC: 18301856)
I have a mean finger! I have an ANGRY infection.
trikseliks (root/stem: triks; translation: trick [sg/pl])
beskytte seg selv ifra å bli lurt av djevelen, ved å kjenne til hans trikseliks (feeldia.com)
protect oneself from getting fooled by the devil by knowing his tricks
trikkelikk (root/stem: trikk; translation: tram)
Kjøre trikk til Tøyen, kjøre trikk til Bergen, trikkelikk! (torggatablad.no)
Go by tram to Tøyen, go by tram to Bergen, tram!
trillelill (root/stem: trill; translation: a walk pushing something with wheels, often a baby stroller)
Kos deg med trillelill (forum.klikk.no)
Enjoy your walk with the baby stroller
trimmelim (root/stem: trim; translation: exercise (noun))
Mao så ligger det vel godt tilrette for litt trimmelimm, eller? (vgd.no)
In other words the conditions are right for some exercise, or what? begge hestene fri fra trimmelimm (123hjemmeside.no)
Both of the horses [got] time off from exercising
trimmelimme (root/stem: trim; translation: exercise (verb))
Og i mellomtiden må jeg trimmelimme (blogspot.com)
In the meantime I have to exercise
trimmelimmer (root/stem: trim; translation: exercises; also: tuning up the engine of a car (verb))
trimmelimmer scootern til matsemann. (twitter.com)
Tuning up the engine of Mats’s scooter
trimmelimmet (root/stem: trim; translation: exercised; also: tuned up the engine of a car (verb))
dersom du har trimmelimmet litt. (subarudriver.com)
If you have tuned up [the engine] a little
troppelopp (root/stem: tropp; translation: troop)
19 forventningsfulle speidere og konfirmanter som troppelopp pa Oslo S (docplayer.me)
19 expectant scouts and confirmands as a troop at Oslo S
truseluse (root/stem: trus; translation: panties)
jeg har jo strikket min første truseluse! (stineskoli.blogg.no)
I have, as you know, knitted my first panties!
truselusene (root/stem: trus; translation: the panties)
småjenter i truselusene (diskusjon.no)
little girls in their panties De færreste av oss mister automatisk truselusene etter to øl (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Few people automatically lose their panties after two beers
trøtteløtt (root/stem: trøtt; translation: tired [sg])
Eiliv var skikkelig trøtteløtt da vi fikk surra oss av gårde (forum.babyverden.no)
Eiliv was really tired when buzzed off
tufselufs (root/stem: tufs; translation: fool, also used endearingly)
tufselufs!! alle vet jo at (mopedportalen.blogspot.com)
Fool!! Everyone knows that
$[\ldots ]$
tufselufsen (root/stem: tufs; translation: the fool, also used endearingly)
mens den vesle tufselufsen ennå ligger i voggen (abcnyheter.no)
while the little fool is still laying in their cradle
tullelull (root/stem: tull; translation: joke)
samler på dårlig karma, og det er ikke en tullelull engang (ukreativt.blogspot.com)
[I am an involuntary] collector of bad karma, and that’s not even a joke
tuppelupp (root/stem: tuppe; translation: young girl/term of endearment)
morten kom å skodde tuppelupp (NoWaC: 20697581)
Morten came and shoed young girl [horse]
tuppeluppa (root/stem: tuppe; translation: definite form of tupp)
Storkoser meg hver dag med lille tuppeluppa mi! (instagram.com)
I am having a great with my little young girl Skal ha en brudepikekjole til tuppeluppa:) (klikk.no)
I am getting a bridesmaid dress for the young girl
tuppeluppe (root/stem: tuppe; translation: young girl/term of endearment)
Din tuppeluppe er fin, men mine er finere (vgd.no)
Your young girl is nice, but mine is nicer så skal tuppeluppe få pureed apple i morgen (klikk.no)
then my girl will get apple puré tomorrow
tutelut (root/stem: tut; translation: beep [onomatopoeia])
Nå mangler jeg bare borrelåssko som lager tutelut og lyser opp (kondis.no)
Now the only thing I need is velcro shoes that go beep and have lights
turelur (root/stem: tur; translation: trip)
Va ein liden turelur på sygehusnå for å besøga fammor (facebook.no)
I went on a little trip to the hospital to visit gramma
tuttelutt (root/stem: tutt; translation: term of endearment)
en 11mnd gammel tuttelutt som begynner å bli klar for bikinisesongen (hundesonen.no)
An 11 month old poppet [dog] who is starting to get ready for bikini season Håper tuttelutt snart henter bordet (bloggi.no)
I hope poppet will pick up the table soon
tøffeløff (root/stem: tøff; translation: tough/cool [sg])
Syns den var tøffeløff. Blir feit med litt farger (freak.no)
Thought it was cool. Would be awesome with some colour.
tøffeløffe (root/stem: tøff; translation: tough/cool [pl])
de var to tøffeløffe mannemenn på oppdrag i Kongo (socialgrep.com)
They were two tough man’s men on a ‘mission’ in Congo
tøseløs (root/stem: tøs; translation: slut)
Hihi . Ok dah, din tøseløs (NoWaC: 14604900)
Tee hee. Ok then, you slut
tøseløsa (root/stem: tøs; translation: the slut)
Tøseløsa mi (facebook.com)
My slut
tøseløser (root/stem: tøs; translation: sluts)
mine tøseløser kommer altid til tiden (tiktok.com)
My sluts always arrive on time
uffeluff (root/stem: uff; translation: oof)
Uffeluff, nå må du komme deg på sykehuset snart azz
$\ldots$
(forum.klikk.no)
Oof, you have to, like, get yourself to the hospital soon Uffeluff :( Gjett hvem vi måtte hente i barnehagen igår da..?! (fregne.wordpress.com)
Oof :( guess who we had to pick up in the kindergarten yesterday..?! nå er jeg hekta! uffeluff!! (linntherese87.wordpress.com)
I’m hooked! Oof!!
vintelinter (root/stem: vinter; translation: winter) Det er vintelinter ute (forum.klikk.no)
It is winter outside
vofselofs (root/stem: vofs; translation: woof [term of endearment for dogs])
med en diger vofselofs på hver side av meg (forum.klikk.no)
with a huge woof on each side of me en vofselofs i en jålebag tronende på sparkstøttingsetet!? (themisspinky.blogspot.com)
a woof in a designer bag thrones on the seat of the kicksled Fordi det var en vofselofs på bussen ista! (twitter.com)
Becuase there was a woof on the bus back then
vofselofsen (root/stem: vofs; translation: the woof [term of endearment for dogs])
vofselofsen er klengete (ohush.wordpress.com)
The woof is clingy da legger vi ut et bilde av vofselofsen (instagram.com)
So we’re posing a picture of the woof skjemmer bort vofselofsen min med så mye leker (themisspinky.blogspot.com)
I spoil the woof with so many toys
vofselofsene (root/stem: vofs; translation: the woofs [term of endearment for dogs])
Vofselofsene dine er herlige! (hunden.no)
Your woofs are lovely! Jeg utsatte verkstedbesøk til i morgen og dro hjem til vofselofsene mine jeg (hundesonen.no)
I postponed going to the workshop until tomorrow and went home to my woofs
vofselofser (root/stem: vofs; translation: woofs [term of endearment for dogs])
det dukker opp andre vofselofser og pusesnusker i alle kriker og kroker (facebook.com)
other woofs and cuddle snugglers appear in every nook and cranny Mine vofselofser poserer. (ellenifridressur.wordpress.com)
[Title of a picture] My woofs posing De er verdens sødeste vofselofser. (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
They are the cutest woofs in the world
vovvelovven (root/stem: vovv; translation: the woof [term of endearment for dogs])
Denne vovvelovven er litt min
$\ldots$
hehe
$\ldots$
(forum.babyverden.no)
This woof is kind of mine Vovveloven på ettermiddagstur i snø, hagl, regn, sol og torden. (enslagsmammablogg.no)
[Me and] the woof on an afternoon hike in snow, hail, rain, sun and thunder
vovvelovver (root/stem: vovv; translation: woofs [term of endearment for dogs])
i og med at jeg ikke vet hvem som vant av hennes vovvelovver (hundesonen.no)
Considering I don’t know which of her woofs won Man blir ikke lei søte små vovvelovver og pusekatter (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
You don’t get tired of cute little woofs and pussycats
våtelåt (root/stem: våt; translation: wet) du blir våtelåt på fotetassebissene dine (forum.klikk.no)
your feetie feeties get wet
æsjelæsj (root/stem: æsj; translation: ew)
når lillesjarmtrollet skal ut å lage bommelom og æsjelæsj.. (klikk.no)
[I smile at the thought of] my little charm troll going to make poo-poo and ew..
ørelørene (root/stem: øre; translation: the ears)
Mye verre at TS fjikk bittelitt au-au i bittesmå ørelørene sijine da (forum.kvinneguiden.no)
Much worse that TS got a little bit of ouchie in their tiny ears
Appendix B. Numerical data for table 1 and elicitation sentences
different reduplicative applied to 7 base forms. The numerical value indicates how many percent of respondees reported a diminutive interpretation
Appendix C. Sentences used for eliciting diminutive readings across reduplicative strategies
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