FROM EMPHASIS TO MOCKERY: THE MULTIFUNCTIONAL ROLE OF REDUPLICATION IN SINDHI

Abstract

The present study investigates reduplication in Sindhi language in morpho-semantic perspective, specifically full, partial and nonsense forms. Employing a qualitative-descriptive method informed by Morphological Doubling Theory (MDT), we collected data by direct sampling of spontaneous speech in natural contexts including homes, markets, and social gatherings. This study records and classifies reduplicated expressions and investigates both their structural types and semantic functions. The findings reveal that full reduplication is mostly used to strengthen meaning or express the speaker's emotions, especially when they feel frustrated, insistent, or sarcastic. Though partial reduplication is an aspect of grammar, the meanings it conveys are finely grained, such as urgency, ambiguity, social relationships, and politeness, all of which are culturally shaped and pragmatic intention. Meaning is provided by the conferring of sound symbolism, social context, and so forth, and nonsensical reduplication is therefore primarily an expressive and social phenomenon ridicule, dismissal, emphasis, imagery, and so on, lacking formal meaning, signing the lack of a need for formal meaning. Overall, the study illustrates that reduplication in Sindhi is not only a formal linguistic process; rather, it is a dynamic communicative strategy that is deeply entrenched in cultural expression and social interaction. Such findings help in the larger narrative of reduplication in South Asian languages as a morpheme that is both semantically connected to the word it modifies but is also multifunctional.