• Central-Philippine language • focus-system •VSO •dominantly prefixing •"inflecting-agglutinating language" • very flexible word classes • only content words (subgroups nouns and verbs) vs. function words
• Besides abundant lexical reduplication, Bikol has a very productive reduplication system, with many functions. The semantics can be generalized to plural, intensive, and diminutive. Much form–function- overlapping. (Details cf. Mattes 2007) • Curu- is a prosodically conditioned variant of full diminutive reduplication for simplexes with more than two syllables.
Diachrony
The origin of the partial reduplication types is not clear, but there are good reasons to assume fully or partially specified affixes as origin, e.g. *Ca > CV, and *-ar- > -Vr-.
Productivity
The lexical reduplications of Bikol are semantically structured and mainly refer to plurality in the narrow and the broader sense (cf. Mattes 2007).
Repetitive Operations
Rarely, a repetition of a phrases is produced. E.g. Ma-init ini! Ma-init ini! "That's hot! That's hot!".
Recursive Operations
Very productive: Recursive suffixation of intesifying -on, e.g. magayon-on-on-on "very, very, very beautiful".
Stylistic Information
Full/Curu- reduplication for diminution is often used for politeness, e.g. to soften a request or a critique, etc.
Terminology