Shm-reduplication

Shm-reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with shm- (sometimes schm-), pronounced /ʃm/. The construction is generally used to indicate irony, sarcasm, derision, skepticism, or lack of interest with respect to comments about the discussed object:

He's just a baby!
"Baby-shmaby".[1] He's already 5 years old!

The speaker is being skeptical. They do not think their kid is a baby or babyish.

What a sale!
"Sale, schmale".[2] I'm waiting for a larger discount.

The speaker is showing lack of interest. They do not care about the sale.

The original word can be a noun, but also an adjective:

"Whenever we go to a fancy-schmancy restaurant, we feel like James Bond."

In this case, it is being used to intensify the meaning of "fancy", implying that it's really fancy. [3] In general, the new combination is used as an interjection. In the case of adjectives, the reduplicated combination can belong to the same syntactical category as the original.

Phonological properties

  • Words beginning with a single consonant typically replace that consonant with shm- (table shmable).
  • Words beginning with a consonant cluster are more variable: some speakers replace only the first consonant if possible (breakfast shmreakfast), others replace the entire cluster (breakfast shmeakfast).
  • Vowel-initial words prepend the shm- directly to the beginning of the reduplicant (apple shmapple). Although this is conventionally accepted by English speakers as an addition of a new element to a whole word, from a strictly phonetic point of view this, too, is a replacement of the initial glottal stop by the shm- morpheme.
  • Some speakers target the stressed syllable rather than the first syllable (incredible inshmedible); a subset of these do not copy base material preceding the stressed syllable (incredible shmedible; cf. Spitzer 1952).
  • When speaking two words, usually only the second word is shm-reduplicated (Led Zeppelin Led Shmeppelin).
  • Shm-reduplication is generally avoided or altered with words that already begin with shm-; for instance, schmuck does not yield the expected *schmuck schmuck, but rather total avoidance or mutation of the shm- (giving forms like schmuck shluck, schmuck fluck, and so on).
  • Many speakers use sm- instead of shm- with words that contain a sh (Ashmont Smashmont, not shmashmont).

Bert Vaux and Andrew Nevins' online survey of shm-reduplication revealed further phonological details.[4]

Origins and sociolinguistic distribution

The construction originated in Yiddish and was subsequently transferred to English, especially urban northeastern American English, by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrations from Central and Eastern Europe. It is now known and used by many non-Jewish English speakers, particularly American English. The construction was also adopted in Modern Hebrew usage as a prefix resulting in a derogatory echoic expressive. For example, March 29, 1955 David Ben-Gurion dismissed a United Nations resolution as "Um-Shmum", (U.M. being its Hebrew acronym, pronounced oom-schmoom).

Zuckerman wrote: "When an Israeli speaker would like to express his impatience with or disdain for philosophy, s/he can say filosófya-shmilosófya".[5] In German Yiddish the same construction is possible, too, for example: Visum-Schmisum (i.e.: visa permits that have been somehow obtained, possibly below the level of legality). Zuckermann (2009) mentions in this context the Turkic initial m-segment conveying a sense of "and so on" as in the Turkish sentence dergi mergi okumuyor, literally "magazine 'shmagazine' read:NEGATIVE:PRESENT:3rd person singular", i.e. "(He) doesn’t read magazines, journals or anything like that".[5]

A similar phenomenon is present in most of the languages of the Balkan sprachbund, especially in colloquial Bulgarian where not only "sh(m)-" and "m-", but also other consonants and consonant clusters are used in this way, and its usage has its particularities that differ from what the English 'shm' indicates.[6]

As a counterexample in linguistics

Shm-reduplication has been advanced as an example of a natural-language phenomenon that cannot be captured by a context-free grammar.[7] The essential argument was that the reduplication can be repeated indefinitely, producing a sequence of phrases of geometrically increasing length, which cannot occur in a context-free language.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Holly R (December 1, 1986). "The Baby". Jews for Jesus. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
  2. ↑ Christina Rexrode and Sarah Skidmore (December 7, 2011). "Shoppers say 'ho-hum' not 'ho-ho-ho' to sales". The Boston Globe. AP. Retrieved January 28, 2012.
  3. ↑ Penn Jillette and Teller (1992). Penn & Teller's how to play with your food. Villard Books. p. 35. ISBN 0-679-74311-1.
  4. ↑ Nevins, Andrew; Vaux, Bert (2003), "Metalinguistic, shmetalinguistic: the phonology of shm-reduplication", Proceedings of CLS 39, retrieved 2016-12-06
  5. 1 2 Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2009), Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. In Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2: 40–67, p. 49, where he also refers to Haig (2001) and Lewis (1967).
  6. ↑ P. Asenova. Main problems of the Balkan sprachbund. Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. 2002. (Bulgarian: Асенова, П., Балканско езикознание. Основни проблеми на балканския езиков съюз. Велико Търново. 2002 г.)
  7. 1 2 Manaster-Ramer, Alexis (1983). "The soft formal underbelly of theoretical syntax". Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society. 19: 256–262.
  • Feinsilver, Lillian Mermin. "On Yiddish Shm-". American Speech 36 (1961): 302–3.
  • Nevins, Andrew and Bert Vaux. "Metalinguistic, Shmetalinguistic: The phonology of shm-reduplication". Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society annual meeting, April 2003.
  • Southern, Mark. Contagious Couplings: Transmission of Expressives in Yiddish Echo Phrases. Westport: Greenwood, 2005.
  • Spitzer, Leo. "Confusion Shmooshun". Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51 (1952): 226–33.
  • Shm-reduplication in Russian language (in Russian)
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