Is there an official name for this type of variant?

[B Kh]

In Sinhala there is a pattern where you can sometimes lengthen a vowel to intensify the word. This is not very different from spoken English (e.g "Thank you sooo much!"), but it's an actual feature in the written language that is kind of standardized (whereas in English we can do it wherever we like). 

Is there something like "intensified variant"? I don't think these cases warrant being separate entries since they have the same meaning, just stronger.

There is another way to intensify things by adding "ma" to the end of the word. So you have for example "boho" which means many or very. And you can have "bohoma" which is stronger and "bohooma" which is even stronger than that. 

Has anyone else dealt with this before? And is there an official name for this?

I hope it's ok to ask questions like that here. If not, don't hesitate to let me know. Or let me know if there is a different forum to ask in.

[Andy Black]

Are these two ways to intensify a word productive?  That is, can you do it with, say, certain categories of words or even all words?  If so, is it clear where the vowel lengthening occurs in the word?  Maybe the last vowel of the root/stem given the one example you give?

If these are productive, consider adding them as intensifier suffixes.

Also is it possible to tease out the nuances in meaning between the two?

--Andy

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[B Kh]

The "ma" suffix can be added to lots of words (and even different categories, I believe) so I am treating it as a suffix. Although since I'm creating a learner's dictionary there will be a few cases with very common intensified words where I want to actually note the word with the suffix, either as a variant or an entry.

The vowel lengthening I haven't found a pattern yet. And I don't think there is a difference in meaning beyond the intensification. That's why I though that calling it a variant was the way to go. I'm very new at this, so I may not have the concepts down yet.

Thanks!

[Bep Langhout]

Hi, I don't know for sure, but I would think that if ma attaches to different categories of words, shouldn't it be a clitic? The vowel lengthening could be a suffix, at least it happens before adding the ma. 

Bep

[Brent Brollier]

Grammatically, there's a difference between clitics and suffixes, which is sometimes difficult to sort out. However, in an orthography there isn't an orthographic category called clitic; a clitic could be written as a suffix (enclitic) or an independent word, and it sounds like this is written as a suffix in Sinhala.

There probably is a pattern to this kind of emphatic lengthening. Figuring it out could greatly help. Vowel lengthening is a suprasegmental feature, so stress or tone would be places to look into, as well as if there's a hierarchy of preference for certain vowels or for following certain consonants.

According to the Morpheme Type list in Flex, this lengthening could be assigned in its own entry, I believe, to the Morpheme Type simulfix (change or replacement of vowels or consonants) or suprafix (suprasegmental is imposed on one or more syllables). I have no idea how something like that would be indicated independently in a dictionary, if that is a further question. Is there a Lexicographer in the house? :P

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