Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Adjective emphasis

Are there instances of usage of double adjectives for emphasis?

IMO it depends on the style of the writer/speaker. For example, let us see this poem from the great poet Nagarjun:

अमल धवल गिरि के शिखरों पर,
बादल को घिरते देखा है।
छोटे-छोटे मोती जैसे
उसके शीतल तुहिन कणों को,
मानसरोवर के उन स्वर्णिम
कमलों पर गिरते देखा है,
बादल को घिरते देखा है। [
Ref]

In the first line, the poet uses two adjectives for the mountain (giri), i.e. "amal dhawal". "Amal" means "pure" or "without any impurity" and "dhawal" means "white".

So you can say that even in this Hindi poem, the word "amal" is emphasizing the other color adjective "dhawal"...

In the poem above, "amal" and "dhawal" have complementary meanings; we can't say the meanings are very different...

If I think for examples from Hindi in day-to-day use: we would have

नंग धडंग
आडा तिरछा
सुन्दर सलोना

The meanings of the two words are the same and yet both are used together.