Editing Reduplication (section)

===Japanese===
A small number of native [[Japanese language|Japanese]] nouns have [[collective number|collective]] forms produced by reduplication (possibly with [[rendaku]]), such as 人々 ''hitobito'' "people" (''h'' → ''b'' is rendaku) – these are written with the [[iteration mark]] "々" to indicate duplication.  This formation is not [[productivity (linguistics)|productive]] and is limited to a small set of nouns.  Similarly to Standard Chinese, the meaning is not that of a true [[plural]], but collectives that refer to a large, given set of the same object; for example, the formal English equivalent of 人々 would be "people" (collective), rather than "persons" (plural individuals).

Japanese also contains a large number of [[Japanese sound symbolism|mimetic words]] formed by reduplication of a syllable.  These words include not only [[onomatopoeia]], but also words intended to invoke non-auditory senses or psychological states, such as きらきら ''kirakira'' (sparkling or shining). By one count, approximately 43% of Japanese mimetic words are formed by full reduplication,{{sfn|Tamamura|1979}}{{sfn|Tamamura|1989}} and many others are formed by partial reduplication, as in がささ〜 ''ga-sa-sa-'' (rustling){{sfn|Nasu|2003}}&nbsp;– compare English "''a''-ha-ha-ha".