Grammatical Form

a linguistic marker in which the grammatical meaning is the signified, and the grammatical device is the signifier. For example, in the Russian grammatical form milyi-milyi (“very nice”), the meaning “a high degree of a quality” is the signified, and the device of reduplication is the signifier; in Malayan, the same grammatical device is used for expressing the plural: orang-orang (“people”). In one language there may be various grammatical forms with the same meaning; compare the Russian premilyi (“very nice”)—the grammatical device is the addition of the prefix pre-.