叨叨，乎乎，兮兮

[danka]

I have a question which I don't really know how to classify grammatically. A Chinese friend of mine sometimes says things like:

他那个人是点（神叨叨 or 傻乎乎 or 神兮兮）的。

My question is if there is any rule on which kind of adjectives (or other words?) 叨叨，乎乎，兮兮 can be added to? Are there more of this kind of additives? How do I know which one goes with which word?

Are there any rules at all about this? Do I have to accept them as lexicographic phrases?

[danka]

Seems to be a tricky question..

While people are thinking about it I just want to add another additive I picked up the other day, 叽叽:

这个衣服看得怪不叽叽的。

[xiaocai]

I think it is no need to pay much attention to those word, very colloquial and the first character indicate the meaning of this word, the duplication only shows degree so can be substituted by 有点、很 and 特别 etc.

I fell I haven't use this kind of words in mandarin.

[Quest]

这个衣服看得怪不叽叽的。

Did you make up that sentence?

[danka]

I think I know relatively clearly what these phrases mean. I was just curious, despite its colloquial nature, if there is some rule or delicate meaning, for instance with respect to 语气. I have also found out that they cannot be arbitrarily interchanged. This can be seen in Quest's objection to my last sentence. No, I didn't make up that sentence. It comes from a native Chinese. When I asked her, she launched the theory that "四川人可能更喜欢这样说". I have no idea if it is true or not.

[xiaocai]

I tried to make and accurate conclusion but fail when I found there are numerous exceptions.

四川话 is southwest Mandarin, but there're still many words people don't know the corresponding characters, so most of these are only in dialect. 怪不叽叽 is not a 四川话.

[danka]

OK. Thank you very much for your attempts to solve this.

I think I'll have to accept it the way it is without any deep grammatical insights or careful and accurate definitions of the respective additives (which one to use when).

Anyway, as you mentioned, it's not a main part of the language. I just got curious about it.

[shinjo2000]

叽叽歪歪！！

[xiaoxiajenny]

We say 神神叨叨 神经兮兮

[confucius]

I think this topic is 顶呱呱！