Sequential word repetitions in the VMS

[MarcoP]

Thai uses reduplication for two cases, one to make a particular kind of plural, and the other resulting from the fact that some classifier words (something European languages tend not to use) are the same as the nouns they classify.

Hi Rene,
do you think this could come close to the frequency of reduplication in the VMS?
Exact and quasi-reduplication occur on 1% of word pairs each in the VMS. On 100 words, one can expect to see two instances of reduplication (in one of the two forms).

Conveniently, Thai usually does not repeat the word in writing, but uses a special symbol (ๆ) which just means: previous word repeated.

- - -

Edit (addition): however, very inconveniently, Thai does not use spaces to separate words. They are just strung together. So, while it would be very easy to count the reduplications in a text, it is not easy to automatically count the different words...

So wordๆ is the written form of "word word", is this correct?
Is quasi-reduplication possible? Things like "word xword" maybe written wordxๆ? If so, can the position of x vary (eg "xword word")?
Or are there other ways in which the two occurrences of the word are not perfectly identical?
Can triplication occur as well?

It's great to have the opportunity to see reduplication in action in a living language!