I've recently been noticing some patterns which look like two repeated past-tense verbs, but I think which indicate a command rather than the past tense. For example:
さあ、行った行った。
"Get along with you!"
I also noticed in the Baseball manga "Major" the following, which was called over a loudspeaker:
入った！入った！
But I'm not sure what it means, or indeed if it is a command or baseball/sport-specific (it was at the start of the chapter and I'm missing the previous volume so I'm not 100% sure what the context is.)
If both of the above are commands, are they roughly equivalent to さあ、行け and 入れ！? Is 行け！ more assertive than 行った行った！?
Can this pattern work with any verb, e.g. さあ、食べた食べた！ or is does it only work for a few?
Answer
Axel Svahn has written about this construction in detail, including summaries of other scholars' viewpoints:
That second one in particular is well worth reading if you are interested in this subject. It includes this summary of what -ta is:
- It functions as a highly informal imperative.
- It is associated with a feeling of urgency on the part of the speaker.
- It is not a phonetic alteration of another imperative construction (such as the -te or -e (ro) constructions mentioned in chapter 2), but is instead derived from the perfective function of the past tense marker -ta and its modal use in expressing the attitude of the speaker towards a given situation.
There is also a very interesting discussion of the various theories about why, if it is so "informal" or "crude", it is nevertheless so commonly used by shopkeepers trying to get customers to buy what they have to sell.
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