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From an Ensemble Stars! visual novel type story, Victoria:

死ぬ死ぬ言わないノ、周りのひとが心配するでしョ……

The character being spoken to just finished an unexpected ramble on the aesthetics of various ways of dying. Ending utterances in katakana is just the speaker's speech quirk.

I understand the quote to mean something along the lines of "You shouldn't go on talking about death like that, people will get worried", but don't really see how 死ぬ死ぬ connects to other elements in the sentence. What kind of construct is that and would it work with a different verb in 死ぬ's place?

Additionally, though I feel like the 言わないの constitutes some kind of an order or advice, I'm unsure of what would give it that meaning grammatically.

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死ぬ死ぬ言わないの

It means "Don't say '死ぬ', '死ぬ', repeatedly." → "Stop saying '死ぬ (I'll die / I'm gonna die)'."
The の at the end here expresses 命令 (command, imperative). See:


「[XYZ][XYZ]言う」

The quotative marker と is often omitted in this kind of phrase. It means "to repeat saying 'XYZ'." Some examples:

「くれくれ言う」
「いつも金がないない言う」
「通販が買え買えしつこい」
「人に死ね死ね言う奴」
「実家に帰ると食え食え言われる」
「親が結婚しろしろうるさい」
「口ではやるやる言うけど実際はやらない」
「バカバカ言うな。バカって言うやつがバカなんだ」

This kind of phrase usually has an annoyed, or complaining tone. So 「いつも問題がないない言うので安心している」「仕事を進んでやるやる言ってくれる」 would sound weird.

と is not omitted when the XYZ part is not repeated: 「くれ言う」「いつも金がない言う」「通販が買えうるさい」「人に死ね言う奴」「実家に帰ると食え言われる」「親が結婚しろうるさい」 etc. sound unnatural. (「バカ言うな」 means something different.)

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  • を instead of と can probably be used almost interchangeably, it loses the quotation aspect but I'm guessing it would be the same as the difference between "thing" you say, quit saying it. and quit to say "thing".
    – v.oddou
    Aug 25, 2022 at 9:52
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This seems to be just quoted speech with the usual grammatical markers omitted which happens quite often in real speech. The “proper” sentence would probably look like:

「死ぬ、死ぬ」とか言わないの[…]

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    Answering his question about the の would make this a more complete answer imo Aug 25, 2022 at 1:09

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