Reduplication in the Holophrastic Stage – A Morpho-Phonological Process in Infant Malayalam

Abstract

This paper offers some evidence of full or partial reduplicating process in a Holophrastic Child’s Malayalam. When observed Mappila infants in the holophrastic stage, it is found reduplicating is completely possible and reduplicated words are comprehensible for them. The objective is to analyse process of reduplicating  in Malayalam  of  an infant in the Holophrastic stage based on the parent’s diary entries . Partial or full reduplicating process is found as a stratagem of the child for its First Language Acquisition and Communication. Interestingly, the child in the holophrastic stage appears capable enough to form words through process of partial or full reduplications. The participant’s sound pattern processing and morpho-phonological processing in the word formation is found no different from that of adult  Malayalam Speakers.