Morphological Awareness of Kindergarten Children: A Case of
Reduplication
Hira Hanif Asyifa and Eri Kurniawan
Department of English Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Morphological Awareness, Reduplication, Inflection, Derivation, Kindergartners.
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the morphological awareness of Indonesian children between the ages of 5 and
6 in two kindergartens. Morphological awareness measures covered children’s ability in identifying and
producing both inflectional and derivational reduplication morphemes. Participants in this study were 45
children of two kindergartens in North Bandung. This study employs a descriptive quantitative method
because the collected data is quantitative information which is presented in numerical data in form of scores
on two different types of test. The results showed that kindergarten children’s morphological awareness is
just beginning. Their inflectional reduplication morphemes awareness was also better than that of derivational
reduplication morphemes awareness. In addition, children performed better at identifying and producing full
reduplication morphemes than affixation reduplication, partial reduplication, and vocalic reduplication
morphemes.
1 INTRODUCTION
One of the basic areas of development in early
childhood is language development. The time from
two and half to five years, children's language is more
similar with that produced by adults although
sometimes the sentences are still grammatically
incorrect (Rahman, 2009). Concerning this matter,
the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia
No. 137 of 2014 regarding the National Education
Standard of Early Childhood Education has
emphasized the significance of language learning in
early childhood education. Thus, the learning
processes in early childhood education should be
oriented to support each stage of their language
development because these abilities are strongly
related to the next level of language competency,
particularly reading ability. In order to have a good
reading skill or literacy development, children also
need to have good language awareness because
"readers of alphabets must have an awareness of
phonemes, readers of syllabaries must have an
awareness of syllables, and readers of logographies
must have an awareness of morphemes" (Singson,
Mahony, & Mann, 2000, p. 191). Later, these skills
will lead to the comprehension of text which relates
to morpheme awareness as an essential type of
awareness in literacy development.
Being one of the essential aspects of literacy
development, morphological awareness can be
defined as conscious knowledge in using morpheme
based on its form and function. Several studies have
been conducted to examine the great influence of
morphological awareness towards literacy abilities
such as word-level reading, reading comprehension,
vocabulary skills, and spelling development (e.g.,
Apel, Wilson-Fowler, Brimo, & Perrin, 2012;
McCutchen, Green, & Abbott, 2008; Nagy,
Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003;
Ramirez, Walton, & Roberts, 2013; Roman, Kirby,
Parrila, Wade-Woolley, & Deacon, 2009; Tabatabaei
& Yakhabi, 2011). Therefore, for kindergarten
children themselves, morphological awareness can be
the next predictor of their level of reading
comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary knowledge.
Examination of language awareness has received
little attention, particularly in early childhood age for
native speakers of Bahasa Indonesia. Compared to
phonological awareness, there are only very few
studies assessing morphological awareness of
children in Indonesian context which merely focus on
investigating children's abilities in identifying and
manipulating affixes (e.g., Kurniawan, Solehuddin, &
Gunawan, 2015; Nurdiansyah, 2016; Silviany, 2017).
170
Asyifa, H. and Kurniawan, E.
Morphological Awareness of Kindergarten Children: A Case of Reduplication.
DOI: 10.5220/0007164001700174
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 170-174
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

In this article, we seek to examine the ability of
kindergarten children in identifying and producing
both inflectional and derivational reduplication
morphemes.
2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Morphological awareness refers to the ability to
consciously consider or identify and manipulate
morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in
language (Apel & Diehm, 2013; Ramirez, Walton, &
Roberts, 2013). This kind of language awareness
comprises mainly knowledge about the pairing of
sound and meaning in a language and the word
formation rules that guide the possible combination
of morphemes (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). Since
morphological awareness includes the conversion of
sounds onto semantic information, it gives major
contribution towards text comprehension ability as it
has been demonstrated in several studies (eg.,
Carlisle, 2000; Kirby, Deacon, Bowers, Izenberg,
Wade-Woolley, & Parrila, 2012; McCutchen, Green,
& Abbott, 2008; Roman, Kirby, Parrila, Wade-
Woolley, & Deacon, 2009; Rothou & Padeliadu,
2014).
There are three types of morphological processes
which have become the focus of a number of studies
concerning the assessment of morphological
awareness: inflections, derivations, and compounds
(Kuo & Anderson, 2006). Inflectional morphemes are
used to indicate aspects of the grammatical function
of a word (Yule, 2006). The example of inflectional
morphemes in Bahasa Indonesia is prefix meN-.
When this prefix is affixed to verbal bases, it will
construct a well-formed verb without changing the
meaning of the base word, as in melihat (to see) and
membuka (to open) (Djenar, 2003). Derivational
morphemes are used to make new words or to make
words of a different grammatical category from the
stem (Yule, 2006). For instance, in Bahasa Indonesia,
the prefix ter- is able to give a new meaning of an
adjective. Compound is the process by which two or
more words are joined to create a new term (Ramirez,
Walton, & Roberts, 2013), for example rumah sakit
(hospital) in Bahasa Indonesia which consists of two
unrelated words, rumah (house) and sakit (ill).
In the morphology of Bahasa Indonesia,
derivation and inflection are still rarely discussed. As
one of the features in Bahasa Indonesia, researchers
have gained their interest in classifying the
inflectional and derivational forms of reduplication
(R). Reduplication itself can be defined as a
morphemical process which involves the repetition of
base words either wholly, partially, or by sound
change (Chaer, 2007; H. P. & Abdullah, 2012). The
classification of reduplication in Indonesian language
formed by researchers is varied. One of the
classifications is proposed by Chaer (2006). He
proposes 4 categories of reduplication which are full,
affix, partial, and vocalic reduplication. Full
reduplication involves repeating an entire word just
like in rumah-rumah (houses), pohon-pohon (trees),
and pencuri-pencuri (thieves). Affix reduplication
involves affixes in the process of the doubling of the
base word, for example, berlari-lari (run
continuously) and kemerah-merahan (reddish).
Partial reduplication occurs when the first syllable of
a word is doubled. The example of partial
reduplication is tetangga (neighborhood) and lelaki
(man). Vocalic reduplication involves vocal or
consonant change in the doubling process, for
example, the words gerak-gerik (movement) and
sayur-mayur (vegetables).
Ermanto (2008) has categorized Indonesian
reduplication morphemes in terms of their
morphological processe. He asserts that reduplication
verbs are formed by a hierarchical morphological
process which is further categorized into two
subclasses: morphological hierarchy of transitive
reduplication verbs and morphological hierarchy of
intransitive reduplication verbs. Morphological
hierarchy of transitive reduplication verbs can be
formulated with pattern I: base word + derivational R
(1) + inflectional affix (2). The example of the words
can be seen in the verb panggil (call), panggil 
panggil-panggil  memanggil-manggil. On the other
hand, morphological hierarchy of intransitive
reduplication verbs can be formulated with three
different patterns: pattern II, pattern III, and pattern
IV. Pattern II consists of base word + (R+affix
(derivational process)). The example of the word
which applies this pattern is pukul (hit), pukul 
pukul-memukul and hormat (respect), hormat 
hormat-menghormati. Morphological hierarchy of
intransitive reduplication verb with pattern III: base
word + derivational R is shown on makan (eat),
makan  makan-makan. Pattern IV, however,
contains of base word + derivational R + inflectional
affix. It can be seen on the word lari (run), lari 
berlari-lari and jalan (walk), jalan  berjalan-jalan.
In terms of reduplication types in Bahasa
Indonesia, its classification is varied since there is no
exact classification formed by researchers. One of the
classifications is made by Chaer (2006). He proposes
4 categories of reduplication which are full, affix,
partial, and vocalic reduplication. Full reduplication
involves repeating an entire word just like in rumah-
Morphological Awareness of Kindergarten Children: A Case of Reduplication
171

rumah (houses), pohon-pohon (trees), and pencuri-
pencuri (thieves). Affix reduplication involves
affixes in the process of the dubling of the base word,
for example, berlari-lari (run continuously) and
kemerah-merahan (reddish). Partial reduplication
occurs when the first syllable of a word is doubled.
The example of partial reduplication is tetangga
(neighborhood) and lelaki (man). Vocalic
reduplication involves vocal or consonant change in
the doubling process, for example, the words gerak-
gerik (movement) and sayur-mayur (vegetables).
3 METHODS
The present study employs a descriptive quantitative
method for collecting and analyzing the data.
Quantitative research method involves numbers
which later can be systematically measured
(Blackstone, 2012; Creswell, 2014; & Perumal,
2014). Consequently, the data of the presents study
are in form of students' scores on their morphological
awareness tasks. Moreover, a descriptive approach
can be explained as an approach that is functioned as
a tool to organize data into patterns that emerge
during the process of analyzing data (Knupfer &
McLellan, 1996). Therefore, the quantitative
descriptive method has been considered relevant to be
employed in this present study because the data
collection process also involved some numerical data
which are collected from students' assessment results.
To describe the findings, the collected students'
scores were calculated by using statistical descriptive
calculation by using percentage, mean, and also
standard deviation.
3.1 Participants and procedure
Participants of the study were 45 kindergartners aged
5 to 6 from two schools in northern Bandung City. In
school A, there were 21 children who participated in
this study which consists of 10 female children and
11 male children. Meanwhile, there were 24 children
in school B which consists of 10 female children and
14 male children. The study’s only inclusion criteria
were teachers' consent, students' assent, and the
ability to understand task instructions. The
assessment took place on August in 2017. The tasks
were administered individually by the researchers in
a quiet area of the chosen school.
3.2 Measures
All students were administered two morphological
awareness tasks, reduplication identification task and
reduplication word analogy task. The identification
task is adapted from the instrument named ‘suffix
choice test’ by Nagy et al. (2003). The identification
task was performed orally by using laptop. There are
12 presentation slides which include a picture in GIF
format, a sentence with a blank space, and three
different words. The participants need to identify the
correct reduplication form to fill the blank space in
the sentence which best described the picture
provided. Meanwhile, the word analogy task is
inspired by Kirby et al. (2012). This task, which was
also conducted orally, followed the form A:B::C:D.
Children were asked to make the same kind of change
to the given words (D) as were made in the original
pair (A:B). The participants' correct choice is scored
by 1 and the incorrect choice is scored 0. The
collected scores were calculated and analyzed by
carrying out descriptive statistics method.
4 RESULTS
In general, kindergarten children have shown their
awareness of morphology to some extent. The results
of the assessment of reduplication identification task
and reduplication word analogy task are shown as
follows.
Table 1: General findings of the study.
Number of
participants
Test
items
Number
of
answers
Correct
answers
Percentage
of correct
answers
45
25
1125
514
46%
The table above shows the number of correct answers
achieved by children is 514 out of 1125, which is only
46% of the total expected answers. By taking account
of the percentage of children achievement, it can be
assumed that their development of morphological
awareness is just beginning.
Table 2: Findings according to morphological process.
Morphological
process
Number
of
answers
Correct
answers
Percentage
of correct
answers
Inflection
405
198
49%
Derivation
720
316
44%
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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Regarding the findings on morphological process,
children get higher percentage of correct answers on
inflectional morphemes (49%) than derivational
morphemes (44%). On inflectional morphemes, there
are 198 correct answers from the total of 405 expected
answers. In contrast, it is found that there are 316
correct answers from 720 total answers of
derivational morphemes. Hence, from the study, it
can be said that children are more aware of
inflectional reduplication morphemes than
derivational reduplication morphemes.
Table 3: Findings according to reduplication types.
Reduplication
type
Number
of
answers
Correct
answers
Percentage
of correct
answers
Full
360
240
67%
Affix
405
166
41%
Partial
180
45
25%
Vocalic
180
63
35%
The table above demonstrates the number of answers
and the percentage of each item. There are four types
of reduplication morphemes administered on the test
which are full, affix, partial, and vocalic
reduplication. From the table, it appears that children
perform better on identifying and manipulating full
reduplication morphemes than others. There are 240
correct answers on full reduplication from the total
360 answers. In contrast, partial reduplication is the
least answered by children for there are only 45
correct answers from the total 180 answers (25%).
From the findings above, it can be concluded that
children have higher awareness level of full
reduplication morphemes than the other types of
reduplication.
5 DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study is to present description of
Indonesian kindergarten children morphological
awareness especially their abilities in identifying and
manipulating both inflectional and derivational
reduplication morphemes. The findings generally
show that Indonesian kindergarten children just begin
to gain their morphological awareness. This result is
in line with Nurdiansyah (2016) which shows that
morphological awareness of Indonesian kindergarten
children in terms of the ability of to identify
inflectional morphemes in verbs is not completed.
Regarding children's results according to
morphological process, it shows that they have higher
awareness of inflectional reduplication morphemes
than derivational reduplication morphemes. Kuo and
Anderson (2006) have stated that research has
consistently shows that children are able to
manipulate the functional aspect of inflectional
morphology by the early elementary grades. The
authors also say that inflectional and compound
morphology appears to develop earlier than
derivational morphology. This research also
considers types of reduplication as a variable for
analyzing the data. From the findings, it can be seen
that kindergarten children perform better at
identifying and manipulating full reduplication
morphemes than the other types of reduplication. Full
reduplication morphemes merely include the
doubling of base words or stems. On the contrary, the
form of affix, partial and vocalic reduplication
morphemes is relatively more complex since the
addition or ommision of syllables is also required.
Therefore, kindergarten children may consider
identifying and producing affix, partial and vocalic
reduplication morphemes as a more challenging task
than identifying and producing full reduplication
morphemes.
6 CONCLUSIONS
By looking at the findings and discussion, it can be
said that the morphological awareness of Indonesian
kindergarten children in terms of the ability of to
identify and manipulate both inflectional and
derivational reduplication morphemes is just
beginning. This can be seen by the percentage of
correct answers that only reach 46%. Kindergarten
children also seem to have a higher awareness level
of inflectional reduplication morphemes than
derivational reduplication morphemes. For futher
studies related to morphological awareness of
children in the future, it is important to specify the
variables, the aspect of morphology, and also the
proportion of each aspect of morphology that is going
to be assessed. By doing this, the instrument or task
can be more easily designed and can be expectedly
measured morphological awareness accurately. In
addition, it is necessary for researchers to conduct
future studies with a larger sample and an ideal
method. By having a larger sample, a more general
result for future studies and stronger claims related to
the research may be achieved. Future researchers can
also attempt to conduct correlational research in
Indonesian context between morphological
awareness and various literacy aspects such as
Morphological Awareness of Kindergarten Children: A Case of Reduplication
173

reading ability, spelling development, vocabulary
knowledge as well as other metalinguistic awareness
aspects. Associating morphological awareness with
some factors is also recommended to be investigated.
Lastly, this study suggests that home and classroom
learning activities might include language or
morphological awareness skill as one of the language
development aspects that need to be developed. Many
longitudinal studies have suggested that
morphological knowledge learned by children in their
early childhood stage will be beneficial for them in
preparing the next level of education.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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