The Study of Reduplication Process in Kurdish Language Within Optimality Theory

The process of word formation is an important subject in morphology. Among the word-formation processes, the reduplication process is common in most languages. Different studies in various languages have produced different theories about these processes. Optimality theory seeks to explore similarities among languages. This theory has novel approaches to phonology construction, morphology and syntax, it has, also explained reduplication process, which has always been a challenge for rule base approaches, by applying constraints. In this article, reduplication process in Kurdish language within the framework of Optimality theory will be examined to find out if reduplication process could be analyzed by Optimality theory? In the analysis part, examples of this process will be discussed examined in the framework of optimality theory. Research methodology in this study is library based. Data have been extracted from the Kurdish-Kurdish Persian dictionary of (Hanbana Borina) as well as speakers of Kurdish language. It should also be mentioned that the researcher is native Kurdish speaker. The findings of this study show that different types of reduplication process in Kurdish language has special constraints on its structural patterns. Constraints have special hierarchical level of reduplication process in Kurdish language. Even in specific types of this process, constraints and their rankings vary according to the morphological structure reduplicates, which is due to their structural patterns. By ranking different markedness and faithfulness constraints different constructions of reduplication process in Kurdish language according to their meaning could be explained.