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A holophrase is a sentence, usually made up of a single word, that has a complex meaning. The holophrase encompasses complete actions or concepts within a single simple term and is a phenomenon that occurs in everyday language in words like “okay”. In the field of language acquisition, holophrases are those words that children use to communicate ideas that in adult language require complex sentences. For example, when a young child simply says “water” it can be equivalent to “I’m thirsty, I want water.”
Holophrases usually consist of only one word but this is not always the case, as they can be slightly longer sentences that children perceive as one. An example can be “ahí ‘ta” to denote the location of something or someone.
The term “holophrase” has its origins in the 1960s, when psycholinguist Martin Braine proposed the theory that single words used in early childhood encompassed communicative functions as broad as a sentence. This is why he called them “holophrastic” or one-word statements.
First words and holophrases
The way in which children acquire and develop language has been of great interest in the disciplines of psychology and sociolinguistics. His study is usually focused on children in early childhood, from the time they begin to speak until about three years of age.
Newborn babies make guttural sounds and cries that are simple calls for attention. As they grow, they take for themselves words heard around them to communicate their wants and needs. Babies begin to babble words around six months but it is not until the first year that these take the form of words like “mama” or “dada”.
Interpretation and context of the holophrases
Language use, including the holophrasic phase (approximately 18-36 months), is a key way to track children’s development. In this first linguistic stage they can name objects and people, as well as express desires and describe actions (Danesi, 2003).
With further development also comes greater complexity in the meanings of infant holophrases. For example, depending on the context, the holophrase “mom” can denote a statement (“this is mom”) or a question (“where is mom?”). For the same reason, it can be difficult to interpret them and it is impossible to use a holophrase as the only metric to understand what the child wants to express.
As their use of language is developing, very young children’s communication goes beyond words and it is essential to take into account their gestures and context to understand what they are trying to communicate. The holophrase, therefore, would be an element within a set of forms of communication that include the verbal and the non-verbal (Lightfoot et al ., 2008).
Do adults use holophrases?
Of course. Adults use holophrases constantly, specifically those that their linguistic context has accepted as understandable or universal. A clear example, as we noted at the beginning of this article, is the word “okay”, which in many Spanish-speaking countries, as well as in the Anglo world, is understood as “everything is fine”. Although they may be longer than traditional holophrases, idioms and idioms are used in the same way, denoting a complex meaning that is not visible literally in the words used.
We also talk about holophrases in highly agglutinative or polysynthetic languages. In this type of language, a single word can contain all the grammatical elements to mean a complex sentence.
The study of the holophrase
The concept of the holophrase has been in use for almost 60 years and today some academics question its relevance as a term. For example, Hobbs (2005) suggests that there is no evidence that there is a “holophrastic phase” that differs from the stage in which young children communicate with a single word. Although the use of the term “holophrase” is quite accepted, it is important to keep in mind that psycholinguistics is a dynamic and growing science whose concepts continue to evolve.
Sources
- Danish, Marcel. Second Language Teaching . Springer, 2003.
- DeVilliers, Jill, and Peter DeVilliers. Language Acquisition . Harvard University Press, 1979.
- Hobbs, Jerry R. “The Origin and Evolution of Language: A Plausible Strong-AI Account.” Action To Language via the Mirror Neuron System. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Lightfoot, Cynthia et al. The Development of Children . 6th ed. Worth Publishers, 2008.
- Rowe, Bruce M., and Diane P. Levine. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics. 4th ed. Routledge, 2014.
- Take it, Michael. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition . Harvard University Press, 2003.
