Reduplication as a Morphological Process in Icibemba Loanword Adaptation

English loanwords in Icibemba take part in reduplication just as native words do. Once borrowed items are integrated into the language’s system, they reduplicate in the same ways: total reduplication copies the entire stem (e.g., fashiti-fashiti ‘kind of hurry’, wanu-wanu ‘one by one’), and partial reduplication copies only the CV portion (e.g., ukusaina-saina ‘to sign repeatedly’). Reduplication in these loanwords marks grammatical and semantic contrasts — repetition, intensity, frequency, distributive meaning. Borrowed words also obey the same bisyllabic constraints as native words in partial reduplication, confirming that they have been fully absorbed into the morphological system. The study uses Lexical Phonology and Morphology (LPM) and CV Phonology to explain how phonological constraints and morphological processes interact during loanword adaptation. English loanwords, once nativised through vowel epenthesis, segmental substitution, and syllabic restructuring, fall under the same reduplication patterns that govern native Icibemba vocabulary. Reduplication thus works as a reliable diagnostic of full morphological assimilation, with implications for how we understand language contact, lexical borrowing, and the structure of the Bantu morphological system.