Templates in language acquisition, adult language and in language games

Children often use preferred fixed prosodic shapes which can be described in terms of higher-level phonological structure. These prosodic units are called “templates” and play a role also in adult language (AL) in morphological processes such as reduplication or truncation. Further, extensive use of templatic structures can also be found in so called secret languages (SL). It will be shown that the templates in the three above mentioned contexts while being different on the meaning or functional side share formally many characteristics.