Clipping and Truncation

Abstract

AbstractClippingandtruncationare terms referring to non‐concatenative word‐formation processes by which a word (the base) is truncated down to a predictable form (the truncatum) describable with the help of the categories of prosodic structure. The termclippingis usually used for processes where the base is a common noun, adjective, verb or phrase, whiletruncationis often used irrespective of the syntactic status of the base. A very productive type of truncations are name truncations such as exemplified by the namePatrícia, which can be shortened to the hypocoristicPat. In phonological theory, truncation processes have encountered much interest because of the templatic shape often realized by the truncatum, most typically a mono‐ or disyllabic foot. Truncation patterns can be classified by the type of template that they realize and by their anchoring properties, in other words by the position of the base preserved in the truncatum, usually its initial or stressed, sometimes its final syllable. In this entry, the most salient properties of truncation patterns are presented, such as the emergence of unmarked structures in the truncatum and phenomena of gradience in anchoring. Recent typological analyses of the phenomenon in the framework of Optimality Theory are discussed, as well as the hesitancy of some morphological theories to recognize truncation processes as part of grammar proper. It is concluded that truncation processes are predictable with respect to the prosodic shape of their outputs and that their meaning can be related to that of other processes of evaluative morphology. However, there is still a certain lack of research when it comes to define the meaning and function of single patterns.