Clipping (morphology)

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In

Creation

According to

standard register

. Many, such as mani and pedi for manicure and pedicure or mic/mike for microphone, occupy a middle ground in which their appropriate register is a subjective judgment, but succeeding decades tend to see them become more widely used.

Types

According to Irina Arnold [ru], clipping mainly consists of the following types:^[4]

• Final clipping or apocope
• Initial clipping, apheresis, or procope
• Medial clipping or syncope
• Complex clipping, creating clipped compounds

Final and initial clipping may be combined and result in curtailed words with the middle part of the prototype retained, which usually includes the syllable with

-s of pajamas/pyjamas) or jammies (adding diminutive -ie).

Final

In a final clipping, the most common type in English, the beginning of the prototype is retained. The unclipped original may be either a simple or a composite. Examples include ad and advert (advertisement), cable (cablegram), doc (doctor), exam (examination), fax (facsimile), gas (gasoline), gym (gymnastics, gymnasium), memo (memorandum), mutt (muttonhead), pub (public house), pop (popular music), and clit (clitoris).^[5]: 109 An example of apocope in Israeli Hebrew is the word lehit, which derives from להתראות lehitraot, meaning "see you, goodbye".^[5]: 155

Initial

Initial (or fore) clipping retains the final part of the word. Examples: bot (robot), chute (parachute), roach (cockroach), gator (alligator), phone (telephone), pike (turnpike), varsity (university), net (Internet).

Medial

Words with the middle part of the word left out are few. They may be further subdivided into two groups: (a) words with a final-clipped stem retaining the functional morpheme: maths (mathematics), specs (spectacles); (b) contractions due to a gradual process of elision under the influence of rhythm and context. Thus, fancy (fantasy), ma'am (madam), and

may be regarded as accelerated forms.

Complex

Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original compound most often remains intact. Examples are: cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical art), org-man (organization man), linocut (linoleum cut). Sometimes both halves of a compound are clipped as in navicert (navigation certificate). In these cases it is difficult to know whether the resultant formation should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between the two types is not always clear. According to Bauer (1983),^[6] the easiest way to draw the distinction is to say that those forms which retain compound stress are clipped compounds, whereas those that take simple word stress are not. By this criterion bodbiz, Chicom, Comsymp, Intelsat, midcult, pro-am, photo op, sci-fi, and sitcom are all compounds made of clippings.

See also

References