Apokope (Linguistics)

As Apocope (from Greek  ἀποκοπή Apocope , truncation ', omission'; IPA [Apocope]) is referred to in the linguistics to the elimination of speech sounds at the end of a word. The apocope is therefore contrary to Paragoge designating the Lautanfügung end of the word. The omission of sounds within the word is called syncope .

An apocope can represent an aspect of word formation and serve to expand the vocabulary . It can occur in the course of language or sound change or it can be used as a rhetorical figure .

In morphology , an apocope denotes a word formation through the omission of word components, e.g. B. French cinéma instead of cinématographe .

In German , the apokope ending in e is common. Words that, according to the normalized Middle High German grammar, had an ending e, which has disappeared in the current language of the dialects , are referred to as apocopied here . Most of the German-speaking area is affected. The ending -e was only retained in a strip on the northern edge of the low mountain range, and in some dialects on the southern edge of the language area. In addition to words in which the ending -e has no grammatical function, for example “tired” → “tired” (the symbol → stands for “develops to”), words in which the ending -e had a grammatical function are also affected or to come. Examples of this are the imperative e, for example “go” → “go”, the dative e, for example “ dem Deutschen Volke ” → “dem Deutschen Volk”, the plural e, for example “Gänse” → “Gäns” or das Past tense e, for example “led” → “leads”. The apocope of the past tense-e makes the past tense and present tense of weak verbs indistinguishable and is seen by some linguists as the cause of the Upper German past tense fading.

Initially, different writing standards competed in the New High German language area: In the Upper German writing language it was common not to write the ending -e, which had disappeared in the local dialects, while the Saxon office language wrote out the ending -e, which had not disappeared in the dialects of Saxony. Martin Luther also followed this norm . The Upper German scribes considered the final e to be Lutheran e . In today's standard German , the final e is written and spoken according to the norm and penetrates again from standard German into everyday language.

Currently, the "e" is not apocopied in German colloquial language in the north, the "e" is apocopied in the middle and in the south and "I have" is spoken instead of "I have". Occasionally both forms are accepted as correct, for example the apocopes of the dative ending “dem haus” or “dem Haus” or the syncope of the genitive ending, for example “of the language area” or “of the language area”.

See also

• Apocope (rhetoric)
• Apocopy
• Procope
• Syncope (linguistics)

Web links

• Justo Fernández López: apocope, epenthesis, contraction - apócope, epéntesis y contracción. hispanoteca.eu
• Björn Rothstein: What are short forms? Germanistische Mitteilungen 71 (2010), pp. 49–69

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.duden.de/node/772773/revisions/1254458/view (accessed on June 1, 2017).
2. ^ Paul Gévaudan: Classification of Lexical Developments. Semantic, morphological and stratic filiation. Dissertation, University of Tübingen, Tübingen 2002, p. 150 f. ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.