Truncation (language)

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Truncation ( Latin truncare , German 'cut off' , English truncation ) is a word formation phenomenon in linguistics in which a word is shortened to a certain length. Often further morphological or phonological transformations take place, such as affiliation , umlaut or resilbification .

Demarcation and similar phenomena

In contrast to regression , in which the truncated part of a word has a certain length, with truncation the remaining part is of a fixed size.

Partial reduplication is closely related to truncation . In this case, a version of a word shortened to a certain length is appended to the word itself. In Ilokano , a Filipino language, the plural of a noun is formed by copying the stem of the noun itself and placing this copy (the so-called reduplicant ) at the beginning of the noun after reducing ("truncating") to the first syllable. In the following example, the truncation of a reduplicant is indicated by strikethrough:

kaldiŋ kal diŋ - kaldiŋ kalkaldiŋ
"Goose" Reduplicant - root "Geese"

Examples from German

i-truncation

An example of truncation in German is the i-truncation. Longer words are shortened to the first heavy syllable and an -i is added to the end of the new word. Examples are:

  • Student → Studi
  • Alcoholics → Alki
  • Depression → Depri
  • East German (er) → Ossi
  • Michael → Michi
  • Andreas → Andi
  • Gabriele → Gabi

The i-truncation in German often has a caressing or belittling meaning.

Shortening

In addition to i-truncation, there is another type of truncation in German in which a word is reduced to the first two syllables, the last of the two syllables being light, i.e. i.e. ending in a vowel:

  • Demonstration → Demo
  • Pornography → Porn
  • homosexual → homo
  • Disco → disco
  • University → Uni

Differences in meaning in this type of truncation are often absent in German, mostly for reasons of linguistic economy .

literature