SHORTENING OF SPOKEN WORDS AND ITS CAUSES

As a type of word-building shortening of spoken words, also called clipping or curtailment, is recorded in the English language as far back as the 15th century.¹ It has grown more and more productive ever since. This growth becomes especially marked in many European languages in the 20th century, and it is a matter of common knowledge that this development is particularly intense in English.

Newly shortened words appear continuously; this is testified by numerous neologisms, such as demo n from demonstration; frig or fridge n from refrigerator; mike n from microphone; telly or TV n from television set; trank n from tranquillizer; trannie n from transistor; vac n from vacuum cleaner, etc.

Many authors are inclined to overemphasize the role of "the strain of modern life" as the mainspring of this development. This is, obviously, only one of the reasons, and the purely linguistic factors should not be overlooked. Among the major forces are the demands of rhythm, which are more readily satisfied when the words are monosyllabic.

When dealing with words of long duration, one will also note that a high percentage of English shortenings is involved into the process of

¹ To prove this an example from Shakespeare might be quoted: Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib / Such dear concernings hide) ("Hamlet", Act III, Sc. 4.) Gib (contracted from Gilbert) ‘a male cat’. Hamlet uses these derogatory epithets about King Claudius.

loan word assimilation. Monosyllabism goes farther in English than in any other European language, and that is why shortened words sound more like native ones than their long prototypes. Curtailment may therefore be regarded as caused, partly at least, by analogical extension, i.e. modification of form on the basis of analogy with existing and widely used patterns. Thus, the three homonyms resulting from abbreviation of three different words, van ‘a large covered vehicle’, ‘a railway carriage’, the short for caravan; van ‘the front of an army’, the short for vanguard which in its turn is a clipping of the French word avant-garde; and van — a lawn tennis term, the short for advantage, all sound quite like English words. Cf. ban n and v, can, fan, man, ran (Past Indefinite Tense of run), tan and the obsolete van ‘wing’ — a variant of fan.

Shortening of spoken words or curtailment consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts (whether or not this part has previously been a morpheme), as a result of which the new form acquires some linguistic value of its own.

The part retained does not change phonetically, hence the necessity of spelling changes in some of the examples above (dub : : double, mike : : microphone, trank : : tranquillizer, etc.).

The change is not only quantitative: a curtailed word¹ is not merely a word that has lost its initial, middle or final part. Nor is it possible to treat shortening as just using a part for the whole as Ch. Hockett² suggests, because a shortened word is always in some way different from its prototype in meaning and usage.

Shortening may be regarded as a type of root creation because the resulting new morphemes are capable of being used as free forms and combine with bound forms. They ran take functional suffixes: "Ref’s Warning Works Magic" (the title of a newspaper article about a football match where the referee called both teams together and lectured them on rough play). Cf. sing. — bike, bod,³ pl. — bikes, bods, Inf. — to vac,⁴ Part. I — vacking, Past Indefinite tense and Part. II — vacked. Most of these by conversion produce verbs: to phone, to vac, to vet, etc., in which the semantic relationship with the prototype remains quite clear. They also serve as basis for further word-formation by derivation or composition: fancy n (from fantasy), fancy v, fancier n, fanciful a, fancifully adv, fancifulness n, fancy-ball n, fancy-dress n, fancy-work n, etc.; or fantasmo ‘supremely fantastic’ from fantastic+-mo on the analogy with supremo ‘a chief.

It is interesting in this connection to compare the morphemes tele-in television and telecast. They are homonymous but not identical. Tele- in television is derived from Gr tele ‘far’, it is a combining form used to coin many special terms denoting instruments and processes

¹ O. Jespersen also suggests the terms stump words, e l l i p t i c a 1
words or curtailments. R. Quirk calls them clippings.

² See: Hockett Ch. A Course in Modern Linguistics. N.Y., 1958. P. 313.

³ Bod — probably from body ‘fellow’.

⁴ Conversion from vac n clipped from vacuum cleaner.

which produce or record results at a distance, such as telecommunication, telemechanics, telepathy, telephone, telescope and television itself. Tele- in telecast does not mean ‘far’, it is a new development — the shortened variant of television rendering a special new concept. This becomes obvious from the following simple transformations: television -» vision at a distance, tele(broad)cast = a broadcast at a distance,¹ tele(broad)cast —» a television broadcast. In this new capacity tele- enters combinations: telefilm, telemedicine, teleprompter (an electronic device that slowly unrolls the speaker’s text, in large print out of sight of the audience), teletext, televiewer ‘one who uses a television set’, Tel-star (Anglo-American satellite system used as television relay station). E.g. It was broadcast via Telstar. Note the capital letter and the absence of article. Similarly para- from parachute (Fr para- ‘ protecting’ + chute ‘a fall’) gives paraflare, paradrop, paradropper, paratroops, paratrooper.

The correlation of a curtailed word with its prototype is of great interest. Two possible developments should be noted:

1. The curtailed form may be regarded as a variant or a synonym differing from the full form quantitatively, stylistically and sometimes emotionally, the prototype being stylistically and emotionally neutral, e.g. doc : : doctor, exam : : examination. Also in proper names: Becky : : Rebecca, Frisco : : San Francisco, Japs : : the Japanese. The missing part cap at all times be supplied by the listener, so that the connection between the prototype and the short form is not lost. The relationship between the prototype and the curtailment belongs in this case to the present-day vocabulary system and forms a relevant feature for synchronic analysis. Much yet remains to be done in studying the complex relations between the prototype and the clipping, as it is not clear when one should consider them two separate synonymous words and when they are variants of the same word.

2. In the opposite extreme case the connection can be established only etymologically. The denotative or lexico-grammatical meaning or both may have changed so much that the clipping becomes a separate word. Consequently a pair of etymological doublets (see p. 259) comes into being. Cf. chap : : chapman ‘a pedlar’; fan ‘an enthusiastic devotee’ : : fanatic; fancy : : fantasy; miss : : mistress. A speaker who calls himself a football fan would probably be offended at being called a fanatic. A fanatic is understood to have unreasonable and exaggerated beliefs and opinions that make him socially dangerous, whereas a fan is only a devotee of a specified amusement. The relationship between curtailed forms and prototypes in this second group is irrelevant to the present-day vocabulary system, and is a matter of historic, i.e. diachronic study.

In both types the clipped forms (doc, exam, chap, fan, etc.) exist in the language alongside their respective prototypes. The difference, how-

¹ Broadcast and the elliptical form cast convey by themselves the idea of distance.

ever, is that whereas words belonging to the first group can be replaced by their prototypes and show in this way a certain degree of inter-changeability, the doublets are never equivalent lexically as there are no contexts where the prototype can replace the shortened word without a change of meaning.

The possibility of substitution in case of variants may be shown by the following example of a brief newspaper note about the prescription of eyeglasses for racing horses in Chicago. It runs as follows: "Racehorses Are Fitted with Specs". The substitution of spectacles for specs would make the headline a little less lively but not unacceptable.

This substitution, as a rule, can go only one way. It would be, for instance, impossible to use mag for magazine in a passage of literary criticism. The specific stylistic character of the clipped form greatly limits the possibilities of usage.

The semantic status of the group of variants (or synonyms) and that of the group of doublets is also different. Curtailed words of the first group (variants) render one of the possible meanings of the prototype creating by this very novelty a greater expressiveness, a colloquial or slangy shade and often emotional colouring as well. The following extract will illustrate this colouring: "Still, I suppose you want to find your room. I wonder where they’ve put you. Half a mo — I’ll come down and look on the board. You go and make the coff, Con," she called back as she came downstairs, "I shan’t be a jiff." Everything with her was an abbreviation. Striking a match by the notice board, she searched for the number of my room. "Presuming the Ass Mat’s remembered." "The who?" "Assistant Matron, old Fanny Harriman..." (M. Dickens)

It is typical of the curtailed words to render only one of the secondary meanings of a polysemantic word. For instance the verb double may mean ‘to multiply by two’, ‘to increase two-fold’, ‘to amount to twice as much’; when used by musicians it means ‘to add the same note in a higher or a lower octave’. In a military context the meaning is ‘to move in double time or run’. As a nautical term it is synonymous to the expression ‘to get round headland’, etc. Dub, on the contrary, renders only one of the specific meanings — ‘to make another sound recording in a cinema film in a different language’.

The curtailed words belonging to this type are mostly monosemantic as, for example, lab, exam, fan. Also they are often homonymous: compare van and vac as treated above, also gym for gymnastics and gym for gymnasium, or vet for veteran and veterinary.

Between the two groups of well-defined extreme cases, namely variants or synonyms and doublets, there exist numerous intermediate cases, where the classification is difficult. The appearance of a more complex semantic structure in a word is a step towards its acquiring greater independence and thus becoming not a variant but a doublet of the prototype.

The second extreme group, the etymological doublets, may develop semantic structures of their own. Very complex semantic cases like fancy with its many meanings and high valency are nevertheless rare.

It has been specified in the definition of the process that the clipped part is not always a complete morpheme, so that the division is only occasionally correlated with the division into immediate constituents. For instance, in phone for telephone and photo for photograph the remaining parts are complete morphemes occurring in other words. On the other hand in ec or eco (from economics) or trannie (transistor) the morphological structure of the prototype is disregarded. All linguists agree that most often it is either the first or the stressed part of the word that remains to represent the whole. An interesting and convincing explanation for this is offered by M.M. Segal, who quotes the results of several experimental investigations dealing with informativeness of parts of words. These experiments carried out by psychologists have proved very definitely that the initial components of words are imprinted in the mind and memory more readily than the final parts. The signalling value of the first stressed syllable, especially when it is at the same time the root syllable, is naturally much higher than that of the unstressed final syllables with their reduced vowel sounds.

As a rule, but not necessarily, clipping follows the syllabic principle of word division, e. g. pep (sl.) ‘vigour’, ‘spirit’ from pepper, or plane from aeroplane. In other instances it may be quite an arbitrary part of the prototype, e. g. prep (school sl.) ‘homework’ from preparation.

Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The bulk of curtailed words is constituted by nouns. Verbs are hardly ever shortened in present-day English. Rev from revolve and tab from tabulate may be considered exceptions. Such clipped verbs as do occur are in fact converted nouns. Consequently the verbs to perm, to phone, to taxi, to vac, to vet and many others are not curtailed words diachronically but may be regarded as such by right of structure, from the synchronic point of view. As to the verbs to pend, to mend, to tend and a few others, they were actually coined as curtailed words but not at the present stage of language development.

Shortened adjectives are very few and mostly reveal a combined effect of shortening and suffixation, e.g. comfy : : comfortable, dilly : : delightful, imposs : : impossible, mizzy :: miserable, which occur in schoolgirl slang.

As an example of a shortened interjection Shun! : : attention, the word of command may be mentioned.

Various classifications of shortened words have been or may be offered. The generally accepted one is that based on the position of the clipped part. According to whether it is the final, initial or middle part of the word that is cut off we distinguish: 1) f i n a 1 clipping (or apocope), from Greek apokoptein ‘cut off, 2) initial clipping (or a p h e s i s, i.e. a p h e r e s i s), from Greek aphairesis ‘a taking away’ and 3) medial clipping (or syncope), from Greek syncope ‘a cutting up’.

1. Final clipping in which the beginning of the prototype is retained is practically the rule, and forms the bulk of the class, e.g. ad, advert : : advertisement; coke : : coca-cola; ed ; : editor; fab : : fabulous; gym

: : gymnastics or gymnasium; lab : : laboratory; mac : : mackintosh; ref : : referee; vegs : : veggies or vegies, vegetables, and many others.¹

2. Initial-clipped words retaining the final part of the prototype are less numerous but much more firmly established as separate lexical units with a meaning very different from that of the prototype and stylistically neutral doublets, e.g. cute a, n (Am) : : acute; fend v : : defend; mend v : : amend; story n : : history; sport n : : disport; tend v : : attend. Cases like cello : : violoncello and phone : : telephone where the curtailed words are stylistic synonyms or even variants of their respective pro totypes are very rare. Neologisms are few, e.g. chute : : parachute. It is in this group that the process of assimilation of loan words is especially frequent.

Final and initial clipping may be combined and result in curtailed words with the middle part of the prototype retained. These are few and definitely colloquial, e.g. flu : : influenza; frig or fridge : : refrigerator; tec : : detective. It is worthy of note that what is retained is the stressed syllable of the prototype.

3. Curtailed words with the middle part of the word left out are equally 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 may be regarded as accelerated forms.

It is also possible to approach shortened words on the basis of the structure characterizing the prototype. Then the two mutually exclusive groups are cases correlated with words and those correlated with phrases. The length of the word giving rise to a shortening might result from its being a derivative, a compound or a borrowing. The observation of language material, however, can furnish hardly any examples of the second type (compounds), all the word prototypes being derivatives, either native or borrowed, as is shown by all the examples quoted in the above paragraphs.

The few exceptions are exemplified by tarmac, a technical term for tar-macadam (a road surface of crushed stone and tar originally named after the inventor J.L. McAdam); also cabbie for cabman. But then -man in such cases is most often a semi-affix, not a free form, and, besides, the process of shortening is here combined with derivation as in nightie for nightdress or teeny for teenager.

The group we have opposed to the curtailed forms of words is based on clipped phrases, chiefly set expressions. These differ considerably from word clippings as they result from a combined effect of curtailment, ellipsis and substantivation.

Ellipsis is defined as the omission of a word or words considered essential for grammatical completeness but not for the conveyance of the intended lexical meaning, as in the following example: the

¹ There seem, however, to be different degrees of colloquialism. Flu, for instance, would be normal in newspaper and broadcasting, whereas fridge would only occur in familiar colloquial, and tec would be substandard.

related two types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed additive, the second restrictive. Both involve the sliding together not only of sound but of meaning as well. Yet the semantic relations which are at work are different. The first, i.e. additive type, is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete stems combined by the conjunction and, e.g. smog<smoke and fog ‘a mixture of smoke and fog’. The elements may be synonymous, belong to the same semantic field or at least be members of the same lexico-grammatical class of words: French+English>Frenglish; compare also the coinage smaze <smoke+haze. The word Pakistan was made up of elements taken from the names of the five western provinces: the initials of the words Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir and Singh, and the final part of Baluchistan. Other examples are: brunch<breakfast and lunch; transceiver< transmitter and receiver; Niffles < Niagara Falls.

The restrictive type is transformable into an attributive phrase where the first element serves as modifier of the second: cine(matographic pano) rama>cinerama. Other examples are: medicare<medical care; posi-tron<positive electron; telecast<television broadcast. An interesting variation of the same type is presented by cases of superposition, formed by pairs of words having similar clusters of sounds which seem to provoke blending, e.g. motel<motorists’ hotel: the element -ot- is present in both parts of the prototype. Further examples are: shamboo<sham bamboo (imitation bamboo); atomaniac<atom maniac; slanguage<slang + language; spam<spiced ham. Blends, although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise, especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 2879