Apocope
| Sound change and alternation |
|---|
| Fortition |
| Dissimilation |
In phonology, apocope (/əˈpɒkəpiː/[1][2]) is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.
Contents
Etymology[edit]
Apocope comes from Greek ἀποκοπή apokopḗ from ἀποκόπτειν apokóptein, “cutting off”, from ἀπο- apo-, “away from” and κόπτειν kóptein, “to cut.”
Historical sound change[edit]
In historical phonetics, the term apocope is often (but not always) limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel.
Loss of an unstressed vowel (with nasal)[edit]
- Vulgar Latin pan[em] → Spanish pan (bread)
- Vulgar Latin lup[um] → French lou[p] (wolf)
Loss of other sounds[edit]
- Latin illu[d] → Spanish ello
Case marker[edit]
In the Estonian language and Sami languages, apocopes help explain the forms of grammatical cases. For example, a nominative is described as having apocope of the final vowel, whereas the genitive does not. Throughout its history, however, the genitive case marker has also undergone apocope: linn (a city) vs linna (of a city), is derived from linna and linnan, respectively. In the genitive form, final /n/, while being deleted, blocked the loss of /a/. In spoken Finnish, the final vowel is sometimes omitted from case markers.
Grammatical rule[edit]
Some languages have apocopations internalized as mandatory forms. In Spanish and Italian, for example, some adjectives that come before the noun lose the final vowel or syllable when they precede a noun (mainly) in the masculine singular form. In Spanish some adverbs, cardinal and ordinal numbers have apocopations as well.
- Adjectives
- Grande (big/great) → gran → gran mujer (feminine) (great woman. However, if the adjective follows the noun, the final syllable remains, but the meaning may also change: mujer grande, meaning large woman)
- Bueno (good) → buen → buen hombre (masculine) (good man; the final vowel remains in hombre bueno, with no accompanying change in meaning)
- Adverbs
- Tanto (so much) → tan (so) → tan hermoso (so beautiful)
- Cardinal numbers
- Uno (one/a/an) → un → un niño (a child)
- Ciento (hundred) → cien → Cien años de soledad (One hundred years of solitude)
- Ordinal numbers
- Primero (first) → primer → primer premio (first prize)
- Tercero (third) → tercer → tercer lugar (third place)
Informal speech[edit]
Various (and numerous) sorts of informal abbreviations might be classed as apocope:
- English photograph → photo
- French sympathique(s) → sympa meaning nice
- French réactionnaire → réac meaning reactionary
- English animation → Japanese アニメーション animēshon → アニメ anime
- English synchronization → sync, synch, syncro, or synchro
- English Alexander → Alex and so on with other hypocorisms
- Spanish fotografía → foto meaning photography
- Spanish televisión → tele meaning television (cf. French « télé » for « télévision »)
For a list of similar apocopations in the English language, see List of English apocopations. These processes are also linguistically subsumed under a process called clipping or truncation.
See also[edit]
- Abbreviation
- Acronym and initialism
- Apheresis (linguistics)
- Clipping (morphology)
- Contraction (grammar)
- Elision
- Syncope (phonetics)
References[edit]
- Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
External links[edit]
| Look up apocope in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- ^ "Apocope". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2016-01-21.
- ^ "Apocope". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 2016-01-21.