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8 - How an ‘Italian’ Suffix Became Productive in Germanic Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Pius ten Hacken
Affiliation:
Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Renáta Panocová
Affiliation:
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice
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Summary

This chapter discusses the complicated interplay between some examples of borrowing and subsequent word formation. It will demonstrate how speakers of Dutch and German re-analyse disyllabic forms, which have recently been borrowed from American English, and how they subsequently use the pattern applied in these clippings more widely, which results in a word formation process that resembles clipping and subsequent suffixation as it appears in American English. However, the application differs. Dutch, for example, borrowed disyllabic models such as lesbo and afro on the one hand and kiddo and creepo on the other hand. The first two lexemes can be described as monosyllabic clipped forms to which subsequent suffixation applied, while in the latter two suffixation applied to a monosyllabic base word. However, in Dutch the new word formation process also accepts disyllabic and trisyllabic base words and thus results in trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words such as gewono and positivo.

In the first part of this chapter, traditional monosyllabic clipping in English, Dutch and German is discussed. In the second part, clipping is compared with hypocoristic formations in German and English. In the third part, the focus is on recent disyllabic forms ending in unstressed -o. In this section it will also be demonstrated how the -o pattern has been borrowed in Dutch and German. In addition, some data from Swedish will be presented to support the claim made in this chapter. The data discussed here come from the literature about clipping and from focused Google searches by the author.

Clipping: general

In this section, first a few remarks from the literature about clippings will be presented. Subsequently a preliminary analysis of different types of English clipping follows. Finally, examples from languages such as Dutch and German will be discussed.

Arbitrariness

Stockwell and Minkova (2001: 10) devote a short paragraph to clipping, which they call ‘creation by shortening’, in which the authors state:

Shortening may take any part of a word, usually a single syllable, and throw away the rest, like quiz from inquisitive, phone from telephone, plane from airplane, flu from influenza.

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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