Apocope
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| Historical sound change |
|---|
| General |
| Metathesis |
| Dissimilation |
| Fortition |
| Lenition (weakening) |
| Sonorization (voicing) |
| Spirantization (assibilation) |
| Rhotacism |
| Debuccalization (loss of place) |
| Elision (loss) |
| Apheresis (initial) |
| Syncope (medial) |
| Apocope (final) |
| Haplology (similar syllables) |
| Fusion |
| Cluster reduction |
| Compensatory lengthening |
| Epenthesis (addition) |
| Anaptyxis (vowel) |
| Excrescence (consonant) |
| Prosthesis (initial) |
| Paragoge (final) |
| Unpacking |
| Vowel breaking |
| Assimilation |
| Coarticulation |
| Palatalization (before front vowels) |
| Labialization (before rounded vowels) |
| Final devoicing (before silence) |
| Vowel harmony |
| Consonant harmony |
| Cheshirisation (trace remains) |
| Nasalization |
| Tonogenesis |
| Floating tone |
| Sandhi (boundary change) |
| Crasis (contraction) |
| Liaison, linking R |
| Consonant mutation |
| Tone sandhi |
| Hiatus |
In phonology, apocope /əˈpɒkəpi/ or /əˈpɑkəpi/ (Greek apokoptein “cutting off” from apo- “away from” and koptein “to cut”) is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word; especially, the loss of an unstressed vowel.
Contents |
[edit] Historical sound change
In historical phonetics, the term "apocope" is often but not always limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel.
[edit] Loss of an unstressed vowel (with nasal)
- Vulgar Latin pan[em] > Spanish pan "bread"
- Vulgar Latin lup[um] > French loup "wolf"
- Latin strat[am] > English street
[edit] Loss of other sounds
- Latin illu[d] > Spanish ello
[edit] Case marker
In the Estonian language and Sami language, a phenomenon is seen where apocope explains the forms of grammatical cases. For example, a nominative has apocope of the final vowel but the genitive does not; instead, the genitive case marker has undergone apocope: linn "a city", vs. linna "of a city", historically derived from *linna and *linnan, respectively.
[edit] Grammatical rule
Some languages have apocopations internalized as mandatory forms. In Spanish, for example, many adjectives that come before the noun lose the final vowel when they precede a noun in the masculine singular form. The word grande (big/great) becomes gran. In this cases, one would say gran aventura (great adventure) rather than grande aventura.
[edit] Poetic device
- German ich gebe > poetic ich geb' "I give"
[edit] Informal speech
Various sorts of informal abbreviations might be classed as "apocope".
- English photograph > photo
- French réactionnaire > réac "reactionary"
- English animation > Japanese anime-shon > anime
- English synchronization > sync
- English Alexander > Alex and so on with other diminutives
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 truncation.
[edit] See also
[edit] External sources
