Haplology (from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
"simple" and , "speech") is, in spoken language, the
elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run to ...
(elimination or deletion) of an entire
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
or a part of it through
dissimilation (a differentiating shift that affects two neighboring similar sounds). The phenomenon was identified by American
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
Maurice Bloomfield in the 20th century.
Linguists sometimes jokingly refer to the phenomenon as "haplogy", an
autology. As a general rule, haplology occurs in English adverbs of adjectives ending in "le", for example ''gentlely'' → ''gently''; ''ablely'' → ''ably''.
Examples
* Basque: → ('apple cider')
* German: → (female 'wizard' or 'magician'; male: der Zauberer; female ending -in); this is a productive pattern applied to other words ending in (spelt) ''-erer''.
* Dutch: → ('narcissism')
* French: → ('femininity')
* English:
** Old English → ''Engle lond'' → ''England'' (expected form would be *''Engelland'')
** Old English ''cyning'' → English ''king'' (expected form would be *''kinning'')
**''
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (m ...
'' → ''morphonology''
** ''conservativism'' → ''
conservatism
Conservatism is a Philosophy of culture, cultural, Social philosophy, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, Convention (norm), customs, and Value (ethics and social science ...
''
** ''mononomial'' → ''
monomial
In mathematics, a monomial is, roughly speaking, a polynomial which has only one term. Two definitions of a monomial may be encountered:
# A monomial, also called a power product or primitive monomial, is a product of powers of variables with n ...
''
** ''urine analysis'' → ''
urinalysis
Urinalysis, a portmanteau of the words ''urine'' and ''analysis'', is a Test panel, panel of medical tests that includes physical (macroscopic) examination of the urine, chemical evaluation using urine test strips, and #Microscopic examination, m ...
''
** Colloquial (non-standard and
eye dialect
Eye dialect is a writer's use of deliberately nonstandard spelling either because they do not consider the standard spelling a good reflection of the pronunciation or because they are intending to portray vernacular, informal or low-status language ...
spellings signalled by #):
***''library'' (
RP: ) → #''libry''
*** ''particularly'' → #''particuly''
*** ''probably'' → #''probly''
*** ''February'' → #''Febury'', #''Febuary'' or #''Febr(u)y'' (compare e.g.
Austrian German
Austrian German (), Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German (), Austrian High German (), or simply just Austrian (), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and South Tyrol. It has the highest prestige ( ...
)
*** ''representative'' → #''representive''
*** ''authoritative'' → #''authoritive''
*** ''deteriorate'' → #''deteriate''
* Latin:
** → ('nurse')
** → (hence ''
idolatry
Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic ...
'')
* Biological Latin:
** ''
Hamamelididae'' (disallowed spelling: ''Hamamelidae'')
** ''Nycterididae'' → ''
Nycteridae''
**
Anomalocarididae
Anomalocarididae (occasionally mis-spelt Anomalocaridae) is an extinct family of Cambrian radiodonts, a group of stem-group arthropods.
Around 1990s and early 2010s, Anomalocarididae included all radiodont species, hence the previous equivalen ...
(disallowed spelling: ''Anomalocaridae'')
* Homeric Greek:
** () → () ('two-handled pitcher,
amphora
An amphora (; ; English ) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land ...
')
** () → () ('black with clouds')
* Arabic:
** () → () ('you are fighting each other')
** () → () ('I eat')
* Spanish: → ('lack of modesty', i.e. the nominal form of , 'immodest')
* Portuguese:
** → (aged person, senior)
** → (feminism)
** Colloquially in sequences like ''campo pequeno'' pronounced like "campequeno" or ''faculdade de letras'' pronounced like "faculdadletras".
* Italian:
** ''tragico-comico'' → ''tragicomico'' ('
tragicomic')
** ''domani mattina'' → ''domattina'' ('tomorrow morning')
Reduplication
The reverse process is known as
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The cla ...
, the doubling of phonological material.
See also
*
Haplography
Haplography (from Greek: haplo- 'single' + -graphy 'writing'), also known as lipography (from Greek: lip- from leipein 'to leave/to omit' + -graphy 'writing'), is a scribal error, scribal or typographical error where a letter or group of letters th ...
*
Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar or elided. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such ...
*
Portmanteau
In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.
Notes
{{reflist
References
* Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics''. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
Phonology