In phonology, apocope (pronounced /əˈpɒkəpiː/, from the 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, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.

[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")

[edit] Loss of other sounds

• Latin illu[d] > Spanish ello

[edit] Case marker

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.

[edit] Grammatical rule

Some languages have apocopations internalized as mandatory forms. In Spanish, for example, some adjectives that come before the noun lose the final vowel when they precede a noun (mainly) in the masculine singular form. Some adverbs, cardinal and ordinal numbers have apocopations as well.

• Adjectives
  • Grande ("big"/"great") → gran → gran aventura (feminine) ("great adventure". Currently, never "grande aventura", except in comparative forms: la más grande carrera)
  • Bueno ("good") → buen → buen hombre (masculine) ("good man")
• Adverbs
  • Mucho ("very") → muy → muy cansado ("very tired")
  • Tanto ("so") → tan → 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")

[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
• Spanish fotografía > foto "photography"
• Spanish televisión > tele "television"

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

• Abbreviation
• Acronym
• Apheresis
• contraction
• Elision
• Initialism
• Syncope (phonetics)

[edit] References

• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.

[edit] External links

Look up apocope in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• World Wide Words: Apocope