[Ads-l] query on -s truncation

[Ben Zimmer]

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>> On May 27, 2015, at 9:14 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>
>> A colleague off-list wonders if anything has been published on the
>> truncation process described by one of her students, who is working on
>> them, as
>>
>> "-s truncation of adjectives and adverbs by younger speakers, yielding
>> for example 'totes', 'awks', 'adorbs', from 'totally', 'awkward',
>> 'adorable', etc."
>>
>> Seems like I vaguely recall something on this but I can't remember
> what. Anyone?
>
> a little bit on on my blog, with references to ADS-L:
>
> http://arnoldzwicky.org/2013/12/31/amaze/

At the 2014 ADS conference in Minneapolis, there was a relevant paper
by Sravana Reddy, Joy Zhong, and James Stanford, "A Twitter-Based
Study of Newly Formed Clippings in American English." The paper is
discussed here:

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/01/16/263096375/researchers-are-totes-studying-how-ppl-shorten-words-on-twitter

That paper followed up on Kenny Baclawski's 2012 LSA poster
presentation, "A Frequency-Based Analysis of the Modern -s Register-
Marking Suffix," summarized here:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/01/24/abbevs-the-like-how-web-words-are-crossing-over

See also Mark Liberman's Language Log post on a recent paper by Lauren
Spradlin, "_OMG the Word-Final Alveopalatals are Cray-Cray Prev_: A
Morphophonological Account of _Totes_ Constructions in English":

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=24

A few other items of interest:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2011/10/15/totes-presh/s63iarzfURe4xU1gCzBQjI/story.html
"Totes presh," Erin McKean, Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2011

http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/01/20/totes-cray-cray-abbrevs/
"Totes Cray-Cray Abbrevs," Ben Yagoda, Lingua Franca (Chronicle blog),
Jan. 20, 2012

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=cb579da7-5a9f-43c9-8ae3-df783b7ee47e
"Why all the cray-cray words?" Elizabeth "Libsies" Withey, Edmonton
Journal, Dec. 18, 2013

--bgz

-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org