[Ads-l] query on -s truncation

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Serendipitously I re-encountered an abbreviation that apparently
follows the pattern under discussion in the naming domain:

Charles => Chas.
Charles F. Lummis => Chas. F Lummis

[ref] 1900, September-October, The Land of Sunshine: The Magazine of
California and the West, Edited by Chas. F. Lummis, Volume 13, Number
4, In the Lion's Den by Chas. F. Lummis, Start Page 291, Quote Page
292, The Land of Sunshine Publishing Co., Los Angeles, California.
(Google Books Full View) link [/ref]

https://books.google.com/books?id=YUI1AQAAMAAJ&

Garson


On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: query on -s truncation
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> One more reference I forgot to mention (the earliest scholarly
> discussion I've seen, from 2010):
>
> Vanessa McCumber, "-s: The latest slang suffix, for reals"
> Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle, University of Victoria, Vol
> 20, No 1 (2010)
> http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/WPLC/article/viewFile/5676/2202
>
> The paper covers past uses of the "-s" suffix, including as a clipped
> form of the "-sy" hypocoristic. Under "-s suffix 2," OED2 gives the
> examples "Babs," "Toots," "ducks," and "moms." (That's relevant to the
> discussion of "Babs" for "Barbara" elsethread.)
>
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 3:03 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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
>
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