Sum: `workaholic'

[Jim Rader]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I'm not familiar with "stumping" as a term and I'm not sure how Benji
Wald would distinguish it from clipping.  The standard taxonomies I
know of--e.g., Hans Marchand's _The Categories and Types of
Present-Day English Word Formation_ (2nd. ed. 1969) and "The Taxonomy
of Word making" by John Algeo (_Word_, 29:2, Aug. 1978) get by with
just "clipping," however inadequately.  Laurie Bauer (_English Word
Formation_, CUP, 1983, p. 233) defines clipping as "the process
whereby a lexeme (simplex or complex) is shortened, while still
retaining the same meaning and still being a member of the same form
class."  Obviously, though, once a word derived by clipping exists, it
may change grammatical class and undergo other modifications.
Marchand calls formations of the <sitcom> type "clipping-compounds"
and Algeo "clipped compounds."  Marchand would presumably consider
<burger> a "fore-clipping" (as opposed to a back-clipping like
<lab>), though he doesn't specifically discuss this word (at least in
the 1st ed.--unfortunately I don't have the 2nd ed. at hand).
Fore-clipping is certainly less common than back-clipping, though
legitimate examples (<gator>, <copter>) certainly exist.
 
Whether there are typological constraints on languages that have
these derivational devices is a good question.  One thing that
immediately comes to mind is that clipped formations may be prolific
in the realm of proper names in languages that don't much resort to
clipping otherwise;  Slavic languages are an obvious example:
shortenings (of old Greco-Latin and dithematic names), usually or
originally with hypocoristic value and often with other
phonetic/morphological modifications, are widespread and of
considerable antiquity.
 
Of particular interest to me is the derivational process by which 1)
a simple or complex lexeme is clipped to a single syllable and 2) the
suffix <-ie/-y> is added; an example is <preemie> from "premature
baby."  This combination of clipping/suffixation also exists in
German:  <Sozi>, <Nazi>, <Ossi>, <Wessi>, many others.  I'm not
certain to what degree the process is indigenous to German or was
borrowed from English.  (Does it also exist in Dutch or Scandinavian
languages?)  The only discussion I know of these words in German
(">Abi<, >Krimi<, >Sponti<:  Substantive auf -i im heutigen Deutsch"
by Albrecht Greule, in _Muttersprache_ Bd. 84 (1983): 207-217)
doesn't deal with the relative chronologies in enough detail for
one to decide.  At any rate, there appears to be no constraint on
doing this in German--though German is so typologically similar to
English this fact is unsurprising.
 
Jim Rader
 
 
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> I have a few questions pursuant to Larry's sum of the formation of
 'workaholic'.
> First, I acknowledge Jim Rader's restriction of "stumping" to word/root
> condensation which preserves some initial stretch, as in #SITuation#COMedy,
> #AGITation#PROPaganda, etc.  Second, I observe that examples of stump
> compounds were only given for languages that have a productive head-final
> compounding process, e.g., English, German, Russian, Chinese, but not
> French (for which examples approximating "workaholic" were given, cf.
> "discotheque", stumped to "disco" in English and then returned to French,
> if French did not stump it independently).  I noted that English has
> numerous non-compound stumps, e.g., #MATHematics.  It also tolerates
> homophony and shifts of grammatical category in stumping, e.g., #CON stumps
> CONtra, CONvict and CONfidence (as in con game/man).  (NB #PAN stumps
> "panorama" used as a verb, cf. #CON = deceive < confidence).  Third, much
> rarer in English is reduction of non-compound words to eliminate initial
> syllables (which have some degree of stress).  hamburger > burger may be an
> example, if it can be shown that "ham" is not necessarily eliminated as a
> morpheme but simply as a convenience to reduction (according to Zipf's
> Law), cntr. frankfurter > frank (not *furter).  Is "burger" an example of
> CLIPping?
>
> My questions are:
>
> What's CLIPping?  How does it differ from STUMPing?
>         (If the terms overlap, is that useful?)
> Are there typological constraints on languages which have stumping?
>         (Why should there be if non-compounds can stump?)
> Are there typological constraints on languages which have "workaholic"
> formations?
>         (Why should there be if "workaholic" formations are related to
> BLENDS?  There are
>           no typological constraints on the occurrence of blends, are there?)
>