A Comprehensive Analysis of Base Truncation in English Word-Formation

Abstract

This study deals with an issue of base-final rime truncation observed in word formation process in English. The base truncation occurs only when a vowel-initial derivational morpheme is affixed to a preceding base. The examples are divided into two major groups: bases ending in a vowel and bases ending in a consonant. The second group of data is also sub-divided into four, depending on the structure and the compositions of the base-final syllable. We argue that the base-final rime deletion is motivated by avoiding a sequence of hetero-syllabic vowels across the morpheme boundary, the final two syllables of a derived word with the identical onsets, the neutralization of a back-formed or prominent vowel, the three or more stressless syllables, and the concatenation of certain derivational suffixes in a derived word. Even though the base-final rime truncation was triggered by various reasons, their goal is to achieve a better syllabic, prosodic, metrical, or morphological structure in newly formed words in English and this study provides a constraint-based analysis which employs constraints, reflecting all those motivations of the base-final rime truncation.