Anchoring in truncation: A typological analysis

Abstract

Analyses of truncation patterns (e.g. Rob, from Robert) have traditionally focused on the templatic shape of such forms, while less attention has been paid to the question of which parts of the base word may survive in the truncatum. This feature of truncation, usually referred to as ‘anchoring,’ is investigated in the present paper. On the empirical basis of the generalizations emerging from an extensive database of truncation patterns in the world’s languages, a formal typology of anchoring in the framework of Optimality Theory is constructed and its defining ranking conditions (its ‘typological properties’) are extracted. The typological properties reveal the grammatical forces shaping the various classes of truncation patterns. They show that anchoring constraints must indeed form an integral part of any model of morphological truncation since—in interaction with templatic size-restrictor constraints—they determine whether truncation occurs at all and whether output forms vary in size or are of a fixed templatic shape. A thorough analysis of anchoring thus also provides evidence for templatic shapes emerging from constraint interaction and against an approach in terms of fixed, language-specific templates.