Apheresis (linguistics)

Etymology

Apheresis comes from Greek ἀφαίρεσις aphairesis, "taking away" from ἀφαίρέω aphaireo from ἀπό apo, "away" and αἱρέω haireo, "to take". Aphetism comes from Greek ἄφεσις aphesis, "letting go" from ἀφίημι aphiemi from ἀπό apo, "away" and ἵημι híemi, "send forth".

Historical sound change

In historical phonetics and phonology, the term "apheresis" is often limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel. The Oxford English Dictionary gives that particular kind of apheresis the name aphesis (/ˈæfɪsɪs/; from Greek ἄφεσις).

Loss of any sound

  • English [k]nife/ˈnaɪf/
  • English because → informal ’cause
  • Proto-Norse *[st]randa- (Swedish strand) > Finnish ranta "beach"
  • Latin Hispania > Italian Spagna 'Spain'
  • Old English cneo > English knee/ˈniː/

Loss of unstressed vowel

  • Greek epískopos > Vulgar Latin/British Latin *(e)biscopus > Old English bisceop 'bishop'
  • English acute > cute
  • Middle English Egipcien > gipcyan, gipsen 'Gypsy'[1]
  • English alone > lone
  • English amend > mend
  • Old French e(s)vanisse > Middle English vanisshen 'vanish'
  • Old French estable > English stable
  • Old French estrange > English strange
  • English esquire > squire

Poetic device

  • English it is > poetic 'tis
  • English upon > 'pon
  • English eleven > 'leven

Informal speech

Synchronic apheresis is more likely to occur in informal speech than in careful speech: 'scuse me vs. excuse me, How 'bout that? and How about that? It typically supplies the input enabling acceptance of apheresized forms historically, such as especially > specially. The result may be doublets, such as especially and specially, or the pre-apheresis form may fail to survive (Old French eschars > English scarce). An intermediate status is common in which both forms continue to exist but lose their transparent semantic relationship: abate 'decrease, moderate', with bate now confined to the locution with bated breath 'with breath held back'.

gollark: It completely freezes, not even my system tray clock works.
gollark: I do want it to swap, just not to the point of freezing.
gollark: It's run out of enough RAM to actually do anything ever in such cases.
gollark: It just swaps utterly.
gollark: I run out of memory quite often because I underprovisioned RAM.

See also

References

Notes

  1. Online Etymology Dictionary, Gypsy. Retrieved 2010-07-13.

Bibliography

  • Alexander, James D. 1988. Aphesis in English. Word 39.29-65
  • Crowley, Terry (1997). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
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