Haplology

 Haplology (from Greek ἁπλόος haplóos "simple" and λόγος lógos, "speech") is defined as the elimination of an entire syllable through dissimilation: when two identical or similar syllables occur consecutively. The phenomenon was identified by American philologist Maurice Bloomfield in the 20th century.^[1] Linguists sometimes jokingly refer to the phenomenon as "haplogy".^[2] As a general rule, haplology occurs in English adverbs of adjectives ending in "le", for example gentlely > gently; ablely > ably.

ExamplesEdit

• Basque: sagarrardo > sagardo ('apple cider')
• German: Zaubererin > Zauberin (female 'wizard' or 'magician'; male: der Zauberer; female ending -in)
• Dutch: narcissisme > narcisme ('narcissism')
• French: fémininité > féminité ('femininity')
• English:
  • Old English Engla land > Engle lond > England ^[1]
  • morphophonology > morphonology^[3]
  • mono nomial > monomial
  • urine analysis > urinalysis
  • Colloquial (non-standard and eye dialect spellings signalled by *):
    • library (RP: /ˈlaɪbrərɪ/) > *libry /ˈlaɪbrɪ/
    • particularly > *particuly
    • probably > *probly
    • February > *Febury
    • representative > * representive
    • authoritative > * authoritive
• Latin:
  • nutritrix > nutrix 'nurse'
  • idololatria > idolatria (hence idolatry)
• Biological Latin:
  • Hamamelididae (disallowed spelling: Hamamelidae)
  • Nycterididae > Nycteridae^[4]
  • Anomalocaridid > Anomalocarid
• Homeric Greek: amphiphoreus (ἀμφιφορεύς) > amphoreus (ἀμφορεύς) 'two-handled pitcher, amphora'^[5]
• Arabic:
  • tataqātalūna (تَتَقَاتَلُونَ) > taqātalūna (تَقَاتَلُونَ) 'you are fighting each other'^[6]
  • *ʾaʾkulu (*أَأْكُلُ) > ʾākulu (آكُلُ) 'I eat'
• Spanish: impudicicia > impudicia 'lack of modesty' (i.e. the nominal form of impúdico, "immodest")^[7]

DittologyEdit

Learn more This section does not cite any sources.

The reverse process is known as dittology. It is less common but encountered in some languages. For instance, in the Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji, numerals "du" ('two, 2') and "sê" ('three, 3') undergo a dittological process when used in counting:

• du > didu
• sê > sisê

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.