Note 37 — Chapter IX · THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD ON LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT

It is often said that stress is decisive of what part is left out in word-clippings, and from an a priori point of view this is what we should expect. But as a matter of fact we find in many instances that syllables with weak stress are preserved, e.g. in Mac(donald), Pen(dennis), the Cri, Vic, Nap, Nat for Nathaniel (orig. pronounced with [t], not [þ]), Val for Percival, Trix, etc. The middle is never kept as such with omission of the beginning and the ending; Liz (whence Lizzy) has not arisen at one stroke from Elizabeth, but mediately through Eliz. Some of the adults’ clippings originate through abbreviations in writing, thus probably most of the college terms (exam, trig, etc.), thus also journalists’ clippings like ad for advertisement, par for paragraph; cf. also caps for capitals. On stump-words see also below, Ch. XIV, §§ 8 and 9.