IX. Clipping

9.1.1. Clipping consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts. It would, of course, be erroneous to think that the new word is nothing but a shorter form with no linguistic value of its own. It is true that the information received from a native speaker will probably be the one I have tentatively given: mag is short for magazine, math is short for mathematics. The difference between the short and the long word is obviously not one of logical content. The same informant, asked about the difference between book and booklet, would say that a booklet is a small book, thus adding the logic element of "small". What makes the difference between mag and magazine, math and mathematics, is the way the long word and the short word are used in speech. They are not interchangeable in the same type of speech. Magazine is the standard term for what is called mag on the level of slang. The substitution of Мех for Mexican implies another shift in linguistic value in that it involves a change of emotional background, based on the original slang character of the term. Moreover, the clipped part is not a morpheme in the linguistic system (nor is the clipped result, for that matter), but an arbitrary part of the word form. It can at all times be supplied by the speaker. The process of clipping, therefore, has not the grammatical status that compounding, prefixing, suffixing and zero-derivation have, and is not relevant to the 1inguistic system (la langue) itself but to speech (la parole).'

The moment a clipping loses its connection with the longer word of which it is a shortening, it ceases to belong to word-formation, as it has then become an unrelated lexical unit. The speaker who uses the word vamp has no idea that historically the word has its origin in vampire. An American who speaks of pants does not think of the word as the shortened form of pantaloons. The study of such words has become a lexicological matter.

It is with the reservations just made that clippings are treated in this book.

9.1.2. There are different kinds of clipping: 1) Back clipping (lab for laboratory). 2) Fore-clipping (plane for airplane). 3) С1ipping-compounds (navicert for navigation certificate; Eurasia for Europe + Asia).

X. Blending and word-manufacturing

10.1. [...] Blending can be considered relevant to word-formation only insofar as it is an intentional process of word-coining. We shall use the term here to designate the method of merging parts of words into one new word, as when sm/oke and f/og derive smog. Thus blending is compounding by means of curtailed words. However, the clusters sm and og were morphemes only for the individual speaker who blended them, while in terms of the linguistic system as recognized by the community, they are not signs at all. Blending, therefore, has no grammatical, but a stylistic status. The result of blending is, indeed, always a moneme, i.e. an unanalysable, simple word, not a motivated syntagma. Once the blend smog has been formed, it ceases to contain the two (curtailed) morphemes which the word-coiner intended to combine in it. Unless speakers have received extralingual information about the composition of the blend, such words as brunch (br/eakfast + l/unch), smaze (sm/oke + h/aze) and others are simple words, the subject matter of lexicology. [...]