The Phonology and Morphology of Spanish Hypocoristics

Abstract

This study sets out to explain the typological gaps and the asymmetric phonological and morphological behaviors observed in the most common types of Spanish hypocoristics. These type of nicknames are divided in three main categories, left-anchored, stress anchored and reduplicative truncated forms, which can be exemplified by the three more common nicknames of the female name Elena: Ele would be the left-anchored form; Lena, the stress-anchored one; and N-ena the corresponding reduplicative variant. The study achieves its goal by postulating a single grammar with three different types of relations between input and output forms: left-anchored nicknames are the product of an input-to-truncate relation, stress-anchored nicknames are the product of a base-to-truncate relation, and reduplicative nicknames are obtained through a truncate-reduplicant mapping. The segmental and prosodic analysis is based, mainly, on two theoretical frameworks: Elan Dresher’s Contrastive Hierarchy theory and Laura Benua’s approach to Transderivational Identity within Optimality Theory.