Templatic Morphology (Clippings, Word-and-Pattern)

This article introduces two phenomena that are studied within the domain of templatic morphology—clippings and word-and-pattern morphology, where the latter is usually associated with Semitic morphology. In both cases, the words are of invariant shape, sharing a prosodic structure defined in terms of number of syllables. This prosodic template, being the core of the word structure, is often accompanied with one or more of the following properties: syllable structure, vocalic pattern, and an affix. The data in this article, drawn from different languages, display the various ways in which these structural properties are combined to determine the surface structure of the word. The invariant shape of Japanese clippings (e.g., suto ← sutoraiki ‘strike’) consists of a prosodic template alone, while that of English hypocoristics (e.g., Trudy ← Gertrude) consists of a prosodic template plus the suffix -i. The Arabic verb classes, such as class-I (e.g., sakan ‘to live’) and class-II (e.g., misek ‘to hold’), display a prosodic template plus a vocalic pattern, and the Hebrew verb class-III (e.g., hivdil ‘to distinguish’) displays a prosodic template, a vocalic pattern and a prefix. Given these structural properties, the relation between a base and its derived form is expressed in terms of stem modification, which involves truncation (for the prosodic template) and melodic overwriting (for the vocalic pattern). The discussion in this article suggests that templatic morphology is not limited to a particular lexicon type – core or periphery, but it displays different degrees of restrictiveness.